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The consolidation wave has been the big news in the business intelligence industry in recent years. First, there was the surge of acquisitions of smaller players by the larger BI specialty vendors, particularly Business Objects and Hyperion Solutions. Then the three largest specialist BI vendors - Business Objects, Cognos and Hyperion - were themselves acquired by software titans SAP, IBM and Oracle. Along with Microsoft, all now have large BI businesses, and much analysis has been devoted to these companies' complex product roadmaps.

The focus on consolidation at the top end of the BI market has led to an assumption by many that the remaining small vendors are now irrelevant to the corporate BI market. But, from the customer's viewpoint, which size of vendor actually delivers the most satisfactory results? Quantitative results from Nigel Pendse's BI Survey 8, the world's largest independent BI and performance management survey, reveal real-world user experiences in a non-vendor-affiliated format.

Read Nigel Pendse's complete article on the analysis of BI Survey 8.

Julie Langenkamp is editor-in-chief of Information Management. She can be reached at julie.langenkamp@sourcemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JulieLangenkamp.