Until now, data analysis has been largely a solo endeavor. Business Objects SA is developing business-intelligence software that could turn the process into a group activity. The product, code-named Sundance and previewed last week at the vendor's user conference in Miami Beach, Fla., can capture business-intelligence best practices, monitor performance metrics, and disseminate information throughout a company using workflow and collaboration capabilities.

	Sundance is critical for large deployments, Liautaud says.

Sundance could prove useful for delivering information and data analysis to Simon & Schuster Inc.'s far-flung sales force, says Paul Zanis, the publisher's business IS director. The software could hold formulas for measuring sales performance using metrics set by a sales VP. It could automatically provide sales managers with regular performance updates and the means to analyze those results to discover the root cause of a sales problem. Performance reports and analysis results could be forwarded to others for action. Sundance will include annotation and discussion-threads features for collaboration.

"They're trying to make information much more freely available through the corporation to communities of users," says Mark Smith, a Full Circle Strategies analyst. The software will be integrated with Business Objects' reporting, analysis, and portal applications. Testing begins this week at 20 companies; the software is due to ship early next year.

"Sundance is going to be critical for large-scale business-intelligence deployments," CEO Bernard Liautaud says. Business Objects also says the upcoming release of its core query-and-reporting products, due by next summer, will include significant reporting enhancements, Web capabilities based on Java and HTML, improved integration with Microsoft Excel, and a more easily customized portal.