There are 3 key reasons why there has been so much activity in the AppExchange Analytics category over the last few months:

1. The importance of dashboards and reporting to CRM success
2. The power of the Salesforce platform and the AppExchange marketplace
3. The shift towards software-as-a-service in the business intelligence market

I'll be doing more in depth reviews of some of these applications in May, but here's a a brief update of who's who in the AppExchange Analytics category (in alphabetical order).

Traditional BI Market Leaders

Business Objects: crystalreports.com has recently been consolidated into a single AppExchange listing and the performance of the Crystal Reports Web service adapter to Salesforce continues to improve for operational reporting and information delivery.

Cognos: In only a few months Cognos now has multiple analytics approaches available to Salesforce customers - an on-premise Data Adapter for Cognos 8 and a hosted application called Lava for real-time dashboards that can also work within your firewall as an BI appliance.

On-Demand BI Innovators

ForceLogix: As the name indicates, Sales Performance Optimizer is a hosted sales performance management application designed to increase salesperson effectiveness and management visibility.

JasperSoft: An open source, on-demand company who recently cracked the AppExchange Top 10 with their Jasper4Salesforce operational reporting and ad hoc query application.

LucidEra: Probably the furthest ahead in terms of true on-demand data warehousing, the Forecast-to-Billing application combines Salesforce data with accounting data from Oracle financials and other systems.

Synergex: The latest release of VisualSmart includes advanced dashboarding features and a traditional OLAP-style of slice-and-dice interface.

Visual Mining: Sales Executive has very impressive interactive dashboarding features, a library of key performance indicators (KPIs), and point and click dashboard personalization.

Desktop Analytics Tools

Advizor Solutions: Named this week's AppExchange "App of the Week", SalesAdvizor is gaining in popularity as an easy-to-use multidimensional data visualization tool.

ForceAmp: Another recent "App of the Week", QueryAmp is the updated and fully supported Excel Connector that also offers a "read-only" BI edition for broader usage in Microsoft-centric organizations.

On-Demand Forecasting

Bluetide Management: As they say, "less sandbagging and more focus!" Bluetide Forecasting is a nice alternative to the pain of Excel-based forecasting and the application takes advantage of Adobe Flex for nice user interface.

Right90: A web-based and offline edition of the Sales Forecaster for Manufacturing allows you to easily perform variance analysis, demand planning, and advanced forecasting.

The AppExchange team is working closely with these and other partners to drive Salesforce customer success this year. I encourage you to take a look at a few of these applications and post a review based on your experience. Are you currently evaluating a Salesforce Analytics partner? Did I miss an application that you've seen or are already working with? Got some questions or feedback? Let me know.