Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Microsoft to Acquire ProClarity

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the changing-hands dept.

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."

2 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. This will be great for businesses by jimmyhat3939 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Aside from the obvious comments I know people will make ("Microsoft business intelligence??!?! That's an oxymoron .... OMG PONY!"), I think this is a great deal.

    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.

    --
    Free Conference Call -- No Spam, High Quality
  2. Too Little Too Late by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This acquisition is ridiculous. Proclarity was a beatch partner of MSFT for the duration, doing whatever MSFT wanted, and operating as an extension of MSFT already. So what does MSFT gain by having them in the package? Really it's about too much hype about analytics in MS-Office, and not enough stuffing. So MSFT, typical of MSFT, goes shopping at the last minute to beef things up.

    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!