Crystal Decisions will begin marketing its enterprise reporting
solution on IBM's Unix solution, the AIX 5l operating system with
pSeries servers, under a new agreement aimed at small and
medium-sized businesses.
The two companies will work together to deliver Crystal Enterprise
on the AIX 5L Unix platform, the DB2 Universal Database, and the
Crystal Enterprise Java SDK for WebSphere Application Server. The
agreement will encompass co-development and marketing.
"The small and medium business market is very focused on integrated
solutions," said Janet Woods, vice-president of business
development. "Crystal has really moved very solidly into the
enterprise space. Those customers often have Unix driving
fundamental applications."
Crystal Decisions will offer a comprehensive business intelligence
solution supporting the WebSphere product suite. With the Java SDK,
corporate developers can now incorporate enterprise-reporting
capabilities into their Java applications.
IBM and Crystal Decisions have also strengthened the overall
business intelligence (BI) capabilities across WebSphere Portal and
WebSphere Commerce solutions.
Crystal offers portlets for the latest release of WebSphere Portal
4.1 and a jointly developed integration package for WebSphere
Commerce containing more than 150 reports.
According to research from IDC, IBM's share of the Unix market for
decision support increased by 6% in revenue and 4% in shipments
from 1999 to 2001.
Crystal Enterprise on AIX will expand the joint opportunities
between Crystal Decisions and IBM to meet the increasing demand for
BI solutions on IBM's Unix platform, said Matthew Eastwood, IDC
research director.