Crystal Decisions Tightens Analysis Software Bundle

Computerworld - Crystal Decisions Inc. last week announced an upgraded set of its reporting and data analysis software that's more tightly integrated than earlier releases were.
The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company said its Crystal Enterprise 9 Premium offering expands on a version of the software bundle that was announced in January. The new package includes hyperlinks to make it easier for end users to send data back and forth between the different applications, said James Church, a group product manager at Crystal Decisions.
The company also added self-help wizard technology and new packaging that should result in lower prices for users, according to Church. But he declined to give any baseline cost savings provided by the bundle, which starts at $75,000 per processor.
Mark Smith, an analyst at Ventana Research Inc. in Belmont, Calif., said the premium version will let end users do more ad hoc querying and create more sophisticated reports than they could before.
Appetizing Features
Charles Castleberry, assistant director of architecture at Los Angeles-based Fox Filmed Entertainment, a subsidiary of Fox Entertainment Group Inc., said he's eager for some of the new bundle's capabilities.
"It will certainly make it easier for us to expand into the analysis features of the Crystal product line," Castleberry said. "The more tightly integrated and seamless the tools are, the simpler it will be for us to start taking advantage of hitherto-unused features." Fox Filmed Entertainment currently runs Crystal Enterprise 8.5 to support internal decision-making.
Crystal Decisions also announced Crystal Analysis Professional 9, an upgrade of its stand-alone Web-based analytics reporting application. New features include improved integration with its Crystal Reports software and products like Microsoft's Excel and IBM's DB2 database.