R continues to gather momentum, just as Linux, Apache, MySQL, and JBoss have in recent years. It's disrupting the market from the bottom, attracting new users who cannot afford the expensive license fees from IBM or SAS. R claims dozens of books on Amazon about the topic, 2,000 open source packages and extensions, and an estimated million users worldwide.
Recently, an open source company that provides an optimized version of R, Revolution Computing, received an injection of capital from North Bridge Ventures and Intel. Who would be equipped to lead a company competing against billion-dollar incumbents? None other than Norman Nie, founder and former CEO of SPSS. Game on.
This story, "The BI battle isn't between IBM and SAS," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in open source at InfoWorld.com.