Packaging Business Smarts

Business intelligence software vendors are quickly aligning themselves with major application developers, as it becomes apparent that companies want analytics to be an integral part of any new deployment.

Business Objects will announce this week that its software will be embedded in the suite of applications offered by supply chain vendor i2 Technologies.

Information Builders will also announce this week that a new version of its WebFocus business intelligence platform contains an application program interface to enable software developers to embed business intelligence into applications.

The developments follow Siebel Systems decision earlier this month to acquire business intelligence software company nQuire Software. CEO Tom Siebel said his goal is to embed “analytics everywhere” in his companys software products.

Mark Tice, group vice president of global alliances of Business Objects, said the i2 deal is not exclusive – i2 will continue to work with other business intelligence software vendors, but it also wanted to be able to go “longer and deeper” with one vendor. “You cant get deep integration with your applications if you continue to support multiple platforms,” he said.

In preparation for its annual users conference in Las Vegas this week, Business Objects is announcing reseller agreements with the Teradata division of NCR, an online “Knowledge Exchange” portal for customers and employees, and the signing of Sun Microsystems as a new customer.

With the new release of WebFocus, Information Builders is also adding features that will provide secured access to business intelligence data, and expanded “knowledge mapping” capabilities that enable users to take information from one report and map it against another report, spreadsheet or Web-based application. The platform also adopts the latest Java standards to increase scalability.

Michael Corcoran, Information Builders vice president of marketing, noted that one large banking customer has expanded its use of business intelligence to include 200,000 employees, and is considering letting its personal banking customers access the capabilities. “Scalability is a big concern with companies. Were making sure we stay ahead of that demand curve,” he said.