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News

• SAP adds Polestar search tool to midmarket BI suite

  SAP on Tuesday announced Business Objects Edge BI 3.1, an upgrade to its midmarket BI suite that includes Polestar, a tool that makes it easier for nontechnical workers to tap BI.

• Jaspersoft version 3.5 adds in-memory analysis to BI tool

  Jaspersoft is adding integrated in-memory analysis functions and SaaS capabilities to Version 3.5 of its BI tool, released on Wednesday. The move opens the way for application service providers to use it to offer hosted BI services.

• IBM adds data-warehousing tools to Informix

  IBM is trying to make its Informix OLTP (online transaction processing) server a more potent option for BI (business intelligence) and data warehousing through a new optional toolset, the company announced Thursday.

• Gartner says key to BI is talk, not tech.

  Research firm Gartner has warned organisations against splurging on technology for Business Intelligence (BI) projects.

• Cognos software gives big boost to fashion designer's sales

  Elie Tahari, a fashion designer and retailer, credits its IBM Cognos business intelligence software, particularly its business performance management (BPM) features, with helping it boost sales by tens of millions of dollars a year while saving several millions of dollars a year on shipping costs.

• Tampa preps for Super Bowl with BI tools

  Half a million football-crazed fans will jam Tampa, Florida, for this Sunday's Super Bowl showdown between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Arizona Cardinals, but a small army of law enforcement officials will be tracking the situation through a system that combines BI (business intelligence) tools and a specialized software application called E Team.

• Gartner's 5 predictions for BI in 2009 and beyond

  Through 2012 more than 35 percent of the largest 5,000 companies will regularly fail to make insightful decisions about significant changes in their business and markets, according to analyst house Gartner.

• MicroStrategy updates BI software suite

  MicroStrategy Wednesday announced the release of MicroStrategy 9, the latest version of its business intelligence software suite, which it says is more flexible and powerful than prior editions.

• IBM Cognos helps banks mitigate credit risk

  IBM last week released an analytical application to provide banks and financial institutions better visibility and management of credit risk across loan portfolios.

• eBay may offer BI-as-a-service to companies

  eBay, which runs a gigantic data warehouse for internal business intelligence (BI) analytics, is considering taking it outside its firewall and offering it as a Web service to interested companies.

• Data mining for terrorists is an exercise in futility

  The kind of pattern-seeking data mining and behavioral surveillance technologies that are being used by several federal agencies to identify potential terrorists are far too unreliable to be of any real value, according to a report issued by the US National Research Council.

• Microsoft's (un)secret weapon for winning the BI battle

  SQL Server may be one of the most popular databases today, but Microsoft nevertheless remains a laggard in the business intelligence market. It ranked just fifth among BI vendors last year, according to research firm IDC.

• Bluenog wraps BI, portal and CMS for midmarket

  Bluenog released an application suite on Monday that bundles portal software along with content management and BI (business intelligence).

• Open-source ERP, BI firms take a tag-team approach

  Two open source companies have partnered to provide an integrated enterprise resource planning and business intelligence offering that should minimize the complexity that an open source deployment typically renders.

• Sydney Water rips up IT to make business intelligent

  Sydney Water will save more than $1.6 million in operational expenditure (OPEX) after it replaced its ailing data collection system with an enterprise business intelligence (BI) platform.