It's only been one short year since SQL Power Group open sourced its Business Intelligence tools, and the company is already poised to be a world-wide leader in the field.

In July of 2007, SQL Power jumped into the Open Source fray and published the source code of their very popular Data Modeling and Data Profiling tool, the SQL Power Architect, making them first-to-market with a cross-platform, Open Source data modeling tool and the first Canadian Open Source BI company. Since then, over 100,000 users from around the globe have downloaded this widely used Data Modeling tool.

In November of 2007, SQL Power followed up the SQL Power Architect Release by open sourcing their Data Cleansing Tool, the SQL Power DQguru (formerly SQL Power MatchMaker). This brought them the additional honour of being first-to-market with a commercially-supported Open Source tool that cleanses data, de-dupes and corrects addresses. The SQL Power DQguru has been downloaded by over 10,000 users globally and has been successfully used to cleanse Data Warehouses and CRM databases world-wide.

SQL Power founder Sam Selim believes that Open Source software is the future for Data Warehousing & Business Intelligence projects, as clients can take the money they would have spent on license fees and use it towards value-adding development and end-user functionality.

So what's next for this Canadian pioneer? SQL Power is currently working on enhancing and Open Sourcing their BI reporting platform, adding ad-hoc reporting and OLAP functionality to their already popular executive dashboard tool, the SQL Power Dashboard. The enhanced SQL Power Dashboard offering is due for Open Source release by the end of 2008 and will give Canadian customers a cost-effective alternative to proprietary BI tools like Cognos, Business Objects and Microstrategy.