LogiXML has been in the enterprise business intelligence business since 2000. They offer a comprehensive BI tools set that is implemented by IT departments behind the firewall. LogiXML is a well-established product, now on Version 9.2. It offers Web-based reporting, analysis and data integration software with its latest version.

LogiXML has just started a new initiative to bring the high-powered data visualization tools they have developed to a much wider audience at a very different price point. In fact, it is free for now. Recently, I spoke with Bill Kotraba, Director of Sales and Marketing at Logi OnDemand about their first product, Widgenie. This is the LogiXML group responsible for this new product line. Bill said they will always a free version, but they will soon introduce ads for the free one. Then, they will provide an ad free version with enhanced features for a modest monthly charge. Widgenie is designed for consumer web users, small businesses, and individuals in large organizations.

Widgenie is very new, only a few weeks old. Initial data visualization options include pie charts, bar charts, line charts,tag clouds, and others. Scatter plots are soon to be released and a heat map will follow. Bill said they are going to look to user input for many of the new options. The LogiXML engine has hundreds of visualization capabilities to convert to Widgenie. Widgenie is setting up a community for users to exchange ideas on how to best use the tool. Widgenie is setting up a community for users to exchange ideas on how to best use the tool and provide product input. They will also have a blog soon.

Widgenie allows you to visualize data from a variety of sources such as Excel or even mashups. You can also create customized widgets that embed on any website or HTML page and display real-time, interactive displays. The Widgenie widget can be embedded in Blogger, Facebook, MySpace, and there is a general embed option for others sites. They can also simply host the visualization and provide a unique url for distribution. You can get reports on how many times your widget was viewed and the number of unique visitors. If you have Widgenie on your blog or other site, others can grab it, if you allow them, and have you data updated on their site. Currently, you provide the data for these visualizations. Bill said they are exploring providing connections with existing data sources, both free and subscription services. In the latter case, they would do revenue sharing.

I think this is a smart idea, to take an existing powerful capability from an enterprise tool and adapt it for web use in a SaaS model. It is a new twist on enterprise 2.0 and web 2.0. It will be interesting to see where it goes.