Another question asked regularly is what Business Intelligence products are suited for mid sized companies often referred to as SMEs.
Doug Henschen of intelligent enterprise
Seeing a huge market opportunity to sell business intelligence software to companies with 100 to 1,000 employees and $100 million to $1 billion in revenue, Business Objects today announced a major new-product family and larger initiative aimed at catering to midsized companies. The midmarket now buys $2.1 billion worth of BI software each year, according to IDC, and Business Objects says that figure is growing 12.5 percent per year — 50 percent faster than BI sales growth among large enterprises.
To cater to the tighter budgets and leaner IT staffs of midsized companies, Business Objects is introducing Crystal Decisions, a “holistic” product that will be offered in Standard, Professional and Premium editions. The Standard edition, which includes reporting, query and analysis, is being released today starting at $20,000. The Pro and Premium editions, which will add data integration and performance management capabilities, will debut in the second and fourth quarter, respectively. All three editions will be able to deliver data, reports and analyses within Microsoft Office and SharePoint.
Microsoft includes integration technologies with SQL Server, something only available in the Pro and Premium editions of Crystal Decisions, but Rowe says Crystal Decisions will deliver more extensive data quality, data cleansing and ETL capabilities. Microsoft's PerformancePoint Server, based in part on ProClarity products Microsoft acquired last year, debuted in mid 2007. Crystal Decisions Premium, which will include goal, metric, scorecard, trend and collaboration features, won't debut until the fourth quarter.
Update: Microsoft launched its Performance Point recently with a well organised Business Intelligence Summit. This day long event was well worth attending !
