CRM Vendors Wise Up To Business IntelligenceCRM Vendors Wise Up To Business Intelligence

Blue Martini Software Inc. is shoring up its data-analysis software. The E-commerce applications vendor this week will ship a version that includes online analytical processing software from ProClarity Corp. for multidimensional analysis. Blue Martini's Analysis Center portal will offer more interactive analysis than earlier versions, which were limited to generating static reports. Pricing starts at $70,000 per CPU.

The move accelerates the race among customer-relationship management software vendors to add business-intelligence capabilities to their products. "Customer intelligence is the next battleground for CRM," says Giga Information Group analyst Erin Kinikin. Siebel Systems Inc. last month acquired analytics software vendor nQuire Software Inc.; PeopleSoft Inc. has partnered with data-mining vendor Angoss Software Corp.; and SAP has made analytics a core of a recent CRM release.