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You can contact Nigel Pendse, the author of this section, by e-mail on NigelP@olapreport.com if you have any comments, observations or user experiences to add. Last updated on March 3, 2004.

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	Latest product reviews to be added or substantially revised: Temtec Executive Viewer 5.3; IBM DB2 Cube Views 8.1; Panorama NovaView 3.5 The OLAP Report now includes a major new 60+ page ‘report within a report’, investigating the long, bitter-sweet relationship between OLAP servers and spreadsheets. This new report is available to all subscribers at no extra cost. Excel add-ins often provide a superior solution compared to both conventional proprietary and Web client tools and our research shows just how capable the best modern products are. New analysis of data from The OLAP Survey 2 confirms that users of OLAP spreadsheet add-ins achieve more business success than any others. The story is copiously illustrated with 50 carefully chosen screen shots, most captured specially for this report, from 13 different OLAP spreadsheet front-ends from vendors in four continents. The latest Oracle 9i OLAP benchmark is dissected, including Oracle’s claim to have “embedded OLAP technology that runs faster—over 75 times faster—than any other OLAP solution in the market”. In fact, on one key measure, we show how this result was actually three times slower than runs of the same benchmark from three years earlier.		“Your website is an incredible source of easy to use information on the BI/OLAP space. I have learned more from your website in an hour than days worth of reading from other sources. Keep up the good work!” Philip A Mickelson, CFA Assoc. Analyst, Infrastructure Software JPMorgan
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Commentaries     Hyperion Solutions merger July 23, 2003 The Microsoft Effect April 15, 2003 The rise, fall and recovery of MicroStrategy August 13, 2003 OLAP Benchmarks March 10, 2003 OLAP API wars April 26, 2002

The OLAP Survey 3 released

Unlike many other published surveys, this independent survey was not suggested, commissioned or sponsored by any vendors, and no one except Survey.com and The OLAP Report had any input to or advance information about the questions. All information provided will be used only in aggregate form and will be kept strictly confidential.

Comparing the three OLAP Surveys
Edition:				Growth in 2003 compared to 2002
Date published	July 2001	October 2002	November 2003
Total respondents	1341	2236	2897	+30%
Users whose detailed data was analyzed	589	669	1047	+57%
Total pages	143	225	282	+25%
Editorial pages	109	192	248	+29%
Total words	32,125	52,257	66,374	+27%
Tables	36	56	62	+11%
Charts	40	79	113	+43%

News briefs

PwC divests Cartesis

PwC is divesting Cartesis, the French consolidation system vendor, to a venture capital consortium led by Apax Partners Funds. This move has been forced by the Sarbanes-Oxley rules which were preventing corporations audited by PwC from doing business with Cartesis. The other members of the consortium are Advent Venture Partners, CDP Capital Technology Ventures and Partech International. The price was not disclosed. The effect of Sarbanes-Oxley had been hurting Cartesis for some time, so it was widely rumored for months that PwC had put it up for sale.

Following the divestment, announced on December 23 and completed in January 2004, Cartesis is wholly owned by the VC consortium, with no management or employee shareholdings. There is also expected to be an injection of new funds into Cartesis which will help the company’s marketing efforts in the US and UK. The company’s management and product strategy are not affected by the change of ownership, as Cartesis had in any case been run on an arm’s length basis by PwC.

Systems Union buying MIS AG

Following on from Geac and Lawson, Systems Union is buying a planning/OLAP software and services company, MIS AG. This German company’s products include DecisionWare (including Alea), onVision, Plain and DeltaMiner. Its sales are mainly in central Europe, efforts to expand in the US having failed.

The agreed bid is for €10 per share, valuing the company at €34.1m or about $40m. MIS was founded in 1988, went public in February 2000 at an offer price of €50, and was listed on the Frankfurt exchange. Its Plain Excel add-in is covered in The OLAP Report’s OLAP and spreadsheets analysis.

Business Objects buys Crystal Decisions for $1.2bn

In the largest BI consolidation so far, Business Objects announced on July 18 that it was to buy its fast growing competitor, Crystal Decisions, for approximately $820m, based on the July 17 BOBJ closing stock price ($300m in cash and 26.5m BOBJ shares). The deal eventually closed on December 11, and the rise of the BOBJ stock price since July raised the net value of the deal to $1.2bn, by far the largest BI acquisition to date.

Before the close, Business Objects had a market capitalization of $2.1bn, so it is paying about 57 percent of its own pre-merger valuation for Crystal, a competing vendor about 59 percent of its size. The majority owner of Crystal Decisions, Silver Lake Partners, became the largest shareholder in the enlarged Business Objects and will have board representation but Bernard Liautaud, co-founder of Business Objects, remains chairman and chief executive officer of the combined company.

For the twelve months ended March 2003, Crystal Decisions’ revenue was $270.6m (a growth of 34 percent) while license fees grew 33 percent to $175m. In the same period, Business Objects revenue was revenue $466m (a growth of 9.6 percent, including the impact of acquiring Acta), while license fees fell 6 percent to $237m.

Crystal’s annual revenue rose to $287.4m in the year ending June 2003, a growth of 32 percent. Business Objects’ revenue for the same 12 months is expected to be about $483m, a growth of about 11 percent, including the acquired Acta. In the quarter ending June 2003, Crystal grew revenues 27 percent to $78.2m, while Business Objects’ revenue is estimated at $128m, a growth of 15 percent, including Acta’s contribution. License fee growth is expected to be much less.

The purchase price represents about 2.85 times Crystal’s trailing revenue (assuming that the Business Objects stock price does not fall significantly), a generous ratio by current standards, so Business Objects is paying a premium for the fast growing Crystal. Business Objects says it hopes for annual pre-tax cost savings of at least $25m. The joint company will have annual revenues of close to $800m, putting it well ahead of Cognos, the current largest BI vendor, which has revenues approaching $600m. Business Objects says that the combined company will be the largest BI vendor in all major geographies, though it also claimed to be the largest BI vendor worldwide even before the merger, though this was clearly not the case.

This deal has relatively little effect in the OLAP market, where Crystal’s share is minimal, but will have a much bigger impact on the reporting market, where both vendors are strong.

It had previously been assumed that Crystal, previously part of Seagate Technologies, was aiming for an IPO, but its future was threatened by the new Microsoft Reporting Services bundled add-on to SQL Server, as well as new reporting products from Cognos and MicroStrategy. This might be regarded as a defensive move on both sides to avoid Microsoft’s threat to Crystal’s core reporting market and Cognos’ increasing strength against Business Objects.

If so, it would have parallels with the 1998 merger of Arbor and Hyperion Software, which is believed to have been triggered by the then imminent release of Microsoft OLAP Services which was bundled with SQL Server 7. That merger proved to be very difficult, in part because of the cultural difficulties between an east and a west coast company. As with this new merger, that one involved a fast-growing technology company threatened by a new Microsoft SQL Server bundled add-on merging with a larger competitor whose growth had stalled.

Crystal is based in Vancouver, Canada, while Business Objects is technically based in Paris, though most of the executive management is now in San Jose, California. The merged company will have development groups in at least eight locations in Canada, France, India, the UK and the US, which will make it hard to improve development productivity, already a problem for Business Objects.

There is a definite overlap in the Business Objects and Crystal product lines, and both have large user bases whose need for compatible upgrades will make it hard to integrate the products seamlessly. Consequently, both brands will continue, though Business Objects hopes to reduce the significant product overlap in the future. It plans to have a single sales force selling all products. Both vendors also have a large number of partners and resellers and there is likely to be channel conflict among some of these. Crystal has 1700 employees, mainly in the US, Canada and the UK; the merged company will have about 3850 employees.

Hyperion Solutions buys Brio

As part of the consolidation rush in the BI industry, Hyperion Solutions announced on July 23 that it was to buy the fading Brio Software. The deal closed in mid-October.

Brio had been struggling for some time and was unable to compete against Business Objects, Cognos, Crystal and MicroStrategy so it is no surprise to see it being acquired. Hyperion had often been rumored as the buyer, so this is also no surprise. Hyperion is paying approximately $142m in another mixed cash/stock deal. The shrinking, loss-making Brio had revenues of $101.8m in the year to June 2003.

Brio scored well as a product in The OLAP Survey 2 and will also get good scores in The OLAP Survey 3. It was also the top scoring client tool (judged in business terms) for Essbase in The OLAP Survey 3, even more so than Hyperion’s own tools, so the fit does seem remarkably good. Ironically, Crystal was the lowest scoring client for Essbase, despite being resold by Hyperion.

Hyperion is reselling Brio’s products on an OEM basis until the deal closes on October 16, 2003. The Brio brand is expected to be dropped immediately after the deal closes, though the Intelligence product name is likely to continue. It is not yet clear what the future of SQR will be.

This deal ends Hyperion’s hitherto moderately successful reseller relationship with Crystal Decisions, which is itself being acquired by Business Objects. It also makes Hyperion a direct competitor against Business Objects, as well as Cognos. Hyperion will be one of the top three general purpose BI vendors, with revenues of about $600m, comparable to Cognos but with slower organic growth.

Of all these takeovers, this probably has a better chance of working than most as

• there is no overlap in the product lines
• the companies are almost neighbors, with head offices only two miles apart, so there are no geographic issues
• Hyperion needs relational query and reporting in its solutions, and Brio is a better technical fit than Crystal
• there is no confusion about which management is in charge, and there is no doubt that Brio needed to be acquired
• Hyperion may well be more successful in selling Brio’s products than than the faltering Brio had been
• Hyperion has learned a lot of lessons after the disastrous merger five years earlier, and has had several relatively successful small acquisitions since.

Geac buys Comshare

The Canadian ERP vendor Geac announced on June 23, 2003 that it was buying Comshare, for $52m in cash. The deal closed in mid August.

Comshare, the longest established BI vendor, was formed in 1966 and had revenues of $58.3m in the year ending March 2003. Geac is buying Comshare for its MPC product, the development and marketing of which will continue under the new ownership. However, the tarnished Comshare brand is expected to be dropped soon.

Geac sees good potential for selling MPC into its large customer base, but will also continue marketing it to new, non-Geac customers. Such customers may actually be more inclined to buy it from Geac than they were from Comshare, given Comshare’s consistently poor financial performance, so this could be a rare takeover that actually increases the sales of the acquired vendor’s products.

There are a surprising number of parallels between this deal and the acquisition of Adaytum by Cognos a few months earlier:

• Cognos and Geac are both Canadian and were of similar size before these acquisitions. Both also had CEOs with British roots, though Geac’s left before the deal closed.
• Comshare and Adaytum had almost identical revenues (of about $60m), though Adaytum’s were growing rapidly and Comshare’s were flat or falling.
• Cognos paid more than three times as much for Adaytum as Geac paid for Comshare.
• Both deals were for cash.
• Both Adaytum and Comshare marketed CPM software.
• In both cases, the acquired company’s name disappeared.

Cognos buys Adaytum

Cognos announced on December 19, 2002, that it was acquiring Adaytum Software, and the transaction closed on 13 January. The final consideration was $157.1m, slightly lower than the $160m initially announced. Cognos views this as a business, not just a technology acquisition, and hopes to maintain Adaytum’s high growth rate, using Adaytum’s existing sales and marketing machine. It views this as justifying the high price paid — the technology alone would not be so valuable to Cognos, which already has products that overlap all of Adaytum’s.

Adaytum had been trying to go public since August 7, 2000, when it filed its S-1 form. A second revised S-1/A was filed in October the same year. However, with the subsequent drop in the market, this IPO was repeatedly deferred, and the cash-burning company had to raise yet more private capital of $7.4m in June 2001 and $11.1m in May 2002 from its original VCs (including St. Paul Venture Capital, Accenture Technology Ventures, 3i Group, JPMorgan Chase H&Q, and Dorsey & Whitney Ventures). The company had announced a previous round $24m of VC funding in September 2000 and several smaller amounts before that.

The IPO was seeking to raise approximately $50m (already reduced from the $63m in the original S-1), about 50 percent more than other OLAP IPOs, of which there have been none for a while. It said that it hoped to sell 5m shares at an estimated price of $9-$11. The filing shows that the company had been making rapidly mounting losses. In January 2000, the company made a number of layoffs, as part of a cost control program.

This acquisition will be challenging for Cognos. There is a lot of overlap between the two companies’ products, so buying Adaytum does not take Cognos into any new markets, though it does significantly strengthen its offering in some areas. With Cognos Finance (the former LEX2000, acquired by Cognos in January 1999) and new Planning product, Cognos already offered budgeting, planning, reporting and financial consolidation, plus its other reporting tools and applications — in fact, a wider range of analytical financial capabilities than Adaytum.

Both Adaytum and Cognos had financial product lines that included very old APL-based modules (dating back at least 20 years) as well as more modern client/server and Web-based products, and each was working on integrating their existing sets of products; now there are twice as many integration issues to tackle. Even the APL-based modules used different variants of APL. It will be interesting to see which of the overlapping products Cognos kills off. Obviously, Cognos immediately abandoned Adaytum’s use of BusinessObjects for reporting, substituting PowerPlay in the role (including providing free Series 7 PowerPlay licenses to maintenance-paying Adaytum users of BusinessObjects reporting). Cognos is only supporting existing BusinessObjects usage for 90 days; after that, existing Adaytum users who wish to continue using BusinessObjects for reporting will need to get support from Business Objects directly.

Most probably, the recently-introduced, and promising, Cognos Planning will also be killed off in favor of the equivalent Adaytum 3 component, and Cognos Finance integrated with Adaytum’s products. The resulting combination will be called Cognos Management Series (CMS).

Both companies had development groups in the US, UK and Canada, but in different cities in each case, so it will be difficult to integrate the respective development organizations, and there are bound to be casualties. And Cognos is paying a high price — 2.8 times trailing revenues — for the only recently and barely profitable Adaytum, so it will have to work hard to make financial sense of this risky move.

Cognos has acquired a number of very small companies in the past, but it is paying about twice as much for Adaytum as for all the others combined. The previous acquisitions were of small technology companies which did not disrupt the Cognos organization, and whether they succeeded or failed, were no threat to Cognos. We believe that this is the first acquisition that will have a real, visible impact on all parts of the organization and which will lead to the acquisition of a significant installed customer base and operational sales force that must be integrated with Cognos’s existing sales force. It is also the first that will cause real product overlap. If Cognos succeeds, it will be the first relatively large and successful BI acquisition; if it fails, it will join a long list of failed BI acquisitions.

Clearly, Cognos views the risks and high cost as worthwhile in order to strengthen its CPM positioning, with Hyperion Solutions being the main target. But even combining Adaytum with Cognos Finance and Metrics Manager, Cognos will still have much smaller financial applications revenues than Hyperion, though it will overtake Cartesis (Adaytum’s former partner) to become the clear number two in the segment. Though it is much too early to tell how well Cognos will be rewarded for this move, it is certain that it will put pressure on Hyperion, which is stronger in this area, but smaller and weaker overall. Cognos and Hyperion were already direct competitors, and now the battle line will become wider still.

Applix sells CRM business, restates 2001 and 2002 revenues and CEO, CFO depart

On January 23, 2003, Applix announced that it was divesting its CRM business for $8.8m to Platinum Equity Holdings. Coincidentally, PEH had previously owned Pilot Software.

This development will allow Applix to focus its energy on its BPM business based on iTM1 and Integra, its new application development environment for iTM1, which had been derived from the Enterprise CRM product. Some 55 of Applix's worldwide headcount will be transferring to PEH, leaving 140 staff with Applix. We estimate that Applix will be a $16m to $18m business based on its Sep 30, 2002 SEC filing. Overall this should be a positive development for Applix, allowing it to concentrate on iTM1 and Integra, which generated 80% of its license revenue in the last reported quarter, without the distraction of a CRM business with declining revenues.

Applix acquired the TM1 business in November 1996, when it acquired Sinper Corporation, which then traded as TM1 Software. At that time, and subsequently, Applix owned a number of other products, but now, since the sale of its CRM business, TM1 (or, iTM1 as it has become), is all it has left. Ironically, for much of the time that the businesses coexisted, the company promoted the CRM products to the exclusion of TM1, which was barely even acknowledged on the Applix.com Web site for an extended period.

Five weeks later, at the end of February, Alan Goldsworthy, the CEO and president, who had been the greatest proponent of the CRM products ‘resigned’ from the company and the board with immediate effect. At the same time, the company also announced that it would be restating its 2001 and 2002 results, the net effect being to reduce 2001’s revenues by $0.9m and to very increase 2002’s revenues. The 2002 Q4 results announcement has been delayed to late March as a result.

Oracle re-launches Express as Oracle9i OLAP AW

Oracle released Oracle9i R2 to manufacturing on May 10, 2002. This release is very significant, as it was the first to include integrated and usable MOLAP technology, the Analytic Workspace (AW). The original 9i release from the summer of 2001 only included the disappointingly weak ROLAP functionality which was little used.

The R2 version includes an enhanced version of the very long established Express technology as the AW, hosted inside the Oracle database environment. Internally, it still remains a distinct multidimensional database and engine, but shares the Oracle administration, security and management tools, as well as all run-time process, memory, logging and caching, and so benefits from RDBMS level security and resilience. From an external perspective, no separate files or processes are apparent. Other OLAP engines, including those from Microsoft and IBM, do not have this level of database integration or resilience.

When Oracle announced what was then called OLAP Services for Oracle9i in October 2000, the emphasis was very much on the ROLAP version — the subsequent Statement of Direction stated unambiguously that, “The native data store is the Oracle relational database. Significant enhancements have been made to the Oracle database to achieve Express-like OLAP performance and functionality.” In the event, the ROLAP capabilities that were available in the first release of Oracle9i did not live up to Oracle’s claims, and our loudly voiced skepticism was fully borne out. Not surprisingly, Oracle has changed tack now that it has the second release available, and is promoting the proven strengths (inherited from Express) of the AW, which of course remains a MOLAP, plus the new integration between relational and multidimensional.

One key feature of this release is that the MOLAP AW data can be seamlessly queried (though not updated) using standard SQL, so even non-OLAP aware tools — including Oracle’s own Discoverer product, which has always resolutely ignored Express — can benefit for the first time from the superior performance and calculation power of a strong MOLAP. It is also possible to join multidimensional and relational data within the database using SQL, so a single query result could include data from both environments with no data transfers required. These capabilities mean that a wide range of Oracle relational-based applications can be updated relatively easily to benefit from the functionality and performance of a powerful MOLAP engine, without needing a rewrite (though they need to use the Oracle OLAP DML language, previously known as Express SPL, in PL/SQL, to make the most of the AW). This is likely to result in a much faster OLAP adoption rate than was the case with Oracle’s previous OLAP offerings, though there seemed to be very few, if any, production deployments of 9i OLAP by Q2 2003.

This release fulfills most of the remaining promises that Oracle has been making almost since it acquired Express in mid 1995; but it will have taken a shocking eight years or more (from 1995 to 2003 or later) from the acquisition of Express to the full integration of OLAP within both the mainstream Oracle database and analytical applications. Even by the poor standards of the software industry, this is a bad case of over-promising and very late delivery, presumably caused by changing plans and internal politics within Oracle.

There are other developments concerning the OLAP Option, the front-end tools and analytical applications, which are covered in the Oracle OLAP review in The OLAP Report.

Business Objects has bought Acta, the ETL vendor best known for its ability to extract data from SAP R3, for a generous $65m in cash. The agreed deal was announced on July 9 and closed in late August 2002. This move puts the Business Objects technology stack in direct opposition to those from Cognos and Informatica, and to a lesser extent, Hyperion (with its Sagent and Crystal OEM arrangements). In each case, the vendors offer ETL technology to extract data from ERP and CRP applications, a pre-built data model, BI tools and a suite of analytical applications to present and analyze the data. Business Objects makes the point that, uniquely, each layer in its stack is composed of recognized best of breed components. With the others, at least one of the layers is much weaker. Business Objects will not be competing in the general ETL segment, and will use Acta as an integrated part of its analytical applications. Acta’s Mountain View remaining employees have moved to Business Objects’ US head office in San Jose, where its application framework is also developed.

The OLAP Report now has coverage of Executive Suite from CIP-Global. This is a new, fully integrated budgeting, reporting and statutory consolidation system, based on SQL Server 2000 and Analysis Services. Being European, it has better support for currencies and complex group accounting than most of the US-developed products. We had expected more such application products based on Analysis Services by now, so CIP’s new product fills a hole in the market. Unlike most such suites, it was developed from scratch, complete with the full set of financial capabilities, rather than being an assembly of products of different vintages.

Having prevailed over Brio in September 1999, Business Objects sued Cognos over alleged patent infringement in May 2000, and announced a settlement in May 2002. Cognos is paying Business Objects $24m, consisting of an immediate $10m upfront payment, followed by quarterly installments of $1.75m for the next two years. This has caused a restatement of Cognos’ 2002 results. Unlike the earlier $10m Brio settlement, Cognos made no admission of Business Objects’ patent’s validity, and like Brio, will not be licensing any Business Objects technology. Business Objects has also sued MicroStrategy, which promptly counter-sued on similar grounds. As the Brio and Cognos settlements were out of court, they did not establish a legal precedent, but they have probably emboldened Business Objects to take on larger and richer targets. This had always seemed a likely course of events, when Business Objects initially sued the much smaller Brio.

Pilot Software is reborn! In June 2002, Pilot Software reappeared in the guise of Pilot Software Acquisition Corporation, a new company formed by members of the Pilot management team backed by institutional investors. This reborn Pilot Software purchased Accrue’s Pilot and Hit List software product lines, including related intellectual property, customer contracts and other assets. Accrue received $1.5m in cash and retained rights to use the Pilot technology within Accrue G2. Additionally, Pilot Software assumed from Accrue certain related liabilities and will provide Accrue support services for the Pilot and Hit List technology. John D’Albis has transferred from Accrue to resume his old role as CTO of Pilot Software. Accrue had bought Pilot from Platinum Equity Holdings in August 2000 for approximately $20m in stock. Before August 1997, Pilot was owned by Cognizant Corporation. Dun & Bradstreet, Cognizant’s predecessor, had bought Pilot in November 1994, before which it had been independent since it was formed as an EIS pioneer in 1983. In 1987, in another all-paper deal, Pilot had acquired Thorn-EMI Computer Software, previously EPS Consultants, which was formed in 1972. Today’s Essbase also had its roots in EPS’s FCS product line.

As expected, PwC has transferred its CLIME product to its French subsidiary, Cartesis. The former CLIME product group in the UK have become Cartesis UK. As a result, we expect Magnitude sales largely to replace CLIME, as Cartesis promotes it in those countries that previously CLIME targets.

Microsoft has released Data Analyzer, its latest Israeli OLAP acquisition

News leaked in the Israeli press on June 21 2001 that Microsoft had just acquired Maximal Innovative Intelligence, the developer of the Max visual query front-end for Microsoft Analysis Services. While it is true that Microsoft has acquired the assets of the struggling company, the speculative price of $20m seems was too high, as Maximal’s sales were small while debts and losses were large. Though coincidentally based in Tel Aviv, like Panorama (the originator of the Microsoft OLAP server), Maximal has never had a connection with that company.

Maximal Max, in its pre-Microsoft guise.

The former Max was an unusual tool that provides a very graphical and elegantly simple way of querying and analyzing rich multidimensional databases. It was designed from scratch and highly optimized for the Microsoft OLAP engine, and worked with no other OLAP servers — so it is a good technical fit for Microsoft. Maximal had few employees and no other products, so this was a relatively simple, tactical move for Microsoft. The developers have transferred to Microsoft in Redmond. And every Maximal customer was, by definition, already an existing user of Microsoft’s OLAP server, so there were no customer conflicts.

As Max was an established version 3 product, Microsoft is keeping it as a separate product rather than immediately re-engineering the acquired technology into its existing OLAP front-end in Excel, the latest XP release of which had only recently shipped. The next Office release is not expected before mid 2003, so Microsoft clearly could not wait that long to release Data Analyzer. However, in due course, more integration is inevitable.

Microsoft announced Data Analyzer on July 10, almost three weeks after the Israeli leak. But, curiously, it did not refer to the Max acquisition in its announcement and it also did not announce the November release date. As we anticipated, Microsoft is treating Max more like Visio, another existing end-user product that it acquired previously — that is, keeping it as a discrete product, part of the Office ‘family’ but not bundled with the Office suite. However, unlike Visio, Max was a little-known product, so there was no value to Microsoft in retaining the existing brand, which was therefore dropped; hence the name change to Data Analyzer. Microsoft cut the Max price to under $180, which is much lower than most OLAP front-ends. However, despite the low price, Data Analyzer is reported not to be widely used (though many companies have tried it). The problem is that Data Analyzer is a specialized tool, whereas Microsoft appears to have positioned it as a mass-market product.

Independent front-end OLAP tools vendors are bound to assume that this is an ominous Microsoft move, suggesting that it is not content with dominating just the OLAP server market, but has similar ambitions for OLAP front-ends as well. However, Data Analyzer, at least in its initial form, is quite different to and therefore not really a competitor for front-end tools from companies like ProClarity, Business Objects, Cognos, Alphablox, Panorama, Crystal Decisions, etc. But it is probably only a matter of time before Microsoft moves deeper into their space, either through future Excel enhancements or by using the skills acquired from Maximal to build a new BI front-end as part of the Office suite. The lesson seems to be that Microsoft intends to meet all the OLAP mass market needs, and independent vendors will only remain successful by continually adding specialist or high-end capabilities. And Microsoft’s BI ambitions are not likely to be limited only to OLAP.

Is there any news we ought to include? Mail Nigel Pendse on NigelP@olapreport.com.

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