When you embark on a new project, a vital project like Calliope, you either do it wholeheartedly or you don't do it at all. Especially when you have already had professional experience that has allowed you to work extensively and intensively on other people's dreams: it's time to work on your own.
Calliope arose from two questions. The first is: Is business intelligence in an average company well resolved for making crucial decisions based on its multiple sources of business data? The reality and the many companies we know and talk to told us emphatically NO. It was still extremely difficult to integrate data and extract business value from it in virtually all sectors and all companies, especially those that could not afford huge projects and teams to do so.
The second question that gave rise to Calliope is: how can we reimagine Business Intelligence in the era of Generative Artificial Intelligence? A world of opportunities (and also challenges) was opening up in a field dominated by scientific and engineering tools that were far removed from those who really need to make business decisions: managers. Battalions of internal data teams, external consultants, different tools in each department, customized and scattered data structures: a sea of technologies, people, and processes that, instead of making life easier, distance those who need to make decisions from the data necessary to do so.
As those of you who know me are aware, my background ranges from technology to product, in an end-to-end value development process with strong roots in Extreme Programming and Lean (if you are interested, you can check out my Forum framework), having led large engineering and product teams at companies such as Wallbox, Stay, and ThePower.
Fate led me to meet my partner Joaquín (former co-founder of Devo and former VP of Engineering at Taiger and Clarity) and to work with him, proposing that we evaluate whether the idea I had in mind for a new generation of AI-driven business intelligence made sense.
The challenge, both in terms of product and technology, was enormous, and as usual, we threw ourselves into it with enthusiasm, a desire to learn, and realistic optimism (the kind that drives you forward without losing your head).
The first problem we encountered was how to integrate data sources as diverse as those used by companies to make decisions: databases, CRMs, ERPs, etc. Integrating this data in an orderly manner, discovering the relationships between them, understanding the customized fields and business rules of each company—in other words, being able to make sense of this data in a way that allows value to be extracted from it—is in itself a tremendous challenge that normally requires very large teams.
To solve this, we decided to create our own technology: a sophisticated workflow of processes and agents dedicated to data integration in an OLAP database management system, the discovery of its structures, the generation of ontologies (relationships between them), and the optimization of business rules and analytical queries. We named this technology Orpheus (son of the muse Calliope).
In Greek mythology, Calliope is the muse of wisdom and whispers knowledge into the ears of rulers, enabling them to make the best decisions.
We work tirelessly to develop Orpheus, as we are well aware that it is the technological heart that drives Calliope.
At the product level, the challenge was also very important: to differentiate ourselves from the myriad of Data Agents (most of them unsuccessful) that, in the light of generative AI, had populated everything from internal to consulting projects, generally with very unsatisfactory results. We wanted not only to build a product that worked satisfactorily but also one that provided much more business value than traditional BI tools such as PowerBI, Tableau, or Looker.
Something very important to me was that Calliope's user experience was unmatched in the field of business intelligence. We had to empower those who really need business intelligence to make decisions, the managers, to be able to speak directly in their language with Calliope and not only obtain valuable business analysis from any question, but also parallel insights, suggestions for related questions, and relevant data visualizations. It was also crucial that they could build their own dashboards in minutes using their own language, without intermediaries and without complications. And convert those dashboards into automated reports that would reach them at their convenience.
When we launched the first production version of Calliope last week, after months of working behind the scenes with several major client pilots, we felt that the journey we had begun together in the depths of our minds was beginning to take shape before our eyes and that we could finally start showing it to the world.
Those of us who are parents know the magic and responsibility that come together in our children, whom we help shape as much as they shape us.
We know that this is the beginning of a journey that we want you to embark on with us in the exciting world of AI-driven Business Intelligence, or as I like to call it, Decision Intelligence. Our journey will only make sense if we help you make:
Better decisions. Faster.
We are at your disposal to listen to your needs and show you Calliope at:
https://www.calliope.so/es/contact
When you embark on a new project, a vital project like Calliope, you either do it wholeheartedly or you don't do it at all. Especially when you have already had professional experience that has allowed you to work extensively and intensively on other people's dreams: it's time to work on your own.
Calliope arose from two questions. The first is: Is business intelligence in an average company well resolved for making crucial decisions based on its multiple sources of business data? The reality and the many companies we know and talk to told us emphatically NO. It was still extremely difficult to integrate data and extract business value from it in virtually all sectors and all companies, especially those that could not afford huge projects and teams to do so.
The second question that gave rise to Calliope is: how can we reimagine Business Intelligence in the era of Generative Artificial Intelligence? A world of opportunities (and also challenges) was opening up in a field dominated by scientific and engineering tools that were far removed from those who really need to make business decisions: managers. Battalions of internal data teams, external consultants, different tools in each department, customized and scattered data structures: a sea of technologies, people, and processes that, instead of making life easier, distance those who need to make decisions from the data necessary to do so.
As those of you who know me are aware, my background ranges from technology to product, in an end-to-end value development process with strong roots in Extreme Programming and Lean (if you are interested, you can check out my Forum framework), having led large engineering and product teams at companies such as Wallbox, Stay, and ThePower.
Fate led me to meet my partner Joaquín (former co-founder of Devo and former VP of Engineering at Taiger and Clarity) and to work with him, proposing that we evaluate whether the idea I had in mind for a new generation of AI-driven business intelligence made sense.
The challenge, both in terms of product and technology, was enormous, and as usual, we threw ourselves into it with enthusiasm, a desire to learn, and realistic optimism (the kind that drives you forward without losing your head).
The first problem we encountered was how to integrate data sources as diverse as those used by companies to make decisions: databases, CRMs, ERPs, etc. Integrating this data in an orderly manner, discovering the relationships between them, understanding the customized fields and business rules of each company—in other words, being able to make sense of this data in a way that allows value to be extracted from it—is in itself a tremendous challenge that normally requires very large teams.
To solve this, we decided to create our own technology: a sophisticated workflow of processes and agents dedicated to data integration in an OLAP database management system, the discovery of its structures, the generation of ontologies (relationships between them), and the optimization of business rules and analytical queries. We named this technology Orpheus (son of the muse Calliope).
In Greek mythology, Calliope is the muse of wisdom and whispers knowledge into the ears of rulers, enabling them to make the best decisions.
We work tirelessly to develop Orpheus, as we are well aware that it is the technological heart that drives Calliope.
At the product level, the challenge was also very important: to differentiate ourselves from the myriad of Data Agents (most of them unsuccessful) that, in the light of generative AI, had populated everything from internal to consulting projects, generally with very unsatisfactory results. We wanted not only to build a product that worked satisfactorily but also one that provided much more business value than traditional BI tools such as PowerBI, Tableau, or Looker.
Something very important to me was that Calliope's user experience was unmatched in the field of business intelligence. We had to empower those who really need business intelligence to make decisions, the managers, to be able to speak directly in their language with Calliope and not only obtain valuable business analysis from any question, but also parallel insights, suggestions for related questions, and relevant data visualizations. It was also crucial that they could build their own dashboards in minutes using their own language, without intermediaries and without complications. And convert those dashboards into automated reports that would reach them at their convenience.
When we launched the first production version of Calliope last week, after months of working behind the scenes with several major client pilots, we felt that the journey we had begun together in the depths of our minds was beginning to take shape before our eyes and that we could finally start showing it to the world.
Those of us who are parents know the magic and responsibility that come together in our children, whom we help shape as much as they shape us.
We know that this is the beginning of a journey that we want you to embark on with us in the exciting world of AI-driven Business Intelligence, or as I like to call it, Decision Intelligence. Our journey will only make sense if we help you make:
Better decisions. Faster.
We are at your disposal to listen to your needs and show you Calliope at:
https://www.calliope.so/es/contact
