Speaking as someone who's had to write these kinds of tools internally it's nice to see more offerings in this space.<p>That said, I think there is a reason all the players in the space gravitate to very expensive enterprise level offerings - it's the only place they can create real value.<p>Analytics is hard. It either requires a lot of smart code rolling up large amounts of data into manageable pieces, or a very big piece of iron that can deal with somewhat raw data. And in either case, everyone has their data in a different format in a different database on a different OS. The result is that you need a behemoth piece of enterprise software or a custom written solution.<p>Even if you build a really smart UI that lets you quickly build reports that slice and dice you data, one dimension is too large to quickly process, or the ID's in another set don't quite line up. Something. There is always a problem that comes up that makes those canned demo videos look comical.<p>The best tool I've used where I felt it was both easy to use and powerful is Tableau. But, the price tag ended up being a little too high to swallow.<p>Note that one space I see that is under served is outward facing dashboards. If you're an advertising company and you want to show the results of the campaign you ran for a client, you have to send them an excel file or write your own custom dashboard. A server that manages authentication, data versioning, chart presentation, regular email updates, browser compatability, etc. is adding a lot of value. GoodData is working on this problem, and I think they are on to something. The concept has a viral quality, as well, as every client they sign up exposes their technology to all that client's clients.