Microstrategy adds SaaS features

MicroStrategy has added new product capabilities for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies to its original equipment manufacturer program, MicroStrategy 9, appealing to a growing market, reports Information Management.

MicroStrategy 9 is a business intelligence (BI) solution that provides integrated reporting and analytics on an open platform.

The latest release's enhanced SaaS features include end-user design features, in-memory BI, improved security integration with third-party tools, a plug-in architecture and the ability for companies to use their own reporting terminology across multiple languages, according to the MicroStrategy announcement.

IBM's planned acquisition of SPSS is likely to set off a new wave of consolidation in the BI market, writes InformationWeek, as more software vendors look to beef up their predictive analytics capabilities, according to a Forrester Research report.

Forrester predicts that in the coming year, vendors will look to partner or acquire companies specialising in this area, including Accelrys Software, Angoss, FICO, KXEN, and Portrait Software. SAP, in particular, is likely to make a predictive analytics acquisition, the research firm says.

"Any BI vendor that fails to realign around a strong predictive focus will find itself on the sidelines of this new era of future-facing analytics," according to the report, 'Business intelligence polishes its crystal ball', co-authored by James Kobielus, Boris Evelson, and Leslie Owens.

Netezza has unveiled a data warehousing appliance dubbed TwinFin, says ZDNet.

The appliance, the first in a family of them, promises to scale to a petabyte of data at a lower price point. TwinFin will be priced at less than $20 000 per terabyte.

The appliance features Netezza software running on standard blade server components. Database accelerator cards will also be integrated. The TwinFin family will include entry-level, high capacity and memory-intensive systems.