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While IBM's recent acquisition of Cognos and Oracle's purchase of Hyperion Solutions may be getting most of the attention in the business intelligence (BI) space, a small German BI vendor is entering the Canadian market with a solution it hopes will find favour with SMBs.

Currently in its fourth release, Axle Studio originated in Germany, has some 8000 users worldwide and is a BI application builder that focuses on functionality, rather than on technology effort. In June 2006 Axle Studio Canada was founded to bring the solution to the Americas.

“Where we believe we have a competitive advantage is in the midsized enterprise market, where the typical Oracle/SAP/Business Objects solutions are just priced out of range,” said Bruce Ringrose, senior partner with Paris, Ont.-based Axle Studio Canada.

With Axle Studio, Ringrose says the focus is on application building to generate reports, and to do trending and analysis. He adds an important differentiator is that Axle can tap any database and data source.

“Unlike many BI tools that have a data warehouse in the middle, Axle bypasses that and goes directly to the data source,” said Ringrose.

He adds another key differentiator is functionality. Analysts can easily write their own reports, without tapping IT or costly outside consultants to develop ad hoc queries.

Looking to grow Axle in the Canadian market, Ringrose says their goal is to grow via a partnership model into different verticals. The company's first Canadian partner, Kitchener, Ont.-based Dynac, is focused primarily on the manufacturing and finance verticals and Ringrose says he'd also like to take Axle into verticals such as healthcare and aerospace.

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