Microsoft Extends BI Platform with ActiveViews Acquisition

At the Gartner Business Intelligence Summit 2004 in Chicago on Monday, Microsoft announced that the company will extend its business intelligence (BI) platform by acquiring ActiveViews, Inc. ActiveViews provides an ad hoc reporting system that takes advantage of the power of Microsoft .NET and SQL Server Reporting Services, letting users explore data stored in a variety of systems. Bill Baker, general manager for BI at Microsoft, said, "Based on feedback from customers and industry experts, we believe that by incorporating this functionality within the business intelligence capabilities of SQL Server, Microsoft will provide a more complete BI solution than has been offered in the industry before." The ActiveViews system presents a business view of the data that an end user wants to examine and gives them a window into the database so they can dig into that information. With ActiveViews technology, end users can modify existing reports and build new reports from scratch in a Web-based environment. To read more about ActiveViews and the acquisition, see, "Microsoft Acquires ActiveViews' Business Intelligence Functionality" at

   http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/apr04/04-26activeviewspr.asp