Walker has announced it will integrate a future version of the Walker Horizon analytic application suite with Microsoft`s upcoming OLAP (online analytic processing) server, codenamed Plato.
Walker Horizon 3.0 allows businesses to analyse financial and operational data in order to predict the financial outcome of business activities and make corrections to meet business goals.
The combination of Walker`s enterprise applications and Microsoft`s OLAP platform will provide Windows NT users with a system for managing company performance, while offering businesses a common platform for business analysis across Windows NT, Unix and AS/400 platforms.
Available immediately, Walker Horizon 3.0 integrates data from major ERP and financial applications, such as SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, and Walker, with data from operational applications to automate planning, forecasting, budgeting and financial consolidation across the enterprise.
"Together with the Plato engine, Walker`s analytic applications will offer Microsoft customers a powerful solution for analysing realtime business across the enterprise," says Steve Murchie, Microsoft`s data warehousing product manager. "Walker`s support of Plato server is an important industry endorsement that shows the momentum behind Microsoft OLAP technology."
Horizon 3.0 is Walker`s latest offering in the fast-growing market for analytic applications, which IDC predicts will grow to $2,6 billion by 2001. By leveraging OLAP technology, Walker Horizon creates an environment that allows management to take a "predictive and corrective" approach to managing company performance.
Walker Horizon is architected to support a variety of performance management philosophies, including balanced scorecard, economic value added (EVA) and activity-based management, and can monitor traditional and industry-specific key performance indicators, allowing users to measure and analyse data specific to their own business.
"Microsoft Plato offers us the opportunity to deliver best-of-breed, NT-based analytic solutions," says Leonard Liu, chairman and CEO of Walker. "By embedding OLAP technology into a powerful suite of analytic applications, Walker Horizon can be used across the enterprise for predicting and correcting the likely outcome of business activities."
Walker`s Horizon applications will support the Plato server through industry-standard OLAP extensions to Microsoft`s OLE data access specification. Walker`s support for OLE DB for OLAP ensures Horizon applications will support any compliant OLAP engine, including Microsoft Plato, Arbor Essbase, GentiaDB and others.
OLE DB is a Microsoft specification that provides applications with uniform access to data stored in diverse information sources, regardless of location or type, enabling access to both relational and non-relational data sources. Walker Horizon will also support Microsoft`s DNA component architecture to allow integration with virtually any application provider`s solution.
* Walker Horizon products are distributed in South Africa by the IBD Group.
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