BI Industry Monthly Roundup: May

Each month, BI Software Insight will report on the major developments in the business intelligence industry, highlighting the most important news from vendors across the field.

This roundup will include purchases, partnerships, investments, and new and updated software releases.

Microsoft and SAP

Microsoft now has the capability to run SAP applications in their own programs, including Azure Cloud.

The partners also announced that SAP’s BusinessObjects will now be compatible with Microsoft Office, including expanded mobile support.

The move was covered by the Wall Street Journal and is noteworthy because users will now have a much broader range of options in accessing SAP apps in Microsoft’s cloud. The apps will likely be available for deployment by July.

Deployment will be executed using an SAP Cloud Appliance Library Tool that can be configured to deploy a multitude of apps.

SAP and Microsoft executives both noted that the move was an indication of further partnerships to come, implying that Hana may soon support production deployment on Azure, as well.

The partnership announcement comes a year after Oracle and Microsoft began working together to make Oracle applications available on Azure.

Executives did not indicate when SAP and Microsoft apps might be integrated into SQL 2014.

Tableau

Gartner has tagged Tableau as the fastest growing business intelligence software provider for all of 2013.

Their annual Market Share Analysis Report highlighted Tableau’s growth rate last year of over 80 percent, bringing the vendor into the elite top ten of worldwide revenue and market share for software companies.

Gartner’s latest Magic Quadrant report, released in February of 2014, placed Tableau in the Leaders Quadrant for the first time.

TIBCO

TIBCO has added another aquisition with the purchase of Jaspersoft, an open source data-integration platform.

Jaspersoft is added to a TIBCO BI lineup that includes bestseller Spotfire, which was acquired in 2007.

TIBCO is hoping that Jaspersoft’s reporting capabilities and embedded analytics will perfectly complement Spotfire’s focus on mobile KPI’s and data discovery.

The news comes just as TIBCO releases new real-time business intelligence software which will allow businesses to make use of data instantly, as it comes in.

The tool will “capitalize on disruption,” Matt Quinn, TIBCO’s chief technology officer, said in a press release, meaning that the tool will help to provide insight from the chaotic influx of new information and new events that characterizes many business operations in the era of big data.

Panorama Software

A new visuals-oriented BI tool hit the shelves this month with the release of Necto 14.

Panorama Software’s latest release conveys BI insights via detailed infographics instead of traditional graphs and reports that may hang up many non-tech users. The visual-heavy approach should support self-service access to the tool and help to make it more user-friendly. Graphics are interactive and directly linked to the details of data, allowing users to quickly drill down to access more information.

Magnitude Software

Two distinctive BI companies have merged to form a single, more holistic vendor.

Noetix and Kalido have come together to form Magnitude Software. Noetix has made a name as a provider of operational reporting software and packaged analytics, while Kalido has offered information management software.

The new company will unite to focus on enterprise information management, and already boasts 200,000 users and 10 award-winning products. “Bringing together strong, established enterprise software products creates economies of scale, and opportunities to leverage talent,” said executive vice president and chief financial officer, Doug Moore.

Birst

Birst is aiming to change the way it handles customer relationship management.

The cloud BI vendor has named former Jive Software Inc. sale executive Jay Larson as its new Chief Executive Officer.

Most players in the BI market, Larson notes, look to IT to handle customer questions about the product and establishing data algorithms and process, when such communication might be more valuable when handled by other parts of the business.

Birst has reportedly passed on several offers to be acquired, and is considering going public. The former CEO and co-founder, Brad Peters, will now focus on product development.

Looker

Looker has presented new software with an innovative approach to data exploration, offering the market another tool specializing in the analysis of big data sets.

The main feature of the product is the simplicity it provides to users attempting to wade thorugh huge amounts of relevant data. Their “D3 Visualization Library” provides graphs and charts for suers to identify and process complex data.

Looker executives say that their tool stands out from its competitors for its range of insight, and ability to provide a focus only on the relevant information. They tout its self-service, customizable environment as responsible for these advances.

The tool will also provide better integration with big data databases such as Oracle, HP Vertica, and Teradata Aster.

DataHero

DataHero is changing the way that businesses think about data visualiztion.

The cloud-based startup vendor has released a new version of its software which churns out dashboards based on data gathered from sources across the web, from Dropbox to Salesforce.

Executives tout the tool as data visualization “for the 99%” because it integrates data and decides the visuals to display on its own, enabling anyone to become a data analyst.