The world over, Business Intelligence seems to be the new buzzword. More and more companies in India are deploying BI tools to reduce operational costs, bring down inventory and improve efficiency of resources. Sensing the opportunity, global BI solutions provider, Business Objects, recently launched operations in India and has already set up a sales, marketing and support team in Mumbai. India is among the fastest adopters of BI. According to IDC estimates, the market is worth $54 million today and is expected to grow at a rate of 26 percent in 2003. Said Sanjay Deshmukh, business development director, South Asia, “Currently, a business user cannot go beyond the information provided by the IT manager. He cannot access the database, which in turn limits his decision making capacity. We will provide them with the tools that will help them overcome these limitations.”

BI extracts data from multiple systems like ERP, CRM, etc. The solution provided by Business Objects provides non-technical business users with the ability to access, analyse and share information from these sources. In order to enable this and deliver total data integration, the company has on offer a solution that enables ETL (extract, transfer and load). To strengthen its position in this space, Business Objects recently acquired Acta Technology, a company with a significant footprint in the ETL market.

This adds back-end data integration capabilities using Acta’s ETL functionality, real-time data server, packaged applications and connectors for SAP, PeopleSoft, JDE, Siebel, Clarify, i2, etc, including capture of metadata information from a packaged application dictionary. Previously, Business Objects depended on its partners to handle this functional need.

Apart from this, the company has on offer a solution called Analytics for Sale, which is a pre-built analytical solution. The company also plans to launch a solution called Application Foundation in India. This solution is basically targeted at the top 100 companies only. With the infrastructure in place the company plans to do more of business development and ramp up license revenue growth in India. Business Objects is also keen on putting together an enterprise analytic platform (EAP), which Deshmukh said, is a combination of BI and ETL.

In keeping with its global strategy Business Object’s business model will continue to remain partner-centric. The company has identified three kinds of partners— distributors (Sonata, Tata Infotech), consulting partners (TCS, Wipro, L&T Infotech) and finally ISVs (i-flex).