The company has unveiled a product line called Business Objects Crystal Decisions which it says is tailor-made for mid size firms. Business Objects classifies mid-size as companies with less than $1bn in annual revenue.
The product is built on the BusinessObjects XI enterprise BI platform, and is available in three editions, each with cascading levels of functionality.
The Standard edition, available now, provides a integrated suite of query, reporting, analysis, visualization and dashboard tools, integration with Microsoft Office and SharePoint environments and scheduling and auditing capabilities for management.
The company plans to add other XI technologies like data integration, metrics and scorecards in Professional and Premium editions that will be released later this year.
This isn’t a dumbed down version of our XI product, stressed Todd Rowe, vice president of worldwide mid-market business at San Jose, California-based Business Objects.
We’ve basically taken the same functionality from some of our core XI products like Web Intelligence and Live Office that are relevant to mid-market firms and made them easier and quicker to deploy and manage as a single platform, he explained.
And because they’re based on the same XI code set customers can easily migrate or upgrade to the full enterprise platform.
Business Objects Crystal Decisions Standard Edition product comes with aggressive pricing starting at $20,000 for five concurrent users on a Windows or Linux server for North American customers. Pricing differs slightly for European and Asia-Pacific customers.
Business Objects will incrementally factor in that initial investment should Business Objects Crystal Decisions customers decide later to upgrade to the full XI platform.
This is a truly worldwide launch across 62 countries, Rowe said, pointing out that the product is immediately available in 12 different languages, including all the major European and Asia pacific languages, from day one.
The product will be primarily sold via channel partners. Business Objects has around 2,300 mid-market partners, comprising of VARs, distributors and systems integrators that OEM its BI software.
Business Objects has also set up a dedicated direct sales force focused exclusively on the mid-market as well. Business Objects said it will now target the mid-market as a holistic business unit with its own revenue, profit margin and profit share targets.
According to Rowe that represents a big organizational shift for Business Objects.
In the past we only had dedicated mid-market people in pre-sales and sales. Now we’ve out together a team that supports the entire product lifecycle management for mid-market — from field marketing, channel marketing, post sales, support and engineering.
Business Objects already has the luxury of having the largest mid-market partner eco-system of any BI vendor. And since all of them are already trained on our product line they can start selling immediately, Rowe said.
These mid-market partners will now benefit from new initiatives planned by Business Objects in 2007 to expand cross and up-sell opportunities.
The company is working with its Solution Provider Partner community to develop vertical industry-specific applications on top of the Business Objects Crystal Decisions suite. These applications will include templates and pre-built data connectors to speed up deployment.
Additionally Business Objects is also tweaking its professional services engagement model to allow partners to take on more mid-market work.
In effect Business Objects’ network of mid-market partners will drive our professional services for this sector, Rowe said.
It is no surprise that Business Objects is looking to sharpen its focus and investment in the mid-market, since it represents the fastest growing segment of the BI market.
With more than 30,000 mid-market customers today, thanks mainly to its Crystal Decisions product line, Business Objects already has a strong pedigree selling into this market.
The company previously launched its Crystal Reports Server, a packaged reporting platform, and crystalreports.com, an on-demand report sharing platform. The latter has already garnered over 10,000 subscribers in the nine months since its launch.
The new initiatives will solidify its position in this market even further.
This isn’t a brave new territory for us. We’ve been selling into the mid-market for over 15 years and already have the sales coverage and breadth of partners to be successful, Rowe said.
What we’re doing with these initiatives is formalizing our product and go-to-market strategies for the mid-market.
