Salesforce is launching a cloud analytics platform in a late entry into a market predicted to be worth $16.1bn by the year’s end by market research firm IDC.
The move will see the firm eschew relational databases in favour of a search oriented model, and will make use of data from existing Salesforce products and other legacy software.
Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce, said: "Today, Salesforce is disrupting the analytics market, just as we disrupted the CRM industry 15 years ago.
"We’re not only connecting companies with customers in a whole new way with our Customer Success Platform, we’re empowering companies to know their customers like never before with the groundbreaking Wave Analytics Cloud."
The analytics program will be available from October 20 on desktop and Apple iPhone, with other device support said to be forthcoming in the future.
Salesforce is hoping to capitalise on its existing customer base, which includes members of the Fortune 500, a rich list for US companies, as well as medium and small firms.
Keith Bigelow, SVP of Analytics Cloud at Salesforce, said that he hoped the product would encourage experimentation, but did not reveal details of a more thorough educational approach to big data.
"The demand for self-service analytics is sweeping across every business function, as end-users demand relevant business insights delivered at the right time to increase their competitiveness and make decisions that positively impact revenues," said Dan Vesset, program VP of business analytics research, IDC
"This swings open the door for a cloud-based analytics solution, such as Wave, which enables companies to circumvent bottlenecks inherent in the traditional analytics model to give users a more mobile, collaborative and simple approach to exploring any volume and variety of data sources."
