RSSMicrosoft Acquires ProClarity
By the Betanews Staff | Published April 3, 2006, 3:18 PM
Microsoft said Monday that it had acquired analysis and visualization software maker ProClarity. The Boise, Idaho based company produces software and technologies that are compatible with Microsoft's business intelligence (BI) programs. The Redmond company said it was investing a great deal in BI, including in its upcoming Office 2007 productivity suite, and this acquisition builds upon those efforts.
BI software helps companies sift through the multitude of electronic data they accumulate, allowing them to see trends and patterns and increase productivity. "This acquisition advances our BI strategy and our ability to deliver performance management applications to customers," Microsoft Business Division president Jeff Raikes said in a statement. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
They both needed each other. Just yesterday, I was going thru a bag of junk I picked up at a conference last year. I came across a Proclarity brochure, and I thought to myself that they've got a really great product but Microsoft's bundled and freely downloadable tools have become "good enough" for most people. That's not a criticism of Microsoft; natural market pressures force everyone (including Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, etc.) to grow their feature sets in areas that users want. Those are inevitably the areas that small 3rd party companies try to target.
In particular, acquisitions seem to be the only way that the major OLTP vendors can move forward in OLAP. Starting with Oracle's 1995 acquisition of its OLAP technology (Oracle Express) followed by Microsoft's 1996 acquisition of Panorama (becoming the basis for code-name "Plato" and eventually SQL Server "Analysis Services"), the big guys seem content to focus in-house development on their OLTP engines and periodically acquire fresh meat for OLAP. In Microsoft's case, Plato was followed by acquisition of Max (becoming the ill-fated "Data Analyzer" product), ActiveViews (becoming the spiffy web-based RDF designer tool in SQL 2005 Reporting Services), Webhouse (becoming the Business Analytics in Great Plains Dynamics from Microsoft's Business Solutions Division), and now Proclarity. Ironically, Webhouse was acquired from Professional Advantage who based Webhouse upon code they licensed from Proclarity, so Microsoft is now licensing code to itself!
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|Anyone been to slashdot, I think Bill Gates as a Borg is pretty accurate, haha!
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|Micorsoft Acquires ProClarity
By BetaNews Staff, BetaNews
April 3, 2006, 3:18 PM
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wuts wrong with this heading? hmmm lol
not by one person says "betanews staff" so were going ot have to fire everyone! lol silly mistake
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|Amazing the lengths the had to go to to finally get some Clarity.
Sorry.......had to.
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|Micorsoft! =)
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