Business intelligence (BI) vendor Business Objects has announced the release of Business Objects XI, fully integrating the products it acquired from Crystal Decisions. The move follows the trend for one-stop-shop solutions from BI vendors, said analysts.

Business Objects XI, which is based on the Crystal infrastructure, is designed to provide an end-to-end BI and performance management system.

"Our vision is to provide a single platform that lets firms standardise their business intelligence," said Richard Neale of Business Objects. "BI has often been implemented in a very piecemeal fashion within organisations. They've become a lot more strategic, and the big driver at the moment is to standardise on a single platform."

The announcement follows BI vendor Cognos's release in December 2004of updates to two of its products: Cognos Controller 2.3, a financial consolidation product to help companies comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley financial reporting requirements; and version 7.3 of Cognos Planning Series, which is based on performance management tools acquired when Cognos bought Adaytum in January 2003.

"The new release enables different parts of the organisation to plan in the way that they need to, but to link those plans together under the control of end users," said Cognos's Mark Stimpson.

Meanwhile, Actuate has announced a new version of e.Spreadsheet, due to ship in February, which lets firms distribute live spreadsheets with certain fields locked down, so that users cannot change the entries.

Recent announcements suggest other BI vendors are following suit, and are focusing on regulatory compliance needs, data integrity, and corporate performance management (CPM), said Ian Charlesworth of analyst firm Butler Group.

Charlesworth agreed with Neale that companies increasingly want to standardise on a single vendor. "There's just no economic argument behind maintaining three or four competing comparable products."

However, Charlesworth said Cognos's acquisition of Adaytum had given it an advantage in the CPM arena. "There is a debate as to whether you can have a Business Objects performance management solution built around partnerships that is as capable as a Cognos one," he added.