Palo – Open-Source MOLAP for Excel

I guess I knew about Palo but I haven’t blogged it yet. Anyhow. Palo is a free open source MOLAP backend for Excel with .Net and Java API. They now have a Linux version of their server. While I’m not an Excel user myself, not even a Windows user, Palo has the potential to turn Excel into a very potent Business Intelligence tool, for free. It won’t be quite as scalable, with regard to the number of dimensions, as commercial tools, but it is probably faster than most alternatives.

The company behind it, Jedox, looks interesting. But I would be a bit scared to have a company rely on a product (Excel) that I don’t control. Microsoft can, at any time, change deeply the way Excel works through a major update. Whatever technology they have, could become obselete overnight if Microsoft so wishes. Sounds scary.

(Disclaimer: I have never used Palo nor any Jedox product or service.)