Microsoft Buys ProClarity to Boost BI Wares

Published: April 5, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Microsoft this week announced that it has bought ProClarity, a creator of analytics and business intelligence software for the SQL Server platform.

ProClarity is a very tight partner of Microsoft's, and was one of the key vendors showing off what the new "Yukon" SQL Server 2005 software could do when it was launched last fall. ProClarity, which is based in Boise, Idaho, has about 2,000 customers using its ProClarity Analytics software to create executive dashboards, performance complex SQL analysis of data warehouses and data marts, and create a lot of different reports to help managers run their businesses. ProClarity's software is also tightly integrated into Microsoft's Office System and SharePoint Portal Server, and Microsoft wanted the ProClarity products to beef up the future Office System 2007 release, now due in January 2007. About 1,200 of ProClarity's customers are running their BI tools on Windows, according to Microsoft; what the other customers are using is unclear, since ProClarity only talks about the Windows platform.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not divulged.