Business Intelligence Vendors Tout New Products, AcquisitionBusiness Intelligence Vendors Tout New Products, Acquisition

It's been an active few weeks for business intelligence software vendors. Business Objects, Cognos, and Information Builders used their individual user conferences to stage new product announcements that span the areas of mobile access and software as a service, and Business Objects said it's acquiring an enterprise search company.

Here are some highlights:

Business Objects said Tuesday it plans to acquire Inxight Software of Sunnyvale, Calif. Inxight makes software for unstructured information discovery, including text analytics, federated search, and data visualization. Financial details of the transaction weren't disclosed; Inxight has 120 employees and grossed more than $25 million in revenue last year. Business Objects previewed a new Information OnDemand offering Tuesday at its European user conference in Berlin. The offering will make external market information available to customers from within their BI software apps. At its annual user conference in Las Vegas on Monday, Information Builders released an upgrade to WebFocus, its core BI platform. Improvements in WebFocus 7.6.1 include process-driven alerts, improved Microsoft Office integration with new Excel plug-ins, and portable dashboard and collaboration capabilities in Active Reports. The last is part of an initiative called active technologies designed to give users access to data while on the road and not connected to the Internet; the analytical engine is delivered as part of the report. At its annual user conference last week in Orlando, Fla., Cognos announced Cognos Now, which it describes as the first product in a new line of BI and performance management software that will be offered exclusively as hardware appliances and through the software-as-a-service model. Based on technology from the recent Celequest acquisition, the company calls Cognos Now "the industry's first BI appliance." The product is also offered for Salesforce.com customers who need to monitor performance against their Salesforce data.