Web Worker Daily

It used to be if you wanted business intelligence software for your company, you’d just write a check for $100,000 to Oracle, SAP or IBM, wait for the 18 cubic feet of paper documentation to arrive, then assign a few dozen programmers you had handy to the task and check back in oh say, 2 years when they had a beta ready.

That was then, this is now. Software that will let you comprehensively control your business data can be had for pennies on those old, pre-Web 2.0 dollars. Whether you’re working for a company that can’t figure out how it really makes money, or you’re the infrastructure nerd (or nerdette) at a brand spanking new online company, “enterprise business intelligence” is a new toy you can now play with.

Jaspersoft makes software for crunching, associating, storing and reporting your firm’s manifold kinds of sales, website and other data in two popular flavors: Open Source Free and Professional. A full helping of professional BI starts around $10K, not $100K, according to Jaspersoft’s CEO Brian Gentile. And if you or your CEO are comfortable with Open Source licenses, you can get into the game for zero dollars.

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