Business Intelligence is a established and growing market. BUT it is a changing and fluid one, being impacted by many many of the trendy words you might hear like Big Data, Hadoop, IOT, Cloud and well others I’m sure. It is also a crowded market, with established vendors ranging from IBM to SAP, new successes like 2013 IPO Tableau (DATA on NYSE, Mktg Cap 6B+!) and just acquired by Hitachi Data Systems Pentaho (for a reported $500-600M). Among the biggest trends in the space is “BI in the Cloud”. One of the innovators in moving BI into the Cloud has been San Francisco based GoodData. Founded in 2007, GoodData has been a darling of Sand Hill road, having raised a reported total of more than $100M in venture from stellar firms including Andreeeson Horowitz and Intel Capital. Life is “Good” when you are the leader of a big trend in a big market.
However, BI in the Cloud is a tenuous leadership positioning. Everyone is in or moving to the cloud. And while Salesforce.com could leverage their first to the cloud advantage to not only lead, but transform an entire market, competitors will not fall easily for that one anymore. More expectedly, customers, while wanting Cloud first, now expect it, and what to know why you matter to them more than everyone else does.
So, rather than rest on the strategy of being the “Leader In Cloud BI,”, or “BI as A Service” , GoodData recently transitioned their positioning to being the leader in “Insight as A Service”. To quote their website:
What does Insights As a Service mean? It’s when you have a tool powerful, flexible and efficient enough to move you beyond traditional BI and get to insights faster than anyone else.
In short, GoodData offers you a MUCH BETTER MOUSETRAP! It’s not just moving the cheese to the cloud, it’s about a new way to find and capture business value. As I describe in this blog, this is CLASSIC Parade Leadership positioning. Insight as a Service is a different approach, a different mindset, and driven by a set of innovative features. We are re-inventing BI, and calling it Insight as A Service, our new mousetrap. And with that, we will deliver you to the BRAVE NEW WORLD of guided analytics.
I have described in detail a process that helps companies create a unique and market leading Viewpoint like this one and I applaud both the courage and the strategy that GoodData is pursuing in declaring a new positioning; essentially, the end of BI and the delivery of Insight. Customers are driven today to find and take advantage of business insight faster than their competition. Traditional BI is a means but not an end to this insight. By positioning GoodData as an Insight provider, not only does GoodData stand out from competitors, but it aligns with exactly the value that customers are trying to get. This is a bold attempt to lead the market forward. If they are successful, then my belief is that the $100M venture investment will be a small small fraction of the value created. I wish the GoodData team well on their journey from having helped to create the BI in the Cloud market, to now leading the emergence of the Insight as a Service market and to eventually transforming the entire BI market to an Insight one.