Yesterday Kalido announced the availability of Kalido Universal Information Director for Microsoft SQL Server which will speed up development of BI systems based on the Microsoft Platform. By using Universal Director (part of the Kalido Information Engine suite of technologies) it is possible to capture the metadata and automate the generation and population of Microsoft SQL Server® Analysis Services (SSAS) cubes with data from the Kalido Dynamic Information Warehouse™. Automatic generation of SSIS jobs, SSAS cubes needed speeds up Microsoft BI system development and enables rapidly constructed SSAS cubes to then be accessed from Microsoft Office Excel, PerformancePoint Server and SharePoint. Also 3rd party BI tools can access this data. Effectively this is like Kalido acting as a wrapper for the Microsoft environment.

Note that Kalido is supports automatic generation of SAP's Business Objects Universes and IBM's Cognos platform. If Kalido keeps adding heterogeneous BI platform support it could put itself in a powerful position with respect to being able to leverage common metadata to integrate BI systems built on multiple heterogeneous technology platforms across different lines of business in large enterprises. I have yet to determine if Kalido technologies can be deployed on the Eclipse platform. If so this would be even more promising. Also this announcement of Microsoft support may well also be welcomed by small and medium size businesses (SMBs) who struggle to afford, find and retain skilled resources to build BI systems. Price point will be all important in the SMB market however especially as open source BI offerings have also penetrated this market.