Traditional business intelligence (BI) solutions are often inflexible and incomplete, because they depend on rigidly structured data found in relational database systems (RDBMS). Such solutions often exclude nonrelational data, and force users into a "SQL query" mindset.Epistemic leverages the power of Web Services to break free from the traditional relational database/SQL query approach to business intelligence that poorly addresses non-relational data and provides intelligence of limited use. Where business analysts using these traditional tools must massage the results in Excel in order to analyze them, analysts using the Epicentric Analytics Toolkit can begin their analysis right away.
Epistemic's use of Web Services provides two important lessons for other software vendors: first, Web Services can provide substantial value to vendors who do not consider themselves "Web Services vendors," and second, Web Services offer much more than simple point-to-point integration.
