Online Analytical Processing firm Arbor Software Inc is refusing to comment about the speculation that IBM Corp may be looking to buy it (CI No 3,183), and for the time being has announced another worldwide reseller agreement under which IBM will resell Arbor’s traditional Essbase family of products. IBM already sells a customized version of Essbase to its DB2 customers, offering Online Analytical Processing on top of a DB2 relational database, instead of Arbor’s multi-dimensional database. Under the new agreement IBM will be able to sell the Essbase OLAP Server and Essbase Application Tools, which include Arbor Essbase Web Gateway, as part of its business intelligence systems offerings. The companies say the new agreement complements their technology and marketing partnership announced earlier this year, under which the two are integrating the Arbor Essbase OLAP engine with IBM’s DB2 database family. Arbor will provide training and support to IBM customers for Essbase OLAP Server or Application Tools.
