Leader in advanced analytics adds to Microsoft’s comprehensive BI capabilities.
Microsoft has again tapped the nether regions of the western half of the United States for software innovation.
Microsoft Corp. recently announced it has agreed to acquire ProClarity Corp., a software company based in Boise, Idaho, that develops advanced analysis and visualization technologies that work in association with Microsoft’s business intelligence (BI) platform, which includes Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005, Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server.
The two companies are well acquainted already. ProClarity has been a Microsoft Gold Partner since 1999 with a fairly deep footprint in the company.
ProClarity has been a valued Microsoft partner for many years, with a strong R&D organization, more than 1,200 mutual customers and a sales force that already works closely with ours, said Jeff Raikes, president of the Business Division at Microsoft. "This acquisition advances our BI strategy and our ability to deliver performance management applications to customers," said Raikes, in a statement.
The upcoming release of the 2007 Microsoft Office system significantly increases and broadens Microsoft’s investment in BI, and this acquisition deepens that investment, providing functionality that includes additional advanced analysis and visualization technologies as well as business-logic-driven "guided" analysis.
Microsoft’s BI strategy aims to broaden the reach of business intelligence by providing an easy and integrated user experience for accessing and working with business information so that decision-makers at all levels in an organization can make more informed decisions and drive better performance.
The goal is to reach every individual, add value to every decision, and help organizations align people and initiatives to business strategy. ProClarity’s technology and people will help accelerate Microsoft’s business intelligence strategy, provide increased BI functionality, increase customer value and enhance opportunities for industry partners to integrate BI into business applications.
In the last year, Microsoft has expanded its business intelligence offerings by optimizing the 2005 version of its SQL Server database to offer better BI features. Last October, the software giant introduced the Office Scorecard Manager, a scorecarding application that helps managers track key performance indicators, will also enhance its spreadsheet applications Excel with BI capabilities in its next Office release in 2007.
The last acquisition Microsoft made in the area of business intelligence was reporting services maker ActiveViews in April 2004. In the last 12 months, the software giant has bought six companies with some of the high profile ones being collaboration software maker Groove Networks and security company Sybari Software.
The ProClarity acquisition is part of that investment, and brings to the table a technology approach that adheres to Microsoft’s current development philosophy: build software the way people work.
Our focus at ProClarity is to give organizations a simple, powerful and adaptable interface to insight, expanding on the power of the Microsoft business intelligence platform. We share Microsoft’s enthusiasm for making BI accessible to all decision-makers within an organization, said Bob Lokken, CEO of ProClarity. "We look forward to applying our people and our technology to have even greater customer impact as an integrated, strategic asset within Microsoft."
The company will also tap BI capabilities for its Dynamics suite of ERP [Enterprise Resources Planning] applications, which consist at the moment of four separate suites: GP (Great Plains), NAV (Navision), SL (Solomon) and AX (Axapta).
Over the next several years, the four ERP suites will be brought together under a single code base and at the same time the suites will be further integrated with Office, Windows, SQL Server and SharePoint Server.
The market for business intelligence has been expanding as companies are getting flooded with more and more data which they want to use to make better decisions. According to AMR Research, the total enterprise performance management, which includes business intelligence and analytic tools, reached $22.2 billion in 2005.
Financial details of the acquisition of Boise, Idaho-based ProClarity, a Microsoft partner, were not disclosed. This acquisition is part of Microsoft’s growing investment in business intelligence, a red hot area that seems to be on the mind of many business software companies, including Oracle.
Earlier this year, business software maker Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison said at an investment banking conference that his company is interested in acquiring business intelligence companies.
This acquisition will make ProClarity a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft and its offices will remain in Boise, Idaho. The privately-held company was funded by Redwood Capital Group and Summit Accelerator Fund and has annual revenues of $13.5 million, according to CapitalIQ.
Microsoft expects the ProClarity deal, pending standard regulatory approval, to close in early May.