Business Intelligence Tools

Business intelligence (BI) is a business management term which refers to applications and technologies which are used to gather, provide access to, and analyze data and information about their company operations. Business intelligence systems can help companies to have a more comprehensive knowledge of the factors affecting their business, such as metrics on sales, production, internal operations, and they can help companies to make better business decisions. Business Intelligence should not be confused with competitive intelligence, which is a separate management concept.


Types of business intelligence tools

Online Analytical Processing, commonly known as OLAP (including HOLAP, ROLAP and MOLAP)- a capability of some management, decision support, and executive information systems that supports interactive examination of large amounts of data from many perspectives.[1]
Reporting software (also called Pixel perfect reporting software)
Data mining - extraction of consumer information from a database by utilizing software that can isolate and identify previously unknown patterns or trends in large amounts of data. There are a variety of data mining techniques that reveal different types of patterns.[2]
Business performance management (BPM)

Open Source & Free Business Intelligence Products

OpenI: simple web application that does OLAP reporting
Pentaho: enterprise-class reporting, analysis, dashboard, data mining and workflow capabilities
SpagoBI: comprehensive platform for BI projects containing reporting, OLAP, data mining, dashboard, free&visual data inquiring, collaborative modules, ETL, scheduling and workflow capabilities
YALE: open-source software for intelligent data analysis, knowledge discovery, data mining, and machine learning useful for business intelligence applications.

Commercial Products

ACE*COMM
Actuate
Applix
Business Objects
Cognos
ComArch
Dimensional Insight
Hyperion Solutions Corporation
MaxQ Technologies
Microsoft
MicroStrategy
Oco
Oracle Corporation
OutlookSoft
Panorama Software
Pentaho
Prognoz
PROPHIX
Pilot Software, Inc.
Prospero Business Suite
QlikView
SAP Business Information Warehouse
SAS Institute
Siebel Systems
SPSS
Teradata