Actuate e.Spreadsheet Eases Data Input for Enterprise Excel Users

The benefit is huge because millions of businesspeople may not know the niceties of databases or back-end enterprise applications, but they know Excel and how to use it, said Actuate executives.

"Users get information in a way that's familiar to them, but IT can maintain control of data access and security," said Nobby Akiha, vice president of marketing at Actuate, based here. "Traditional [business intelligence] tools have been aimed at power users and the analyst community. This is clearly aimed [at leveraging] 230 million Excel users."

Some 95 percent of employees in Global 2000 companies have spreadsheets, and 98 percent of those use Excel, according to Actuate's research.

This third release of e.Spreadsheet is geared toward boosting enterprise use. The new version adds a report wizard, range editor and query editor to enable people with Excel expertise to create reports that are easily updated from server-side data wherever it resides, according to Actuate.

The report wizard lets users set up and format their information, toggling between data sheet and design views as they go. The query wizard lets users point and click on relevant data sources using the familiar spreadsheet interface. The query design editor enables people without SQL expertise to set up queries.

The server-side component costs about $35,000 per CPU, or $495 per named user. The client-side designer software is priced at $495 per desktop. The new version is expected to ship this quarter.

Callidus Software integrates the software into its application that helps companies determine sales-force compensation. "This can help companies figure out who their top performers are by product [or] by territory. E.Spreadsheet takes that data out of the system and analyzes it, and since everyone in the world already knows Excel, the training curve is zero," said Geoff Roach, vice president of marketing at Callidus, San Jose, Calif.

"We have mountains of financial data, and it's always right, because you're dealing with people's paychecks %85 [with e.Spreadsheet] this data is more valuable because it's understandable, and you can use all the spreadsheet functions," Roach said.