Cool Emerging Vendors from A to Z: Birst

Channelweb.com in January launched its Emerging Vendors blog and has since profiled some 200 fresh young vendors that are eager to work with channel partners. Here's an A to Z look at some of the coolest companies we spotlighted this year, continuing with ... B is for Birst.

Company: Birst

Headquarters: San Francisco

Technology Sector: Software

Key Product: Birst 4

Year Founded: 2004

Number of Channel Partners: 20 systems integrators in the U.S.

Ideal Channel Partner: Midmarket-focused solution providers

Why You Should Care: Birst promises easy-to-use cloud-based business intelligence (BI) software that bridges the gap between cumbersome spreadsheets and expensive high-end BI packages.

The Lowdown: Birst is bringing full-featured business intelligence tools to midmarket customers by way of the cloud with its eponymous SaaS-based offering.

The company's software promises ease-of-use and lower costs compared to high-end premise-based BI packages, said John Pierson, vice president of sales and marketing at Birst, during an interview at September's Midsize Enterprise Summit, an event hosted by Everything Channel, the parent company of Channelweb.com.

"We're working mostly with customers in the midmarket and underserved departments of enterprises that don't have the money or expertise to do full-blown BI projects," Pierson said.

Birst's cloud-based software can automatically extract data from multiple sources within a company, build data warehouses and data hierarchies, as well as create sample reports based on the relationships between the data, Pierson said.

The latest version of its software, Birst 4, is slated for launch this month. The update features Birst Live Access, which enables customers to use pre-existing data warehouses, data marts or local databases, as well as Birst Advanced ETL (Extract, Transform Load) Services for complex data transformations.

Birst has approximately 20 systems integrator partners in the U.S., Pierson said. "They find opportunities on their own, but we work with them."