03/14/2007

Information Builders, a specialist in production business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced an agreement with IBM (NYSE: IBM) to distribute a special version of Information Builders' WebFOCUS business intelligence suite for the IBM "all-in-one” System i business computing platform. The new WebFOCUS offering will target the full breadth of the System i marketplace, from small businesses to enterprise users.

ebizQ received the following details:

"Business intelligence continues to be an area of significant growth and, with so much of the world's data being stored in DB2 databases, it makes sense for us to provide better analytical capabilities around that data,” said Jim Herring, director IBM System i products. "We know the importance of providing the Web-based business intelligence functionality necessary to support a modern organization and feel confident this new offering will do just that.”

IBM has hundreds of thousands of System i clients around the world. The offering will enable both Information Builders and IBM to bring Web-based BI capabilities to one of IBM's major customer bases. The new product will be available to all IBM clients via current distribution channels.

"The significance of this agreement is that by having WebFOCUS fully integrated within the System i software stack it simplifies access to all of the information in the environment, and makes BI available to a much wider audience,” said Gerald Cohen, CEO Information Builders. "Thousands of System i customers will now have direct access to WebFOCUS.”