According to the OLAP report the worldwide OLAP market, including services for implementation and training, was estimated to be $1 billion in 1996, $1.4 billion in 1997, just over $2 billion in 1998, $2.5 billion in 1999 and above $3 billion in 2000.

In this vast and competitive marketplace, organizations in every industry are seeking to improve employees' ability to make fast, fact-based decisions. The key to achieving this goal is the effective use of real-time business information across the organization. There is likely to be a boom in OLAP application sales as the technology becomes more and more widely deployed.

To excel in today's marketplace, organizations need intuitive, easy-to-use business intelligence and analytic solutions that unify access to all business information. In order to have effective information sharing and decision-making within an organization, there is a need for a solution that integrates disparate data sources into a personalized user environment that supports robust, real-time analysis anywhere, anytime.