ProClarity Acquisition Nets OLAP Client

The pending purchase of ProClarity will fill a longstanding gap in Microsoft’s online analytic processing (OLAP) strategy, providing a client for SQL Server Analysis Services, the company’s OLAP server technology. A Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, ProClarity has garnered about 2,000 customers for its ProClarity Analytics product, which includes a Web server application that allows users to work with Analysis Services data using a browser and a more full-featured thick client application. Although the purchase will round out Microsoft’s OLAP strategy it will also threaten one of the remaining opportunities for partners to complement that strategy.

Complements SQL Server Analysis Services

Microsoft entered the OLAP market with the 1998 release of SQL Server 7.0 and has refined its OLAP features in subsequent SQL Server releases; the collection of development tools, programming interfaces, and run-time services for building OLAP applications is called SQL Server Analysis Services and was significantly overhauled as part of SQL Server 2005. According to The OLAP Report, an independent research publication devoted to the OLAP industry, Analysis Services has become the OLAP market’s leading platform.