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Business Objects: Open source a distant threat

Andrew Donoghue and Graeme Wearden ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 17 Jan 2005 18:00 GMT

There's little chance of an open source company shaking up the Business Intelligence (BI) market any time soon, according to Bernard Liautaud, the chief executive of Business Objects.

Speaking last week after the launch of Business Objects Extreme Insight (XI), Liautaud said he didn't think that the success enjoyed by open source CRM vendors such as SugarCRM and vTiger will be repeated in the BI space, at least not imminently.

"In BI there has been no particular effect yet but like any part of the software industry, there will be some open source initiatives. There are some open source Java-based reporting tools but it is a fairly mature market so it is going to be a little harder, but it is still a factor," Liautaud -- who is a MySQL board member -- told ZDNet UK.

Liautaud also said that Business Objects was considering the potential of offering its analysis and reporting tools through an on-demand model similar to that of Salesforce.com.

"Salesforce.com has been growing very significantly without a particularly new technology but with a new business model -- that is certainly something we have taken notice of," said Liautaud, who insisted that Business Objects didn't have any firm plans in place for on-demand services.

You can read the full interview here.