Under the microscope

Already strong in banking, insurance, government, telecommunications and healthcare, the company sees additional play in the retail/consumer packaged goods sector, as well as with legal and accounting firms. It is now looking for industry expertise in these areas, Macdermid said.

"In the early days it was a real struggle, but now there is huge market growth," he said. "Everyone has data and needs to do something with it."

The mid-market, in particular, was ripe for the picking, he said, even though many of these companies don't think they have the infrastructure or skills needed to implement a BI solution.

"BI projects don't need to be large, multi-year data warehousing projects. All business today has some level of reporting solution," Macdermid said. "The key is to streamline the processes that are being used to make decisions."

Power users

Resellers needed to determine which users employ reporting and analytic tools the most and ask what information they need.

"After you have identified your power users and learned how they use reports and what information they desire, you are ready to take the next step toward enabling analytics to help guide the company," he said.

Locally, Microsoft was also seeing huge demand for its BI technology amongst the mid-market crowd, and was working with a host of partners, partner group director, Kerstin Baxter, said.

"We expect the highest opportunity to be in the mid-market and enterprise space," she said. "Within these markets, there's a need for more complex BI solutions."

Microsoft has seen its channel numbers almost triple in the data management solutions competency, a new segment formerly dubbed BI.

"This is one of our fastest growing areas. In June, we had 18 partners and now there are 45 enrolled," she said. A further 100 partners had expressed interest in the category.

"Information needs to be accessible; it can no longer be locked away," Baxter said. "There's a need for everyone to be able to see it."

Microsoft had significantly increased and broadened its investment following its latest foray into the BI market with the launch of Microsoft Office BSM 2005, she said. The goal was to provide a better experience when users access and work with information from within Microsoft Office suite of applications they already use to collaborate and manage their business, according to the company.

Until now, BI had been complex and costly and disconnected from software tools that workers used every day in their jobs, Baxter said.

Taking integration further, users could also build on top of portal technologies using SharePoint products, she said.