Brio Technology was a San Francisco Bay area software company cofounded in 1984 by Yorgen Edholm and Katherine Glassey.
[4] The next year, Brio released DataPivot, an innovative program designed to allow regular or sequenced data to be totaled automatically.
Brio gained a patent for the idea behind DataPivot ("Cross Tab Analysis and Reporting Method") in 1999.
[6] SQRiBE was a small company in Palo Alto, CA with reporting (SQR) and a new portal product (ReportMart).
Although the combined company did reach a record high of revenues in the year 2000 of $150 million (annualized), financial problems were looming.
Brio hired Craig D. Brennan, a former SVP of Global CRM at Oracle, as its new CEO January 1, 2001.
Brennan brought in a new executive team in his first six months and together they came up with a new vision for the company focused on Brio 8, their first integrated Business Intelligence Suite, with a complete redesign from mainframe and client-server to a web-based "zero footprint" architecture.
Beginning in 2002, the company focused on installing business processes across all functions, dedicated most of its development resources to Brio 8, and managed new maintenance requirements for its most important customers.
In 2003, the executive team, working with the board, determined that the Business Intelligence market was going to consolidate and it made sense for the company to consider being acquired.