Stories about: Crystal Decisions

Business intelligence (BI) is in the eye of the media, no longer as the industry's new buzz word but as a technology fast attaining maturity. With market consolidation on the rise, the technology is gaining momentum in Asia.

Business Objects, SAS Institute, and MicroStrategy are bolstering their BI technology in the areas of data integration, analytics, and links to popular desktop applications in order to drive BI from a back-office querying and reporting tool to a front-office mainstream system. These initiatives are aimed to provide an end-to-end infrastructure to liberate BI data locked in operational systems and to enable data to flow to an expanded set of users who can, in turn, make better critical business decisions.

Microsoft's disclosure that the release date for Yukon has slipped again gave some SQL Server users even more to think about than the potential effect on their IT project plans.

Microsoft has added reporting capabilities to its SQL Server 2000 database, rounding out its business intelligence platform with a feature long sought by some of its customers.

Business information software company Business Objects SA announced a roadmap for integrating its own products with those of Crystal Decisions Inc., which it bought last July.

The rash of recent consolidation among enterprise business intelligence suite vendors has occurred at the temporary expense of their ability to perform, according to analyst firm Gartner’s assessment of the BI landscape.

An integrated reporting and analysis system has delivered ROI in less than six months for National Parts, a division of Automotive Components and maker of car parts.

Microsoft Corp. on Friday released the first public beta of a product that should allow developers to build and manage reports using its SQL Server 2000 database. It also disclosed pricing for the product and pegged it for release by the end of the year.

With its purchase of Brio Software Inc. expected to close later this month, business intelligence software maker Hyperion Solutions Inc. is already eyeing its development priorities for integrating the two product lines.

On Tuesday Cognos will formally unveil ReportNet, a query and reporting engine that has been written to support Web services, Java, and XML. At the same time, Business Objects will unveil Version 6.1 of its Enterprise business intelligence suite of applications.

Newlywed business intelligence firm Crystal Decisions will put on staff rather than shed them as the merger between Crystal and Business Objects takes shape, according to Crystal CEO Jon Judge.