Mellmo, which makes mobile software for visualizing business intelligence data, just keeps expanding the capabilities of its Roambi graphics display applications for the iPhone and iPad.
The Del Mar, CA-based startup announced two weeks ago that it has integrated Roambi with Oracle’s suite of business intelligence products. So the Roambi enterprise server, which connects to a customer’s business-intelligence system and converts data into a graphic display for mobile devices, can now access data stored on a system from any of the four major vendors of enterprise databases and planning systems: SAP, IBM, Microsoft, and now Oracle.
It means a Mellmo customer like Carlsbad, CA-based Life Technologies (NASDAQ: [[ticker:LIFE]]), which uses multiple business intelligence systems, can use Roambi to access and display data from any of its systems, according to Quinton Alsbury, a Mellmo co-founder and president. As Wade noted in April, the latest version of Roambi’s enterprise server also can create Flash versions of Roambi charts and graphics, so users can access Roambi data dashboards from their desktop or laptop computers.
“We’re well on our way to becoming a universal solution to all these back end systems,” Alsbury told me last week.
What seems more significant, though, is the announcement Mellmo is making today. The startup founded in early 2008 says it is launching a new mobile display application called Roambi Blink that, instead of connecting directly to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or SAP BusinessObjects document, can access data directly from a data warehouse. Businesses use data warehouses to organize transaction data for fast retrieval.
The company says the move reflects one of its top customer requests, which was have the ability to generate dynamic visualizations from raw data, without first requiring someone to build a report or database query. Mellmo says it uses a sophisticated and innovative process called “distributed in-memory processing” to provide users with a set of five conventions, such as product and month, to provide the necessary analysis. “We think it’s a really innovative solution to a really complex problem,” Alsbury told me.
The Mellmo president, who is responsible for leading the company’s design and marketing teams, says the startup currently counts 27 Fortune 500 companies as customers, including Dow Corning and Novartis—with another 50 scrutinizing Roambi in what he calls a “proof of concept” stage. Mellmo has provided over 60,000 licenses for its Roambi Enterprise Server to its customers, and Alsbury says more than 350,000 Roambi Apps have been downloaded from the Apple Store.
