Having enjoyed 80 per cent year-on-year growth in 2011, LogiXML, the web-based business intelligence (BI) software specialist, is expanding its Partner Program in North America and Europe. According to Brett Jackson, CEO, LogiXML, the business intelligence and analytics market is large and continues to grow.

The code-free development environment of LogiXML’s flagship product, Logi Info, allows the rapid creation of analytic applications designed around business user needs, expanding BI usage across an entire organisation resulting in more value and more opportunities with each customer engagement. Additionally, LogiXML’s ‘bi-directional’ BI capability can deliver intelligent information applications that are integrated within customers’ daily operations.

Recently, LogiXML was positioned in the 2012 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms, where its products ranked among the highest for ease of use, overall product functionality, support, product quality, performance and customer experience. For more information on the LogiXML Partner Program, click here.

Comment: Changes in technology and in business practice over the last ten years have radically altered how we want to – and can – receive our business information. In recent decades, providing, storing and accessing business data has – traditionally – been the job of the IT department. This was initially the area of data warehousing and data mining. It was in the late 1990s that this sector became known as the business intelligence (BI) sector. Since then, this sector has experienced three major changes.

In the early years of this century, business reporting was key – but ‘reporting’ business data was via pieces of paper. Nowadays, ‘reporting’ has been overtaken by ‘analytics’ – done in different, more visual ways than a straight ‘report’.

The second major change relates to the data itself. Historically, data was contained in a relational database, such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL (Sequel Server) or Excel. These days, we’re seeing data contained in other systems, such as over the web via progams such as Salesforce (customer relationship management (CRM) software). There is even the growing practice of using new technology to store data in columnar databases, rather than relational databases.

Finally, there’s the self-service concept. Reporting and BI were the province of an organisation’s IT department but, as the workforce has become increasingly sophisticated in terms of data – and especially as more people want that analysed data delivered via mobile technology – so the actual consumer of that information wants to interact with the data and develop their own individualised reports. Moreover, as users surf the web, they want more sophisticated visuals along with richer interfaces and outputs.

This latter trend – towards self-service – has a potential impact on the BI market. While some BI products, such as IBM Cognos and SAP Business Objects, typically require IT specialists to operate them, anyone who needs to understand the data being used and who knows the location of that data can use products such as LogiXML’s which, with its web-based architecture, can – and does – deploy the Logi Info engine on any cloud technology, including Microsoft Cloud Azure and Amazon cloud.

Traditionally, organisations tend to possess a great deal of data which is kept – siloed – by its various departments. If this data was allowed to be analysed on an organisation-wide rather than a departmental basis, it could provide valuable insights into the organisation’s performance and its progress towards meeting its goals and objectives.  Providing this is the – increasingly realised – benefit of BI.