BOARD International develops and sells BOARD, a software application organizations around the world used for Business Intelligence (BI) and Corporate Performance Management (CPM). Headquartered in Switzerland and with branches in 15 countries, the company is a global player in the BI/CPM space, competing with such large competitors as SAP and IBM. BOARD has been adopted by more than 3,000 organizations worldwide, and the company has seen double-digit growth annually for the past eight years.
According to Pietro Ferrari, Chief Technology Officer, BOARD’s team is lean and mean, and relies on strong technology partnerships to stay competitive. “We’re continuously improving our technology through our alliance with Progress, to bring our capabilities to the market now and into the future,” he said.
What sets the company’s software apart is its broad range of capabilities. “BOARD is applicable across industries, and it enables customers to combine functionality typically met with multiple tools,” said Ferrari. “For example, SAP customers would need three tools to accomplish what they can with BOARD.”
But to remain competitive with the larger players, a cloud offering was essential. “We had to provide customers with the choice to use our on-premise solution or access it in the cloud,” said Ferrari. “It’s a must-have for survival in the market.”
A key enabler was data connectivity. “It was our first concern—how do we move data from on-premise to the cloud?” said Ferrari. “We already had some experience with Progress® DataDirect® ODBC connectors, so when we found out Progress also offered cloud connectors, that’s where we started.”
Ferrari downloaded a trial version of the Progress DataDirect Cloud® connectivity driver. “We didn’t find any other solution that took the same approach as Progress,” said Ferrari. A cloud offering in itself, Progress provides a web portal where you can configure everything, rather than installing the connectivity driver on your own server. “Progress does all the maintenance and updates transparently, so we don’t have to,” he said. “We didn’t find anything else similar on the market.”