Targit Is Number One

September 29, 2010

I do have a difficult time figuring out how a company makes or does not make one of the many Top 100 lists. I learned on a call this morning that Targit Business Intelligence, a company in Denmark with offices in Tampa is ranked as Number One on a Computerworld’s Top 100 list. Here’s a screenshot of the Targit splash page with the announcement:

targit splash

Kudos to Targit, a company offering a business intelligence suite. We have encountered the system in the past and found it to be a good product. The product fits into the next-generation of content processing systems. Targit says:

TARGIT was founded in 1986, with CEO Morten Sandlykke as one of the founding partners. From the beginning, TARGIT developed and sold Business Management Systems. While starting out as a software company providing applications to the retail and oil business, Targit quickly realized the overwhelming need for analytical processing tools that could help management in day-to-day decision-making. With the acquisition of Morton Systems in 1996, TARGIT started to develop a Business Intelligence tool based on the same basic ideas of usability, versatility and ease of implementation that has always been a Targit trademark. In October 2000, the company was reorganized; the “new” Targit Inc. is a pure business intelligence company that markets only the Business Intelligence product line; Targit BI Suite. The first version of the Targit Business Intelligence technology was launched during spring of 1996. The core technology of Targit Business Intelligence is protected by several international patents.

The company says that it has more than 270 marketing Targit throughout the world and has over 3,700 customers with more than 260,000 named users. You can see some good examples of the system and its interface on the Targit Video Demo Web page.

What caught our attention is the fact that the Computerworld seems to be specific to Denmark. Nothing wrong with that, but my hunch is that the list may be a clever way to open the door for Computerworld ad sales people to ring up a firm on the list. The idea is that advertising in a Computerworld publication, on its Web site, or participating in some other special program is the object of the game. In fact, the list reveals more about Computerworld than the names of the companies placed on the list.

I learned that several conference organizers are shifting to a pay-to-speak model. Other companies are skipping the public conference opportunities and holding user conferences. MicroStrategy contacted me today inviting me to a free business intelligence seminar. The idea is to learn about business intelligence and interact with a business intelligence system. My hunch is that this will be MicroStrategy’s own system.

As search and content processing vendors shift to new markets, I expect that more innovative marketing and promotion opportunities will become available. The problem is that procurement teams are likely to have a very difficult time figuring out what is real, what is marketing, and what is coming in the next release of a particular product.

As search implodes, I think I will be witness to an explosion of content systems that are transforming themselves into different types of companies.

For established players, this creates a need to market better. The good people at Computerworld seem to have hit on a “special” list as one way to boost revenue and, in my opinion, create confusion for those trying to find a system to resolve a quite particular problem. Lists don’t solve problems. I think long lists without context create more work and can lead to confusion. Desperate times call for innovation. Lists. New. Fresh.

Stephen E Arnold, September 29, 2010

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