Today at Gartner Business Intelligence Summit 2004 in Chicago, Microsoft Corp. announced it would extend its business intelligence (BI) platform by acquiring ActiveViews Inc., a small, privately held company based in Provo, Utah. ActiveViews provides an ad hoc reporting system that takes advantage of the power of Microsoft® .NET and SQL ServerTM Reporting Services to allow users to easily unlock and explore data stored in a myriad of systems.

"There is a significant amount of data out there and an increasing need for every employee to have access to that data to make decisions. By incorporating the technology provided by ActiveViews, SQL Server Reporting Services will help users access information more quickly and efficiently," said Bill Baker, general manager for business intelligence at Microsoft. "Based on feedback from customers and industry experts, we believe that by incorporating this functionality within the business intelligence capabilities of SQL Server, Microsoft will provide a more complete BI solution than has been offered in the industry before."