The business intelligence market has come a long way in the last ten years. I can remember when I was first exposed to Business Objects, Cognos and Hyperion (back when it was Arbor and Hyperion separately), they all had a similar message of extending their market beyond "power users."
They've done an excellent job collectively of extending the reach of BI software to the point where "analytics" and "reporting" are baseline feature sets in virtually all software application suites. Despite the success, it remains a daunting task for many non-technical users to fully embrace core BI reporting and analytics tools.
Business Objects has taken an interesting step in seeding its market to individual users and SMBs with the release of CX NOW! CX NOW! is a free, entry-level version of its well known Crystal Excelsius tool for turning Excel-based data into graphically-rich presentation material. It's a quick and painless download with an easy-to-understand 5-minute tutorial.
For anyone that wants to punch up their Powerpoint presentations but can't afford (or isn't sure it's worth paying for) a more robust solution, CX NOW! is a nice alternative.
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Note: At the time of this
writing I, and/or funds I maintain discretionary control over,
did not maintain a position (long or short) in BOBJ, COGN or HYSL.
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