A New IIDEA For Reporting And Business Intelligence 2

IBM and Informatica Corp. have created a reporting and business-intelligence package aimed at midsize companies for financial-analysis, risk-management, and regulatory-compliance applications.

The system, dubbed the Informatica and IBM Dashboard Engine Appliance (IIDEA), will combine IBM's eServer xSeries server, WebSphere application server, and DB2 Warehouse Edition database with Informatica's PowerCenter data-integration software and PowerAnalyzer reporting and business-intelligence dashboard applications.

The IIDEA package will also include a toolkit for building financial reports and data-mapping tools the vendors say will make it easy to extract data from operational systems such as PeopleSoft, SAP, and Siebel Systems applications.

Along with financial and compliance analysis, IBM and Informatica expect companies to use IIDEA to provide consolidated views of customer data. IIDEA is aimed at companies with $100 million to $750 million in revenue and 100 to 1,000 employees.

Surveys show IT spending growth by midsize companies will outpace that of large companies in 2005, says Forrester Research analyst Philip Russom--and he expects business-intelligence and data-warehousing technologies particularly to be in demand. Midsize companies lack the financial and technical resources of bigger companies to build and operate complex data warehouse systems, creating the need for packaged systems such as IIDEA.

IIDEA will be available later this month, with pricing starting at $200,000. The system will be sold through distributor Avnet Inc.'s value-added reseller channel.