The business intelligence specialist has launched its new Crystal Vision suite

Business Objects trained its sights firmly on mid-market customers at its annual European User conference in Cannes yesterday, launching a new product and underlining its commitment to delivering hosted business intelligence (BI) software.

The new Crystal Vision suite packages together Business Objects' existing Crystal Reports reporting toolset and Crystal Xcelsius data visualisation software, as well as its Crystal Live Office functionality, allowing users to access live data from Microsoft Office applications.

Jaylene Crick, group product marketing manager for Business Objects’ Crystal line of products, said customers could still buy the products separately, but argued a pre-integrated suite would appeal to mid-market firms. She added that firms buying the packaged solution would get a discount - the individual Reports and Xcelsius products are available from $495 (£270) per user and the combined suite is priced from $795 (£430).

The suite is also available for individual users on the desktop and as Crystal Vision Server to allow firms to securely manage and share data over the web.

Business Objects chief executive John Schwarz said the launch was the latest step in the vendor's strategy to target mid-market firms. "Lat year there was a significant upswing in demand for BI from the mid-market as they begin to realise the value of the technology," he said.

Separately, Schwarz said he was pleased with the response to Business Objects first hosted software offering, Crystalreports.com, which was launched in the US last month. He added that the site - which allows firms to post business reports that can then be accessed by authorised colleagues or partners in a manner similar to a photo sharing site - had received interest from smaller firms that did not want to build their own BI portal, and from distributed organisations who want a secure way to share data between branch offices.

Schwarz said Buisiness Objects would assess customers’ reaction to the new offering and investigate other BI tools that could be offered as a hosted service. However, he argued that it was extremely unlikely that BI functionality would be offered solely online. "I can see up to 40 percent of our mid-market customers using [hosted BI tools]," he said. "But I don't believe it will [work for] high-end customers."

Schwarz also dismissed suggestions that Microsoft's recent acquisition of BI specialist ProClarity and its stated aim to develop easy-to-use BI tools would make it a fearsome competitor for mid-market customers. "Microsoft’s success with apps and databases [for the mid-market] was because it was moving into a vacuum where there were no viable competitors," he said. "We are already in this market and we will not let Microsoft take our business away."

Schwarz added that Microsoft's commitment to the Windows platform meant it would struggle to produce a compelling BI solution that could report effectively on all forms of data on different platforms.