MicroStrategy offers free starter BI

MicroStrategy has released a free starter package of business intelligence (BI) tools, hoping to seed departments and workgroups of large organisations that could eventually decide to upgrade to the paid version, reports InformationWeek.

The Reporting Suite enables companies to use MicroStrategy's integrated BI platform to develop and deploy Web-based reporting applications. Users can view data in tabular grid reports and graphs, drill down on data, make ad hoc queries and export data to Excel and PDF formats.

The free software is meant as an entry point for initiating small, departmental reporting applications, while presenting a path to expand the BI deployment as needed.

Teradata's Blurr data centre appliance, now called Teradata Extreme Performance Appliance (EPA), is available for beta users and early adopters, states Computing.co.uk.

The company claimed at its 2009 Partners Conference in Washington that EPA is the world's fastest data warehousing appliance, and the first built on a solid state storage device. Martin Wilcox, director of platforms and solutions at Teradata, explains that EPA will allow for speed improvements of up to eight times, but will come at a cost.

"Discs can only spin so fast," he says. "But most business intelligence and data warehousing is very I/O intensive. [By using sold state] we can fully exploit the hardware and let firms perform more complex database queries up to eight times faster."

CRM and ERP vendor Consona has unveiled its Consona Knowledge Management Version 7.3, described by company officials as "a KCS Verified v4 product featuring analytics powered by QlikView business intelligence software,” according to TMCnet.

Most knowledge management tools are sold as modules, Consona officials note, saying "we built our product around that concept that knowledge shouldn't happen in isolation, or be an afterthought".

"In the past, Web transaction logs, especially from busy self-service sites, have made it virtually impossible to look at knowledge trends," Consona officials say, adding that knowledge management initiatives are "long-term programmes; you may achieve a fast return on investment, but they also grow, evolve, and even decline relatively slowly.”