As the IT industry enters 2010, Panorama Software is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary of excellence in the business intelligence community. From Panorama’s first generation OLAP product (acquired by Microsoft) through the sixth generation NovaView, the first BI solution to work in the cloud, to today’s complete hybrid solution, the company has represented a hotbed of innovation for the IT community.

“When we launched our first product release out of Israel in March 1995, developers coming out of the Israeli army were turning the location into a hotbed for IT creativity and innovation,” said Rony Ross, founder and chairperson of Panorama Software. “Since then, we’ve helped launch the first web-deployed, cloud-enabled and now fully hybrid business intelligence platforms in the industry.”

The first generation product helped companies deploy a smart, optimized multi-dimensional database to handle the huge amounts of data they were accumulating in their corporate databases, making the data available for analysis in a friendly and easy to use EIS (Executive Information System) environment. In October 1996, Microsoft acquired the Panorama OLAP technology, which was further developed and rebranded as SQL Server Analysis Services and integrated into the SQL Server platform.

But Microsoft wasn’t done with Panorama. After it purchased the technology, the software giant encouraged Panorama to develop client-side applications to run on top of Microsoft technologies. A unified client-side product (Panorama NovaView) that was simple to use emerged from the partnership, accommodating development and deployment under the same user interface.

A third generation product appeared a couple of years later. NovaView Web Intelligence Server enabled powerful, highly functional analytics on top of the MS SQL Server Analysis Services – as well the first web-based deployments using thin client architecture.

NovaView version 4 built on previous versions with NovaView Smart Reporting; a completely different look at interactive reporting that creates, formats and distributes high quality reports in just one click.

NovaView Spotlight emerged from next-generation development. Spotlight delivers personalized insights to users in a simple and intuitive way, and puts these insights right when and where they need it – in Microsoft Outlook.

NovaView version 6 saw the dawn of the first consumer-oriented BI in the cloud. Based on Google Apps, the analytics gadget allows information workers to come up with analytics on the fly and in the cloud on top of any spreadsheet; generate a multidimensional model automatically, intuitively and in record time; and use analytics in the cloud through self-discoverable functionality that does not require any training. Hundreds of thousands of users still leverage the platform today.

NovaView’s recent and most exciting incarnation offers total hybrid functionality with painless implementation and without having to duplicate the data by setting up a whole datawarehouse in the cloud. With a hybrid solution, information stays on-premise where it’s safe and directly accessible, while the application layer that collects the data resides in the cloud. This kind of functionality allows for full, secure control of data, coupled with the cost-saving benefits of cloud computing.

“After fifteen years and numerous incarnations, Panorama NovaView continues to stand as a cornerstone of progress and evolution in the business intelligence community,” added Ross.