Business intelligence (BI) giant Business Objects continued its push into hosted software market today with the US launch of a new report-sharing capability that will be available in the UK later this year.

Crystalreports.com gives users of Business Objects Crystal Reports XI reporting suite the ability to upload reports and create a list of users authorised to view and drill down into the reports, the company said.

Richard Neale of Business Objects said the functionality would particularly appeal to mid-market firms, and argued it would be more secure and flexible than emailing PDFs of business reports and more cost-effective than investing in a BI portal.

Current users will get a free service for 10 users and up to 60 reports, while firms wanting to upload more reports and grant access for more users can get a premium service for a monthly licence fee.

However, Neale admitted the service may appeal less to larger firms who may prefer to propagate reports through their own customised BI portals. "Larger organisations tend to have the resources to host their own BI server and may prefer the flexibility that gives them," he said.

Some firms may also be reluctant to upload sensitive financial reports to a third-party site, according to Alys Woodward of analyst firm Ovum. "It is a good model for sharing reports with partners and handling operational data," she said. "But I am still not convinced by the security and availability [of hosted BI systems] and I can see firms choosing to keep sensitive financial reports internally."

The launch follows Business Objects' announcement earlier this year that it is to provide a reporting application through Salesforce.com's AppExchange hosted platform that will report on data held by firms in Salesforce's CRM applications.

Meanwhile, US hosted enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications specialist Intacct launched a new hosted BI toolset last week supporting personalised dashboards, customised reporting and analytics, budgeting, business-event management, and integration.

Robert Jurkowski, chief executive and president of Intacct, said in statement that hosted software could take BI functionality to a mid-market currently poorly served by traditional software vendors.

“When companies outgrow spreadsheets, there’s a large void in the product selection, which Intacct is targeting with its business intelligence solution,” Jurkowski added. “We give our customers the power not only to see key performance indicators in real time, but also to drill down and adjust the underlying business processes that generate the results on the dashboards.”