Business Objects business intelligence specialist has announced the launch of Business Objects Crystal Decisions Professional. This new edition of the Business Objects Crystal Decisions suite is tailored specifically for the needs of small and mid-sized companies and is the second mid-market offering launched by the company since February 2007. The announcement underscores an aggressive commitment from Business Objects to continue to deliver flexible, easy-to-deploy, and affordable BI solutions for mid-market companies – those companies with less than $1 billion in annual revenues or fewer than 1,000 employees.
Business Objects says it is the first and only BI vendor to offer an all-in-one business intelligence and data integration product designed for the mid-market. Business Objects Crystal Decisions Professional offers the benefits of highly developed data integration functionalities as well as intelligent reporting, ad hoc query and analysis, and dashboards capabilities. The data integration feature provides the ability to extract data from different database types that include Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, Oracle, Ingres, and integrate that data into a single target source.
"Our customers look to us to provide innovative solutions that are easy to deploy, easy to use, and can deliver immediate value," said Todd Rowe, vice president of worldwide mid-market business at Business Objects. "We continue to be the industry's leading BI vendor delivering just that – powerful business intelligence solutions at an affordable price point, customized for mid-market users. With the release of Business Objects Crystal Decisions Professional, we have added a new set of data integration capabilities to an already market-leading reporting, ad hoc query and analysis, and dashboard solution all of which is designed to fit within the price and deployment constraints of any growing company."
"We have found that business intelligence is one of the top IT priorities this year for mid-market CIOs," said Robert Anderson, research vice president for small and mid-sized businesses at Gartner. "With that urgency in mind, it is increasingly important for vendors to address this market with BI solutions that are specifically tailored to the needs of this growing segment."
The launch of Business Objects Crystal Decisions Professional comes on a wave of strong momentum over the last three months following the entry of the Standard edition to the market in February. The Professional edition takes the capabilities of Crystal Decisions to the next level for the rapidly growing customer segment of small and mid-sized companies.
Business Objects Crystal Decisions Professional is generally available from Business Objects and its channel partners in twelve languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Japanese, Korean, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese. To protect customers' initial investment, Standard edition customers who upgrade to the Professional edition are required to pay only the difference between their initial purchase and the Professional edition list price.
