Information AboutOutlooksoft |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT OUTLOOKSOFT | |
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Where BI applications typically provide a historical or retrospective view of financial or operational data, CPM provides users with a near real-time, if not predictive way to analyze, plan, and forecast business and organizational performance. Strategic applications such as performance scorecards (i.e., see Kaplan & Norton's balanced scorecard concept) and predictive analytic dashboards are associated with more sophisticated CPM offerings. Founded in 1999, OutlookSoft Corporation was created by a group of experienced financial and analytic applications experts, many of which with roots from Hyperion, a leading BI vendor. These industry veterans shared the common goal of creating a solution that, from a unified architecture and platform, encapsulated features and functionality to support the key processes associated with CPM (such as budgeting, planning, forecasting and reporting). OutlookSoft, close to entering its seventh year of life, is now considered a leading vendor in the CPM space, along with industry stalwarts such as Hyperion and Cognos . Other vendors in this rapidly consolidating and highly competitive market space include Applix, SAS, SAP, and Oracle. Of note, OutlookSoft's present CEO, Phil Wilmington, was formerly a co-president at Oracle before starting his new life at OutlookSoft. Given OutlookSoft's extensive use of Microsoft technology - such as Excel and Microsoft Analysis Services (the " OLAP " component of SQL Server) - and the company's relatively strong relationship with the Redmond juggenaut, there is much speculation that OutlookSoft remains an acquisition target of Microsoft , which itself has made considerable inroads into the BI space, and more recently has announced its intentions to enter the CPM market as well. As with any rapidly growing and fast consolidating industry, M&A speculation abounds for all companies, large and small alike. What makes OutlookSoft interesting among its peers is that the company continues to thrive, in large part due to its somewhat unique "unified" solution that competitors like Hyperion (through "System 9") and Cognos (through "Series 8") are just now starting to play catch-up on. The BI and CPM theme today is standardization. To this, OutlookSoft has always been regarded as one of the more visionary companies in the space (as recognized by Gartner's Magic Quadrant analysis on the space), as a majority of BI and CPM vendors continue to offer highly modular, if not fragemented, application "suite" solutions that can require a high degree of consulting and integration. Sources: Public domain, OutlookSoft web site, Gartner
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