Open Source and Cloud Computing

Crystal Reports at Cloud Expo

The founders of Crystal Reports and veterans of Microsoft, Symmetrics and Business Objects have launched a start-up out of Vancouver called Indicee that's developed a cloud-based reporting application meant to give SMBs frustrated with cutting and pasting data into spreadsheets a faster way to mash data and create reports.

The company sees itself as bringing reporting and analysis to the masses.

The widgetry eliminates manual spreadsheet data manipulation; consolidates data from different systems, reports and spreadsheets; bypasses direct access to information locked up in corporate databases; and processes queries in plain English.

Indicee figures it cuts 90% of the cost and complexity of traditional business intelligence.

It also lets users share the data and provides pre-built data marts for applications such as Microsoft Dynamics GP and Intuit.

The 30-man start-up is working on $8 million in venture funding, $6 million of which was raised recently from Yaletown Venture Partners and Granite Ventures.

Indicee's single-user starter kit is free. Licenses run anywhere from $69-$125 a month depending on the number of users and the amount of storage required.

Crystal Reports is the popular reporting and analysis software for Windows originally designed by Crystal Decisions, which Seagate Software bought before it was acquired by Business Objects, which brought it to SAP when the German company bought Business Objects two years ago. It became a de facto standard when Microsoft bundled it.