An Internet-based business intelligence suite

While companies like Business Objects have taken their client server based technologies and added Internet components, start-up company nQuire has built its business intelligence platform for the Internet.

That distinction, according to Larry Barbetta, CEO of nQuire, puts his company in what he considers “a unique position.”

The premise is to make it “as easy to access structured data as it is to access unstructured data on the Web,” he said.

With the nQuire Server Suite (starting at $125,000), users can access information from various data sources--both external and internal including datawarehouses, data marts and operational systems--as they would execute a standard Web search. The nQuire Server is designed to get the information, which may reside in various repositories, in the most efficient way. For example, if a user wanted to find out the highest sales of product X by region, that information may reside in databases, datamarts and the accounting system. However, the datamart is likely the quickest place to access that information and that is where nQuire would tap, according to Barbetta, who prior to founding nQuire in 1997 lead Platinum Technology’s business intelligence unit.

The receipt of the data can end up in a portal interface--either one designed through nQuire’s template or via another portal vendor. In either case, the portal can end up burying nQuire (like Inktomi is to many Web search engines) in an environment the user is more comfortable with--for instance, the corporate intranet.

The link between a portal and business intelligence tools was recently commented on by Bob Moran, VP of decision support research at the Aberdeen Group.

“Current business intelligence tools and techniques, will not alone be able to satisfy many business requirements and the demands of the information portal,” said Moran. “To fulfill many promises--and requirements--behind the portal, enterprises need a search-engine simple mechanism for analytical access, and that’s precisely what nQuire Software has delivered.”

Venture-capital funded nQuire, which chose to “launch” its company around the product has two customers currently using the tool--Royal Bank of Canada and Fanball.com