Oracle buys Hyperion. Microsoft buys ProClarity. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) companies seem to be bracing for the business intelligence (BI) invasion. Present at a Brainstorm round table to answer some questions were:

Sean Wainer, MicroStrategy country manager; Carel Badenhorst, SAS Institute BI product manager; Gary Broomberg, Business Objects SA country manager; Charl Barnard, Knowledge Integration Dynamics; Nitesh Vallabh, PBT Group director; Gary Boddington, Alchemex Reporting Solutions managing director; Estelle de Beer, BI Practice; Jean Moncrieff, Emerge Africa CEO; Bruce Nicholson, i5 CIO; David Greenleaf, Ability Solutions commercial director; Anthony Vieria, Syspro BI specialist; Colleen Rose, Smollan group IT director; David MacWilliam, Cognos SA managing director; Schalk Roelofse, eCom Institute; Yolanda Komen, Intellient BI manager; Keith Jones, Harvey Jones Systems managing director; and Sarah Gibbons, Bytes Technology Group.