Business Intelligence Software Vendors - Panorama Software

Panorama Software - BI Solutions

Microsoft's acquisition of ProClarity — Panorama Software's most direct competitor — earlier in the year forced the company to dramatically alter its business strategy. Customers using Microsoft's SQL Server Analysis Services as an OLAP back end will now look first to ProClarity as an OLAP front end before considering Panorama Software's NovaView solution. In response, Panorama has been able to differentiate itself from ProClarity by having more references of larger customer deployments. Also, Panorama accelerated the release of the NovaView front end to an SAP NetWeaver BI back end.

Previously, NovaView only worked on the Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services platform. Panorama leveraged its deep knowledge of Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) to query SAP InfoCubes, InfoQueries and the NetWeaver BI ODS. Moreover, it is one of the few pure-play BI platform vendors to front end SAP NetWeaver BI, without building an intermediate layer of metadata or moving the data out of SAP. This change showed strong market responsiveness. Panorama is now a front end for the two leading, and fastest growing, OLAP back ends in the market. Panorama also secured a strategic OEM partnership with Cartesis, a vendor of corporate performance management (CPM) software, which is also based on the Microsoft BI platform.

However, Panorama still needs to execute on its SAP vision by attracting a large number of SAP NetWeaver BI customers. To reach the Visionaries quadrant, Panorama needs to attract more customers that embrace NovaView as their core BI platform. Today, its customers see Panorama mainly as an OLAP front end to Analysis Services and NetWeaver BI. This is a risky position. While Panorama offers very good BI functionality, its overall growth will be limited, as both Microsoft and SAP improve their own front-end capabilities. Organizations that run both SAP NetWeaver BI and Microsoft Analysis Services should consider NovaView to provide a consistent front end that works simultaneously on both platforms.

Source: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/oracle/145507.html