Event
Summary
MINNEAPOLIS,
Nov. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Sterling Software, Inc. (NYSE: SSW) announced general
availability today of its new EUREKA:Intelligence product. EUREKA:Intelligence
is a Web-Based Integrated, Query, Analysis and Reporting tool that allows users
to easily query, manipulate and format data for personal or shared use. It integrates
the most commonly used business intelligence capabilities into a single tool,
making it valuable for the majority of business users. EUREKA:Intelligence is
ideally suited for large, distributed organizations that require general purpose
analyses reporting requirements for a large portion of business users. The 100%
Java tool also satisfies the unique requirements of business-to-business e-commerce
companies.
EUREKA:Intelligence
is the latest product to be added to the integrated EUREKA:Suite. The suite
also contains products for web-based production reporting, analysis of very
large databases, and advanced ad-hoc analysis. In addition, EUREKA:Portal provides
a single point of entry and is a common platform of services for all EUREKA:Suite
products. Since EUREKA:Intelligence is 100% Java, it provides cross-platform
support. The client code is maintained and deployed automatically by the EUREKA:Intelligence
server, so there is no need to install or update client code. The product has
multiple analytical view modes including chart, pivot, table, and report document.
There is also a scheduling capability to allow users to monitor performance
over time. Time-series groupings of similar archived reports can be used to
generate historical information.
Market
Impact
Sterling Software is making moves into the portal market, similar to actions
taken by Cognos, Ardent Software, MicroStrategy, and many other data warehousing
vendors. Sterling completed the acquisition of Information Advantage, a leading
provider of web-based business intelligence software, in September 1999. As
announced by Sterling L. Williams, president and chief executive officer of
Sterling Software, on September 1, "Portal technology is changing the rules
of business intelligence, and with this acquisition, we're helping to write
those rules. Today, we're announcing the formation of a new product family and
a new Business Intelligence Division in order to unleash this enormous potential."
Carole Morton, president of the Business Intelligence Group, articulated Sterling's
goal to "address the full spectrum of business intelligence needs in any organization.
There is no shortage of business intelligence tools on the market. What has
been lacking is the ability to integrate the disparate capabilities into a common
platform and personalize the environment for every user."
Sterling
Software is a late entry to the portal game. MicroStrategy has recently enjoyed
great success in this arena (See TEC News Analysis article: "MicroStrategy
Moves Up with e-Business", October 6, 1999), and Sterling is going to have
to play catch up, however Sterling has a large number of products in its stable,
and counts over ninety percent of the Fortune 100 as customers. With their overall
market penetration in application development, information management, and storage
& network management, they should be able to kick-start their business intelligence
offering by leveraging their existing customer base.
User
Recommendations
Customers evaluating business intelligence solutions should investigate the
possibility of using portal technology to distribute information to end-users.
Sterling Software should be included on a long list of vendors to be evaluated,
along with MicroStrategy, Cognos, Seagate Software, Brio, Oracle, the SAS Institute,
Business Objects, and others. Vendors are entering this arena almost on a daily
basis, so the market should be thoroughly researched. Sterling should be questioned
about the maturity of their offering, since it has only recently come to market,
and Sterling has been in the business intelligence arena for a very short time.