Microsoft to Acquire ProClarity 79
Gosalia writes "In order to increase its presence in the business intelligence market, Microsoft announced its plan to acquire business analytics software developer ProClarity. 'This acquisition advances our (business intelligence) strategy and our ability to deliver performance management applications to customers,' Jeff Raikes, Microsoft business division president, said in a statement."
This will be great for businesses (Score:5, Insightful)
I've thought for some time that Ajax couldn't/doesn't provide all the answers for how to collaborate on various office documents and workflows. While I think there's a place for stuff like Writely, I really believe that 10 years from now most businesses will still be using MS Office or something like it. So, this acquisition will provide those companies with a realistic way to collaborate aon stuff and increase their per-worker productivity.
There are a whole bunch of benefits from this, including making it more possible for people to telecommute, etc. But to me the best part of this news is that it demonstrates that Microsoft is plowing ahead, in the face of all the FUD and vaporware that's being shot out all over the place about Ajax and web-based technologies. Maybe someday the web will get there, but not soon. Not soon.
Re:This will be great for businesses (Score:1)
I used to like that idea, until my friend's job got offshored.
Re:This will be great for businesses (Score:1)
Huh? Are you responding to the right article? This is an enormously boring acquisition of a boring analytics company that makes boring scorecard type products for executives, alike to many similar products in a burgeoning marketplace. I mean, if you're an executive looking for scorecard software, it's mildly interesting that Microsoft might eventually integrate it to supplant its own, but otherwis
The borg seem more appealing now... (Score:4, Funny)
'This acquisition advances our (business intelligence) strategy and our ability to deliver performance management applications to customers,' Jeff Raikes, Microsoft business division president, said in a statement.
Translates to: 'And.. Oh yeah, I'm going to be filthy rich!'
Re:The borg seem more appealing now... (Score:2)
Re:The borg seem more appealing now... (Score:4, Funny)
This is new and different! It's stupid management jargon
Re:The borg seem more appealing now... (Score:3, Funny)
There's no jargon, just a paradigm-shifting wave of common sense management tactics. In the new system, you start out as a Feng Shui White Belt and work your way up to Shabby Chic Grand Master. All you have to do to begin is attend several confidence building sessions and knowledge empowerment courses, which complement the integrated business intelligence software environment.
Re:The borg seem more appealing now... (Score:2)
It's not quite that bad. A proper name is "performance measurement", because that's what it is, and measuring performance makes a lot of sense.
A lot of the /. crowd will probably now come in to give horror stories about terrible measurement systems they have encountered as developers, so let me say that I agree that I haven't seen anything impressive there.
That
Re:The borg seem more appealing now... (Score:1)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Great, now Microsoft will... (Score:2)
Re:Great, now Microsoft will... (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft is simply looking for a way to use its cash hoards to generate some growth. That's what businesses do. Microsoft has billions of dollars sitting around in low interest accounts. It's looking for some growth opportunities.
The real story is what this does to Microsoft's current business "partners." There really aren't technology niches that aren't threatened by Microsoft. I know I certainly wouldn't be interested in building my business on Microsoft's technology. Sure, someone gets rich when Microsoft enters a market as they invariably buy someone. However, everyone else gets crushed. Competing with Microsoft is ridiculously hard under the best of circumstances, but it is impossible when you have to purchase Microsoft technology to use your own product.
Re:Great, now Microsoft will... (Score:1)
Re:Great, now Microsoft will... (Score:2)
Nothing is free. I make a living customizing Free Software based software, and it's basically never free. There's no question that Free Software lowers the total cost of software, but the total cost is still not zero. This is especially true if you haven't spent the last ten years learning how to deploy Free Software :). Heck, that's why Microsoft software still gets installed in a lot of places. Depending on
Re:Great, now Microsoft will... (Score:2)
This is more of a threat to "the big three" of BusinessObjects, Cognos and Hyperion. ProClarity is in the low end of the scale of BI vendors, but in a lot of instances that's a pretty good place to be.
Implementing good BI solutions is pretty darn hard, and comparable in effort, cost and possible benefits to implementing SAP. That means that it can be a life saver for a company, but more often it's a huge burden after a failed implementation.
But ... but ... IT LOOKS PRETTY! (Score:2)
That doesn't matter. "It looks pretty" is all that matters. To most beancounters, statistics is just the means to the end of promoting their pet idea, not something useful for decision finding. Or even something to base a decision on.
OMG (Score:1)
but (Score:2, Funny)
seriously though, i'd be interested in seeing how they take an incredibly complex app domain (in general) and try to fit it into a typical microsoft interface template, where things like selectively averaging columns in Excel is non-trivial...
Re:but (Score:2)
Good acquisition (Score:4, Interesting)
I find this statement from an InformationWeek article [informationweek.com] to clear up what ProClarity exactly does: "ProClarity makes analysis and visualization software." Much of this software is in very popular demand now; a friend of mine just started a job at a company called SSS, which makes visualization software for modeling all kinds of information and displaying it in a manner that is very informative and interactive. Google released something similar [google.com], Google Analytics, for websites, and it has been a huge success (heck, Slashdot uses it).
Overall, I think this is a very smart move on Microsoft's part. Software for organizing information can be very useful. It's also nice to see some Microsoft articles on Slashdot for a change (even though I'm not a big fan of Microsoft), rather than the usual Googlomination.
Re:Good acquisition (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Good acquisition (Score:2)
They're supposed to be a software company, not a marketing company however it proves that Microsoft can't write 1 line of code that provides any value.
They can't write it so buy it.
Their in house programmers are so tainted with bad blood that the talented ones can't write anymore.
For a quick show of hands, how many paople see Microsoft as a software company? Anyone? Bueller?
How many people see Microsoft as a mar
Re:Good acquisition (Score:2)
Re:Good acquisition (Score:2)
Patently false. Excel is the best piece of software ever written for the mass market. And as others noted, SQL Server 2K/2K5 both are good as well.
Re:Good acquisition (Score:3, Interesting)
MSSQL was acquired throuth a partnership with Sybase and Ashton-Tate and the codebase was written by Sybase and Ashton-Tate, not Microsoft.
Re:Good acquisition (Score:2)
Well, Excel was one in a long line of ripoffs of VisiCalc and was nothing special in the beginning. It didn't become really good until somwhere around Office97, and it's the last few versions that are outstanding.
With MS, there is no such thing as "before the corruption". They used to be a company that delivered crappy products, but some 12 years ago they started massive usability
Re:Good acquisition (Score:2)
The rest of the Office suite was acquired or absorbed.
I remember Powerpoint before MS acquired it (brings back some younger day memories).
Now we can blame another internal division... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Now we can blame another internal division... (Score:2)
While not exactly a code optimization, consider the T-SQL string functions, /library/en-us/tsqlref/ts_fa-fz_7oqb.asp [microsoft.com] /library/en-us/script56/html/ddfa5183-d458-41bc-a4 89-070296ced968.asp [microsoft.com]
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=
with the string handling functions of VBScript
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=
(to say nothing of C-octothorpe)
Ask yourself, as you write some very 1980s
Real news would be if Microsoft invented something (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:Real news would be if Microsoft invented someth (Score:2)
Suggesting that the changes to the Office suit is just "maintenance" seems a bit disingenious. Much like cars today are much better than cars from 30 years ago, Office and Visual Studio have improved tremendously. (For Windows the results are less impressive, especially considering the resources they have spent.)
What Raikes really meant (Score:5, Funny)
Larry Ellison's strategy (Score:2)
Oh yeah, that it what Larry Ellison is doing too. Except he started sooner.
sPh
Too Little Too Late (Score:3, Insightful)
They did the same thing right before the SQL 2005 launch in order to beef up their ability to have end-users create reports - but it was a total flop because MSFT is awful at integrating this stuff.
The reality is that they need to show lots of pretty stuff in the launch of MS-Office or else nobody will upgrade to it (again) and life will be poopy for the reporting people there.
The only happy people are the perclerity people, who always wanted to have a Borg injection!
Re:Too Little Too Late (Score:2)
Have SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services and no wher (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Have SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services and no w (Score:2)
Actually, for BI solutions different scales almost certainly requires different products. This is also true for accounting, where SAP is not an option for a company with 30 employees, but that company's accounting system of choice isn't an option for a Fortune 100 company either.
That said, MS has a pretty bad track record here, so I'm not too convinced they will deliver well in any
Employee turnover (Score:2)
Re:Employee turnover (Score:1)
They are aquiring ego. They are reaching a critical mass, where physicists are undecided if the ego will go nova or continue to gain mass until the entire worlds supply of ego is sucked in.
ProClarity? (Score:4, Funny)
Nice Name (Score:2)
Grammar Police (Score:1)
Here's the dictionary [reference.com] article that outlines how to use the two.
Re:Grammar Police (Score:1)
Re:Grammar Police (Score:1)
obligatory Simpsons (Score:4, Funny)
Bill Gates leaves, sniggering "checks? I didn't get rich writing checks!"
hmp.... I wonder why they don't show this one anymore....
Re:obligatory Simpsons (Score:2)
Enjoy
Soon to be part of SQL Server 2005 (Score:1)
This really is a threat to other BI vendors like Cognos or Business Objects, and probably to the other front ends to SQL Server Analysis Serv
Re:Soon to be part of SQL Server 2005 (Score:1)
Smart Move (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Smart Move (Score:1)
OMG! Business! (Score:2)
From the Slashdot Summary (OMG! Emphasis mine!):
Man oh man, gotta love that business-speak!
All of a sudden the April 1 "OMG!" theme is sounding a whole lot more intelligent.
In other news (Score:2)
In other news, the last intact family north of Arizona filed for divorce early toda
Pardon my ignorance... (Score:1)
The submitter mentions it twice in two sentences, and I still don't know what it means. Seems to be an expensive Google adword though...
Seriously though, this is all buzzword bingo for the Pointy-Haird Boss, right?
Jesus, that's a hell of a bingo prize.
Re:Pardon my ignorance... (Score:2)
Re:Pardon my ignorance... (Score:2)
It used to be called "reporting", but now it is actually possible to get it work in a way that adds value to real companies. Please note "possible", though. For every successful implementation there are as usual dozens of failed ones.
But the meaing and defnition is pretty widely accepted and agreed upon, and in common use. It shouldn't make anyone's top 50 list of stupid business jargon anymore.
Re:Pardon my ignorance... (Score:1)
Tell me again why it shouldn't make anyone's top 50 list of stupid business jargon?
But kudos to the data mining folks. Their products have lottery-grade ROI, and it's still a growing business.
Re:Pardon my ignorance... (Score:2)
Because, contrary to the saying, on that list it's not so lonely at the top. It's pretty darn crowded.
On a more serious note, BI isn't exactly "reporting", it's "reporting on an enterprise scale" (except for the fact that "enterprise" really is a word that deserves to be on that top 50 list).
"intelligence"? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:"intelligence"? (Score:1)
More BI vendor purchases to come? (Score:1)