Seeing a huge market opportunity to sell business intelligence software to companies with 100 to 1,000 employees and $100 million to $1 billion in revenue, Business Objects today announced a major new-product family and larger initiative aimed at catering to midsized companies. The midmarket now buys $2.1 billion worth of BI software each year, according to IDC, and Business Objects says that figure is growing 12.5 percent per year -- 50 percent faster than BI sales growth among large enterprises. 数据挖掘交友
To cater to the tighter budgets and leaner IT staffs of midsized companies, Business Objects is introducing Crystal Decisions, a "holistic" product that will be offered in Standard, Professional and Premium editions. The Standard edition, which includes reporting, query and analysis, is being released today starting at $20,000. The Pro and Premium editions, which will add data integration and performance management capabilities, will debut in the second and fourth quarter, respectively. All three editions will be able to deliver data, reports and analyses within Microsoft Office and SharePoint.
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Business Object's larger initiative will see a separate division set up to serve the midmarket, and it will have its own research, development and customer support teams. It will also have a separate Web presence and a partner-driven solutions marketplace patterned after Salesforce.com's AppExchange.
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Among the top BI vendors, Business Objects is uniquely positioned to take on the midmarket thanks to its 2003 acquisition of Crystal Decisions. That company catered to small and midsized companies and had a strong sales channel. As a result, Business Objects says it already has 30,000 midmarket customers and 2,300 integrator and reseller partners.
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Business Objects currently offers Crystal Reports Server and the CrystalReports.com on-demand service. The Crystal Decisions family goes beyond reporting and is said to share its code base with the Business Objects XI platform. That overlap leads at least one competitor to question whether Crystal Decisions is truly designed for midmarket needs. "High-end BI products are complex, but midmarket customers are concerned about implementation time, skill sets and training requirements," says Rick Pitts, CEO of the North American unit of QlikTech, a midmarket-focused BI vendor. "If you go to Business Object's Web site, you'll see 18 pages of courses. We have three courses, the longest of which lasts four days."
