Enterprise reporting software firm Actuate said it has grown its public sector customer base substantially for its acquired Performancesoft Suite products.
The San Francisco-based company is expected to announce the addition of over 280 new customers for the dashboard and scorecard software it picked up from its $16.5m acquisition of Performancesoft in January 2006. The majority of these customers are in the public sector and include 94 local government and services organizations, 22 federal departments, and 18 state and education organizations.
Our View
The acquisition of Performancesoft by Actuate was a sure sign that the worlds of BI and performance management were converging. Scorecard tools are now becoming an integral part of BI as well as ERP-style business applications suites.
Actuate has sought a much-needed dashboard and scorecard capability for some time to fill the gaps in its reporting-centric BI platform. It chose Performancesoft for its ease of implementation that requires little or no IT support. Performancesoft gives Actuate the potential to broaden its appeal beyond IT to business users. Actuate now seems to be doing that in the public sector. But scorecarding is a far cry from corporate performance management, and customers should not be duped into thinking otherwise.
