Jedox Extends Microsoft Excel For Business Intelligence

Company:

Headquarters: Freiburg, Germany

Technology Sector: Software

Key Product: Palo BI Suite

Year Founded: 2002

Number of Channel Partners: three in North America; 20 worldwide

Ideal Channel Partner: Business Process Consultant

Why You Should Care: Jedox is one of a growing number of companies that defray the cost of proprietary business intelligence solutions by weaving in elements of open-source software, thus making BI more affordable for small and mid-market organizations.

The Lowdown: The business intelligence market continues to boom despite the sluggish economy, in large part due to the trend of BI startups using open source to undercut the cost of BI offerings from established vendors like Hyperion, Cognos and Oracle.

Freiburg, Germany-based BI vendor Jedox has carved out a name for itself in Europe with this strategy, and the company believes it can duplicate that success in the U.S. In its last fiscal quarter, Jedox saw its sales increase by 45 percent year-on-year, growth that Markus Roithmeier, vice president of global sales and marketing, chalks up to the company's ability to bring BI to market at price points that make sense.

BI software gives companies insight into vast data stores, allowing end users to crunch data more effectively and make informed decisions. Jedox's Palo BI Suite, a Web-based spreadsheet with centralized server capacity and in-memory MOLAP (Multidimensional OnLine Analytic Processing), uses Microsoft Excel as a front end to give users more control over the data.

According to Roithmeier, many organizations have found Excel difficult to use as a BI tool, but Palo solves this by using a single database to handle analysis and planning behind its Excel front end.

"There are many downsides to using Excel as an analysis tool," Roithmeier said. "For example, if you have different versions of the same Excel spreadsheet in an organization, you don't have control over the versions, and multiple users can't work on them at the same time."

Last month Jedox unveiled Palo BI Suite 3.0, which consists of Jedox's core applications -- OLAP Server 3.0, Worksheet Server 3.0 and ETL Server 3.0 -- and is also available on Amazon EC2. Jedox offers Palo BI Suite in community and enterprise versions, with the latter packaged with extended software assurance and support functionalities, said Roithmeier.

Jedox uses a hybrid direct-channel model, and relies 100 percent on resellers in countries where it doesn't have a presence. This year, Jedox is focusing on building out its channel program in the U.K. and France, and next year will focus on doing the same in the U.S., Roithmeier said.