FREIBURG, Germany, November 10, 2005 -- Microsoft Excel users looking for a lightweight alternative to Microsoft's OLAP offerings inside SQL Server 2005, should have a look at the free of charge add-in named PALO. PALO is an in-memory OLAP Server especially designed for non-IT users and business analysts who want to build state-of-the-art OLAP solutions for planning and analysis in Microsoft Excel. In contrast to many other OLAP solutions, Palo does support write-back of data directly into the OLAP cubes.

PALO overcomes Excel's two dimensional row/column concept, enabling users to work with up to 256 dimensions. This makes it possible to picture even highly complex models very easily. Beyond that, Excel becomes network-compatible and now allows multi user access. This is possible since PALO offers a centralised data management and, if necessary, links Excel spreadsheet data over the network: Modifications that are made to Excel tables on one workstation are immediately visible to all the other users in the network. PALO is easy to use for any user with a general Excel knowledge. More information and a link to the free download can be found under http://www.palo.net.

About Jedox

Jedox (http://www.jedox.com) offers enterprise solutions around Microsoft Excel. In addition to the Open-Source MOLAP-Database PALO, Jedox also develops and markets the Worksheet-Server, which is a high-end Excel-to-Web solution. Worksheet-Server allows to run interactive Excel Applications as a true server-based web application on a web browser (no extra client software needed). Jedox's owner and CEO is Kristian Raue, the former CEO of IntelliCube Software AG, who founded Jedox in 2002.