Business Objects, which develops business intelligence software, is getting into the on demand business.
The company announced April 10 that its ubiquitous Crystal Reports software is available as a service,
Named crystalreports.com, the service is essentially an on-demand report-sharing platform that lets users connect to data sources and share information.
Users first have to choose which reports (written initially in Crystal Reports) they would like to share and then upload the document to the Web site and create a list of users authorized to view the information.
“What a customer will do is go to www.crystalreports.com, where they can enter a key code into the registration code and get a ten-name access to start sharing [reports] right away,” said James Thomas, director of product marketing at Business Objects, in San Jose, Calif.
“If youre on the latest [version] of our software, its a complementary service, and you can share with a few users.”
A higher premium subscription priced model is also available that lets users share reports with an unlimited number of users, according to Thomas.
Crystalreports.com will be available through Salesforce.coms AppExchange, an online marketplace and integration platform for third–party, on demand applications.
Earlier this year, the two companies announced the launch of Crystal Reports for AppExchange, a partnership that lets Salesforce.com customers implement Crystal Reports directly into their Salesforce.com environment.
The crystalreports.com service will be available in the second half of this year.