Cognos bought Applix and their TM1 OLAP tool just before Cognos was bought by IBM. Cognos already had a suite of planning and reporting tools they had brought together, including what was Adaytum Planning. Now they are taking the best of each to produce a new set of tools.
Microsoft's SQL Server database is commonly used in business packages, and is a popular tool for custom development. SQL has a facility called "Analysis Services" (AS) which provides multi-dimensional reporting. As each version of SQL appears, so AS improves.
Microsoft also had planning functionality in PerformancePoint. But that was lost virtually overnight when the product was rolled into SharePoint early last year, leaving users high and dry.
Other tools such as PowerOLAP (developed by a former TM1 reseller) also provides multi-dimensional reporting, but is better for planning than AS.
Whilst these tools can be used in SMEs and corporates, there are Business Intelligence tools priced for larger organisations that also provide multi-dimensional functions.
The right tool depends on use, the number of items in each dimension (such as the number of products) and the number of rows of data (such as sales transactions). Horses for courses!
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Smaller companies might want to look at MySQL, the open source database system that gives even large databases a run for their money. There are plenty of great reporting tools that use MySQL, both commercial and open source.
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