TIBCO has announced its intention to acquire Extended Results, a US-based company whose software and services push business intelligence reports and dashboards onto mobile devices.
Extended Results defines its market as "personal business intelligence": delivering "the right information to the right person at any time on any device".
It describes its PUSHBI product as "CNBC but for your business", presenting real-time data on tablets, PC and smartphones. A starter edition allows customer to access data from flat files; a 'pro' version integrates with most major business intelligence platforms; and enterprise version supports more advanced analytics and visualisations.
Earlier this year, Extended Results claimed to have become one of the first companies "to develop a real BI app for Google Glass".
Interestingly, the company's services business is aligned to Microsoft's technology stack. It uses SQL Server as its data warehousing platform, SharePoint for presentation and collaboration and integrates with Microsoft Excel to allow staff to work on the data in a familiar format.
TIBCO says Extended Results will now be integrated with its Spotfire business intelligence offering. "By combining Extended Results' mobile business intelligence technology with he market-leading Spotfire analytics and data discovery platform, we enable everyday business users to manage by exception and take action immediately when critical business metrics change," said TIBCO CTO Matthew Quinn.
"With this powerful addition to our platform, executives, operational managers and employees in the field will always have fingertip access to the information that is most important to them."
Independent business intelligence analyst Howard Dresner found in his most recent 'Wisdom of Crowds' report that over 80% of BI buyers consider support for mobile devices to be at least "somewhat important" in their desired BI solution.
Analyst company Ovum declared in January that mobile business intelligence has finally "come of age".
"Mobile BI solutions, which in the past have suffered from a lack of technological advancement and use cases, can now enable senior executives and line-of-business managers to adapt to a new “connected” business reality which expects them to have ready access to BI information in order to make quick and timely business decisions."
The firm said that BI vendors MicroStrategy, Information Builders and Yellowfin are "leading the charge with feature-packed yet functional mobile solutions".
“We expect BI vendors to enhance their mobile capabilities through in-house development and a continued wave of M&A activity,” said Ovum analyst Frederik Tunvall at the time. “This will also be where we will see some of the most interesting and innovative developments in BI and analytics over the next few years.”
Extended Results is a privately held company, and financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
TIBCO is due to publish its latest financial results later today.
