Microsoft, Cognos Extend Analytics Efforts

Microsoft

SQL Server Accelerator for Business Intelligence is available with a "cookbook" of methodology, best practices and documentation for building and maintaining these applications, said Don Petersen, product manager at the company.

Microsoft said the tool can help solution provider and ISV partners to satisfy specific business requirements for vertical applications and generate infrastructure for them in "days rather than months," Petersen said.

G4 Analytics, Bethesda, Md., already used an early version of the code to adapt its own business-intelligence application for the consumer products industry. One customer, tea producer R. Twining and Co., is already using the resulting application, G4 said.

The goal is to provide partners a way to quickly design and prototype analytics for specific vertical markets with unique requirements, Petersen said. Microsoft is talking with other analytics vendors including Business Objects, Proclarity and Cognos about using this technology in their own wares, he said.

Microsoft is trying to get ISVs to embed more of its technology in their own application offerings. The same strategy applies to the new Project 2002 project management software, which it is peddling to other companies

But in this attempt, Microsoft must tread a fine line between supporting third-party ISVs that write and sell their own applications and actively competing with them with its own offerings, observers said.

In related news, Cognos this week unveiled a version of its analytics for SAP applications. The Ottawa-based companies already offers analytics for J.D. Edwards and Oracle eBusiness applications and said it plans to cover the broad range of enterprise applications.

Scott Lawrence, director of marketing for Analytic Applications at Cognos, declined to say which enterprise applications are on deck for Cognos. Pricing for the SAP analytics start at around $100,000, he said.

Analytics has become a hot button, with application vendors such as Oracle and Siebel rushing to incorporate their own business-intelligence capabilities in existing applications.