Its no secret that Microsoft Corp is moving strongly into the business intelligence infrastructure sector with its Sequel Server 7 (SQL 7) software. However, the biggest threat to the small and medium sized vendors in that sector such as Business Objects SA and MicroStrategy Inc is MicrosoftÆs Excel 2000, the spreadsheet program in RedmondÆs new Office suite which is due to appear next month.
Excel 2000 has much more exposed OLAP functionality to enable customers to use Excel as a front-end for a BI system based on SQL 7. Cognos Corp, when talking to ComputerWire about SQL 7 last year claimed that Excel couldnÆt offer the same kind of industrial strength business intelligence that its own PowerPlay tool could. However, Richard Finpson, UK managing director at Informatica Corp sees the challenge ahead for vendors working in the lower end of the BI market as offering more functionality than the SQL 7/Excel 2000 team at a decent price. The advent of Microsoft in the sector has and will push prices down. Many in the market, such as Charles Tipping from Information Advantage Inc sees $100 a seat tools offering more functionality than a user could build themselves using Excel and SQL7, as the way forward.
