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Friday, July 3, 2009

FLASHBACK 10 YRS AGO: "nQuire Rolls Out Internet Software"

Minnesota-based nQuire Software began to offer a business intelligence suite of products in late 1999. Siebel aquired nQuire in 2001, and Oracle aquired Siebel in 2006. Here is an article published 10 years ago announcing the launch of nQuire eBusiness Analytics which became Siebel Analytics and is now known as Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition...


Fri. Aug. 27, 1999
From the August 27, 1999 issue of CRN

nQuire Software Inc., a start-up focused on enterprise data access, unveiled its first product, a search engine and related suite of software for accessing and analyzing structured data from disparate internal systems.

"The average person can go home and pull up on the Web all kinds of information, but they go to work and can't even get adequate sales data for a given period because it resides on different platforms," said Larry Barbetta, president and chief executive of nQuire.

The nQuire Suite addresses this issue and provides users with self-service access and analysis of the data stored across various operational systems, data warehouses, datamarts, relational databases and XML-based sources, Barbetta said.

In addition, the nQuire technology enables organizations to deliver better service both inside and outside their corporate walls, Barbetta said. The technology can be used to power enterprise information portals, corporate intranets, business-to-business commerce and Internet customer access, he said.

"The Internet has raised the bar of people's expectations," Barbetta said. However, "the Internet has affected consumers, but it really hasn't been hammered home in corporate space to the degree that it has impacted their computing structure," he said, adding that corporations still have trouble accessing and analyzing information that resides on their internal systems.

"The ability to hide the complexity of data analysis requires an enormous amount of technical savvy," said Bob Moran, vice president of decision support research at the Aberdeen Group Inc., Boston. "It is to nQuire Software's credit that it has been able to accomplish this feat in an Internet/portal context, without requiring enterprises to undergo a disruptive change," he said.

"Delivering accurate and comprehensive information from multiple applications and services has been a challenge for business intelligence," said Hadley Reynolds, research director at The Delphi Group, Boston. "nQuire's multi-repository search capability promises to break down the barriers associated with application and warehouse boundaries, and give portal users a substantially clearer discovery channel for knowledge management or E-business activities."

The nQuire server features data access techniques coupled with a scalable, high-performance engine capable of performing business calculations, joining, merging, filtering, aggregating and integrating data, Barbetta said.

The nQuire Suite also provides thin-client, browser-based access to the nQuire Server, as well as support for existing reporting, online application processing, query, and development tools and applications capable of querying a relational database management system, the company said.

The browser enables non-technical users to access buried corporate information. "We allow the user to get at the data in the way they think about it, not in the way it's stored," Barbetta said.

Building the company's channel organization is among the first major goals for Duane Cologne, nQuire's vice president of marketing and business development, Barbetta said.

"We plan to leverage our sales model with partnerships with key service providers," he said. "We're talking to both the new-age integrators as well as the 'big dogs,' " he added, referring to the large mainstream integrators.


Before being positioned for the Siebel aquisition, nQuire established several key customer wins at such companies as CSX Transportation, McDonald's, Simon Property Group, and Union Pacific Railroad.

Financial terms of the Siebel acquisition of nQuire were not disclosed. The Oracle acquisition of Siebel was valued at approximately $5.85 billion.

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