Analytics In the Spotlight

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 Microsoft.

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

G4 Analytics, Bethesda, Md., said it 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 give partners a way to quickly design and prototype analytics for 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.

In attempting to convince enterprise software ISVs to use its technology in their applications, Microsoft must tread a fine line between supporting third-party ISVs that write and sell their own applications and actively competing by selling its own offerings, industry observers said.

In related news, Cognos last week unveiled a version of its analytics tools that works with SAP applications. The Ottawa-based company already offers analytics capabilities for J.D. Edwards and Oracle eBusiness applications, and said it plans to support a broad range of enterprise applications.

Scott Lawrence, director of marketing for analytic applications at Cognos, declined to say which enterprise applications are on deck. Pricing for the SAP analytics tool starts at about $100,000, he said.

Analytics has become a hot issue, with application vendors such as Oracle and Siebel Systems rushing to incorporate business-intelligence capabilities into existing applications.