Brio Technology Inc, the business intelligence software house, has hit break even a few months ahead of expectations, prompting CEO Yorgen Edholm to pep up his quarterly conference call with a rapturous chorus of canned applause. Following another strong quarter of revenue growth, the Palo Alto, California-based company reported second quarter net profits of $23,000 compared with losses last time of $2.4m on revenues up 74% at $10.6m. For the full six months, revenues were up 76% to $20m. Aside from the profitability milestone, Edholm said the other noteworthy event in the period was the addition of IBM Corp as a distribution partner (CI No. 3,475) Summing up, Edholm said, Brio continues to grow quicker that its competition, and it continues to improve its product offerings, and so I believe that the third quarter will be another good quarter. Asked about the competitive landscape for analytical applications, Edholm said his company was seeing less and less of Seagate Software’s Information Management Group (IMG), noting that as far as Brio was concerned, the leadership section of IMG had gone to Veritas Software Corp. License fees accounted for 71% of revenues in the quarter, with the remainder from services. Geographically, 82% of sale were made in North America. Additionally, the company announced a definitive agreement to acquire a five person start up called MerlinSoft Inc, based in Saratoga, although Edholm was reluctant to provide further details.
