A small startup, Adaptive Planning, has taken the next step in offering alternative application technology by combining on demand and open source to build business intelligence-based performance management software. The question is, now that the company has built it, will users come?

The goal for Adaptive Planning is to "dramatically expand" its base of users who will move forward from free, hosted versions of its software to paid subscriptions, according to William Soward, the company's president and CEO. To do that, the company announced <A HREF="http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2112101,00.asp?kc=EWEAUEMNL041007EOAD">a free version of its Express Edition On-Demand software.</A>