VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwire) -- 11/14/12 -- arcplan Enterprise and Simba Technologies announced today a partnership to enable connectivity to Hadoop distributions - enabling SQL access to Big Data in Hadoop. Simba's Apache Hive ODBC Driver with SQL Connector enables standard SQL and Hive Query Language (HiveQL) access directly to their Big Data.

arcplan Enterprise, one of the most successful business intelligence (BI) platforms on the market, has partnered with Simba to enable its customers to perform real-time analysis on their Hadoop data. With Simba's Apache Hive ODBC Driver with SQL Connector arcplan's customers can connect directly to their Big Data source, enabling high-performance analytics without the need to extract the data into a proprietary data source.

"We are pleased to extend arcplan's big data analysis capabilities even further with this new driver from Simba," said Hans Peter Wolff, arcplan's CTO. "Our customers get the benefits of fast and easy analysis and reporting on massive Hadoop/Hive data sets in our simple-to-use BI platform, along with the benefit of integrating it with other corporate data within the enterprise for a full picture of organizational performance."

Unlike other data drivers for Hadoop/Hive, Simba's Big Data ODBC Driver technology performs the added task of mapping advanced SQL functionality to HiveQL to provide users with seamless integration between their favored SQL-based BI application and their Hadoop-based Big Data. Built upon the SimbaEngine ODBC SDK driver development framework - the industry's leading toolkit for high-performance custom ODBC driver development.

"arcplan's platform provides broad and flexible BI capabilities, letting you focus on the performance of the organization and not the data," said George Chow, Simba's CTO. "Simba's Big Data ODBC Driver provides SQL access to Hadoop, enabling easy access and high-performance analytics on your Big Data. Simba's Big Data ODBC driver technology enables arcplan's customers to efficiently and easily analyze, understand and report on their Big Data without extracting and aggregating data into a proprietary data source."

The world of Big Data offers enterprises the opportunity to perform real-time analytics on their data, enabling enhanced decision making, and insight discovery and process optimization. Simba's Big Data ODBC drivers empower this. Simba's Big Data ODBC solution for arcplan comply with the latest ODBC 3.52 data standard and adds important functionality such as Unicode and 32- and 64-bit support for high-performance and real-time analytics on Big Data. Hadoop distributions including those from DataStax, MapR, and HortonWorks already include Simba's Apache Hive ODBC driver so users are guaranteed standard ODBC access regardless of which Hadoop distribution they use and no extra costs.

ODBC was developed in 1992 by Microsoft and Simba Technologies and has been the flagship API for SQL ever since. It is the most common data interface used by BI, data analysis and reporting applications for relational data connectivity. The ODBC 3.52 specification - on which Simba's Big Data ODBC Drivers are fully compliant - is the foundation for standards-based access from BI tools such as arcplan, Microsoft Excel, Tableau, SAP BusinessObjects Crystal Reports, QlikView and countless others.

For more information about Simba's Big Data ODBC Drivers, visit: www.simba.com/bigdata.

For more information about SimbaEngine ODBC SDK - Simba's leading ODBC toolkit for custom ODBC driver development - visit: www.simba.com/odbc-sdk.htm.

About arcplan

arcplan (www.arcplan.com) is a leader in innovative Business Intelligence, Dashboard, Corporate Performance and Planning software solutions for desktop and mobile use. Since 1993, arcplan has enabled more than 3,000 customers worldwide to leverage their existing infrastructure for better decision making. Empowering all users to connect and collaborate with relevant information is crucial for improving business performance. With arcplan - it simply works.

arcplan's flagship product arcplan Enterprise® was rated the #1 third party tool for SAP BW, Oracle Essbase, and IBM Cognos TM1 in The BI Survey 12 (2012).

About Simba Technologies Inc.

Simba Technologies (www.simba.com) is the recognized world leader in standards-based data access and analytics products and solutions for both relational and multi-dimensional data sources. Simba provides data connectivity solutions to many of the world's leading companies on various platforms, including Windows, Mac, UNIX, Linux and many mobile device platforms. Simba's data connectivity products support multiple interfaces, including ODBC, JDBC, OLE DB, OLE DB for OLAP (ODBO), XML for Analysis (XMLA), ADO, ADO.NET, ADOMD and ADOMD.NET.

Simba's software is used worldwide. Its customers include leading independent software vendors and global enterprises like arcplan Enterprise®, Datastax®, Hortonworks®, MapR®, Microsoft®, Oracle®, SAP®, Teradata® and Qubole.

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