Who are some of the most interesting, or noteworthy, business intelligence startups?

I'll talk about what I know best, what the 5000fish team is doing with Yurbi (www.yurbi.com).

We're tackling the challenge that most mid to large organizations are having, they have a lot of data spread across multiple repositories but no easy or cost effective way to access the info, combine it for analysis and metrics, and share it securely with business users that need it.

Here's our approach at a high level:

1. 100% web-based but installed on-premise. We're working with very secure Federal Agencies and Enterprises that are not interested in moving to a SaaS based BI option.

2. A single platform. A single platform to meet the majority of BI user needs, from ad-hoc, report building, library and template access, dashboards/mashboards, embedding of reports/dashboards, and anonymous access if needed. (Big piece coming soon.. mobile)

3. Designed for business users. Users are able to access multiple data sources and create powerful reports and dashboards without writing any programming or SQL language. User are provided a familiar web interface which leads to high adoption.

4. Security tightly baked in. Security wasn't an after thought, to ensure IT and Security teams feel comfortable opening up the BI power to business users we have a model that ensures business users only have access to the info they should see from a data source. We've received or are in the process of approval to have our software installed on the most sensitive federal environments.

5. Ease of implementation. Not only is it easy to install but more importantly easy to implement. We don't require any changes to the underlying data sources. No schema changes, no security roles or access changes, no data warehousing or replication. With our AnyDB technology a customer can quickly model a data source and start delivering reports in days not months.

6. Ease to Connect Data. We've built a pretty powerful data workflow engine which can pull information from multiple sources and provide a data virtualization layer where customers can combine data (even when there is no key join field) into a single report or dashboard. Again from a user perspective there is none to very little SQL knowledge needed to do this, we handle it in the platform. A recent example, pulling real time data from Service Management, Financial, and CRM to understand a true picture of customer maintenance cost. Yurbi was able to pull real-time info from 3 different systems and separate databases and combine into a single analytic space.

7. Easy to do business with. We're easy to work with and have customer friendly terms. Our pricing model is simple and subscription based, we don't nickel and dime with options, we provide a complete platform and allow customers to pay for just what they need, the number of data sources and the number of users who need to access those data sources. Our licensing terms include things like test/dev licenses for all customers. And our customer service and support is fantastic (I'm biased but I'm just going by what our customers tell me and they have no reason to lie :-)

I still consider us a startup but we've got a pretty good foundation in place. We've been around as 5000fish for almost 2 years now, but as a team we've been doing BI together for almost 10 years. We've got a great customer base of large and mid-sized organizations and federal agencies, some big name partners, we're profitable, and we're growing.