Simba (formerly Simba Technologies Inc.) is a software company specializing in solutions for

ODBC In computing, Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a standard application programming interface (API) for accessing database management systems (DBMS). The designers of ODBC aimed to make it independent of database systems and operating systems. An ...

and

JDBC Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) is an application programming interface (API) for the Java (programming language), Java programming language which defines how a client may access a database. It is a Java-based data access technology used for Java ...

data drivers. Originally founded in 1991 as PageAhead Software in

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

, Simba co-developed the first standards-based ODBC driver with

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

. The company was acquired by Magnitude Software in 2016, and became part of insightsoftware, a

Raleigh Raleigh ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, second-most populous city in the state (after Charlotte, North Carolina, Charlotte) ...

–based enterprise software company, following insightsoftware’s acquisition of Magnitude in November 2021. Simba now operates as the data connectivity division of insightsoftware, with continued engineering and business operations based in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

and the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

Products

Simba provides data connectivity solutions, offering software development kits (SDKs) and prebuilt drivers that enable data access across applications and platforms. Its flagship offering, the SimbaEngine X SDK, allows developers to build custom ODBC and JDBC drivers for a wide variety of data sources, including relational databases, cloud platforms, and big data systems. Simba drivers are embedded in many business intelligence and analytics platforms, including Microsoft Power BI,

Tableau Tableau (French for 'little table' literally, also used to mean 'picture'; : tableaux or, rarely, tableaus) may refer to: Arts * ''Tableau'', a series of four paintings by Piet Mondrian titled '' Tableau I'' through to ''Tableau IV'' * '' Tableau ...

, Google BigQuery,

Amazon Redshift Amazon Redshift is a data warehouse product which forms part of the larger cloud-computing platform Amazon Web Services. It is built on top of technology from the massive parallel processing (MPP) data warehouse company ParAccel (later acqui ...

, Databricks, and

Snowflake A snowflake is a single ice crystal that is large enough to fall through the Earth's atmosphere as snow.Knight, C.; Knight, N. (1973). Snow crystals. Scientific American, vol. 228, no. 1, pp. 100–107.Hobbs, P.V. 1974. Ice Physics. Oxford: C ...

. The technology also supports Logi Symphony, an embedded analytics platform from insightsoftware. Simba has a history of early innovation, including releasing the first

driver for

Apache Hive Apache Hive is a data warehouse software project. It is built on top of Apache Hadoop for providing data query and analysis. Hive gives an SQL-like Interface (computing), interface to query data stored in various databases and file systems that i ...

in 2012, which enabled SQL-based access to

Hadoop Apache Hadoop () is a collection of Open-source software, open-source software utilities for reliable, scalable, distributed computing. It provides a software framework for Clustered file system, distributed storage and processing of big data usin ...

environments. Today, Simba develops and maintains drivers for both cloud-native and on-premises systems.

Services

Simba offers prebuilt ODBC and JDBC drivers that enable access to a wide variety of data sources, including relational databases, cloud platforms, and big data systems. In addition to its commercial driver portfolio, Simba provides integration and driver development services with a focus on original equipment manufacturer (OEM) solutions. The company develops custom and white-labeled drivers for software vendors and enterprise applications, and also performs certification and compatibility testing to ensure compliance with analytics and data processing tools. Supported platforms include

Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet editor developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows, Windows, macOS, Android (operating system), Android, iOS and iPadOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a ...

, and other business intelligence environments.

History

Simba was founded in 1991 under the name PageAhead Software, with offices in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Seattle, Washington. In 1992, the company collaborated with

to co-develop the first standards-based

driver, known as Simba.DLL, which was included in

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

3.1. The company was renamed Simba Technologies in 1995 and began focusing on data connectivity toolkits and driver development. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Simba expanded its offerings to include toolkits for

, OLE DB, and XMLA, and collaborated with companies such as

Oracle An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Descript ...

, SAP, and Attachmate on data access technologies. In 2012, Simba developed one of the first ODBC drivers for

, enabling SQL-based access to

data sources. Simba was acquired by Magnitude Software in 2016, and became part of insightsoftware in 2021 following its acquisition of Magnitude. Today, Simba operates as the data connectivity division of insightsoftware, supporting a wide range of platforms in analytics, business intelligence, and data engineering. In 1993, the company was the first to introduce an ODBC Software Development Kit SDK to build custom ODBC drivers allowing users to use standard-compliant Business Intelligence BI applications and platforms, such as PowerBI,

, Alteryx and SAP BusinessObjects for analysis and reporting. In 2012 Simba Technologies developed an ODBC driver for

/ Hive

Big Data Big data primarily refers to data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data processing, data-processing application software, software. Data with many entries (rows) offer greater statistical power, while data with ...

sources. The ODBC 3.52 driver enables users to directly access and analyse Big Data sources, using the BI tool of their choice.

Timeline

* 1991 – PageAhead Software is founded in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Seattle, Washington. * 1992 – Microsoft partners with PageAhead to develop Simba ODBC. * 1993 – Microsoft includes Simba technology in Windows 3.1. * 1995 – PageAhead Software changes its name to Simba Technologies. * 2012 – Simba releases the first ODBC driver for Apache Hive. * 2016 – Magnitude Software acquires Simba Technologies. * 2019 – SimbaEngine X SDK receives performance improvements and extended support for cloud-native platforms, including Snowflake and Google BigQuery. * 2020 – Simba positioned as the enterprise data connectivity layer within Magnitude’s analytics and ERP product ecosystem. * 2021 – insightsoftware acquires Magnitude Software, integrating Simba into its portfolio. * 2024 – insightsoftware releases Simba Workday Drivers for real-time data integration with Workday.

References

{{reflist Software companies of Canada Companies based in Vancouver