Budgeting/planning.

• Position: TechnologyTOOLS - Adaptive Planning Inc. introduces hosted application

Adaptive Planning Inc. has brought out what it calls an alternative to spreadsheet-based budgeting, planning, forecasting and reporting: a new hosted solution. Targeted at the mid-market, Adaptive Planning "combines a flexible, easy-to-use, spreadsheet-style interface with a hosted, easy-to-deploy application framework that is affordable, quick to implement and offers a low total cost of ownership," the Mountain View, Calif., company said in an announcement.

Adaptive Planning claims to be the first provider of a hosted application that includes the powerful budgeting, planning, forecasting and reporting capabilities companies want, without additional IT requirements or lengthy implementation projects.

"As a former CFO, I am all too familiar with the limitations of spreadsheets--the fact that they are error-prone, time-consuming to manage and consolidate and don't easily adapt to a company's changing business needs," said Robert S. Hull, CEO and founder of Adaptive Planning. He calls the new product "a powerful, affordable, easy-to-use and easy-to-implement solution that allows financial executives to spend more time understanding their business and less time manipulating spreadsheets."

Adaptive Planning has a...