According to estimates by the analysis firm Forrester Research, HP sold less than 100 enterprise Neoview installations during the past four years. In that same time, companies including , , and newcomer Netezza (which was ) have managed to establish themselves as leading players in the sizzling-hot BI market.

Much of Neoview's problems stemmed from a lack of focus that left it hopelessly overpriced in a market increasingly dominated by aggressively priced BI appliances from other vendors.

HP's decision to can Neoview comes as the company is expanding its relationship with Microsoft in the BI space. The companies launched several new appliances last week, combining Microsoft's software with HP's server hardware.

The products included a $2 million appliance featuring edition of SQL Server 2008 R2, as well as a business data warehouse product for small- and medium-size businesses.

Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld. Follow Jaikumar on Twitter at or subscribe to . His e-mail address is .