Updating Smart Analytics

Overnight, I received an email from Girish Kulkarni, Head of Content at HBI Software in Bangalore.

It contained the latest quarterly financial updates for nine mobile companies which Smart Analytics track for competitive intelligence. Over the next few weeks, Girish and the team at HBI Software will update further Competitive Intelligence reports to companies in both the electronic document and print, and the software company sectors.

We started building Smart Analytics over three years ago. It can now be accessed via Microsoft Office 2003 and Microsoft Office 2007 by downloading a web services utility from the Smart Analytics page on Microsoft Office Marketplaces.

All that changes when Microsoft launch Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office 2007 Suite in the next quarter. Microsoft are then integrating Smart Analytics into the core Research ribbon in Microsoft Office 2007 Suite. All Office users will then be able to access Smart Analytic's research and analytics sources directly from within their Office applications.

It's been three years in the making. The end game is just a few weeks away.

From a New Zealand perspective, our relationship with Microsoft globally follows pretty much the same path as described in one of Rod Drury's blogs yesterday. A Microsoft partnership is a valuable technology tool as well as being a great potential route to market. It needs working at though. Microsoft have their own route map and it is important that partners understand that and align part of their own development and marketing strategy to map that. Then the potential can be realised.