>SAP BO, SAS and Siebel are key players in BI. MS is a baby with BI.
>
>MS is not a baby with BI - statements like this are historically and factually incorrect and slanted.
>
>One of the many key components of Business Intelligence is the MDX language. Microsoft (and some contractors working for MS at the time) created the MDX language the late 1990. Several of the companies/products you mentioned above (along with other OLAP vendors) later adopted the MDX language.
>
>Microsoft also published an OLAP specifification around the same time, which other vendors also adopted.
>
>These two facts alone vitiate your comments.
>
>What is more accurate is that many of the MS tools did not receive serious (and deserved) attention until SQL Server 2005. What is more accurate is that prior to SQL 2005, MS wasn't viewed as a strong OLAP vendor - but the truth is that every OLAP offering from every vendor had serious issues.
>
>Microsoft is now considered a key player on the BI "magic quadrant", with integration into SharePoint and Office. Take a look at the Gartner report for BI vendors, published earlier this year.
>
>There are people in the world who talk about BI who actively work in it - and there are also toilers, dabblers, cranks, and those who are innocently mistaken.

While at #5, it is interesting to note that MSFT was one of the fastest growers (23.6% is huge growth) last year (along with Oracle), however, it has a way to go still at 8.7% while SAP is at 22.9%:
http://blogs.investors.com/click/index.php/home/60-tech/2400-sap-leads-bi-software-market-that-tops-10-billion

Snippet:

SAP was the front-runner last year with $2.41 billion in business intelligence software sales, gaining 0.6% in market share over 2009, to claim 22.9%.

Next come Oracle (ORCL) at 15.6% and privately held SAS Institute at 13.2%.

IBM (IBM) and Microsoft (MSFT) round out the top five, at 11.6% and 8.7%, respectively.

SAP, Oracle, IBM and Microsoft are consolidating the BI field, with a combined 58.8% of the market, up from 57.1% in 2009.

SAS’s share slipped from 14.3% in 2009. IBM’s share also fell, from 12.2%, but IBM CEO Sam Palmisano highlighted analytics as a growth area with “excellent momentum” in the company’s Q1 earnings press release on Tuesday.

Microsoft and Oracle were the fastest growers last year. Microsoft’s BI sales jumped 23.6% to $913.7 million in 2010. Oracle’s total rose 21.9% to $1.65 billion.