关于Crystal Ball 的现状，本站曾经说过其被Oracle收购了，但是不是很详细，今天从Oracle官方网站看到说明Crystal Ball 历史的文字，如下：
Crystal Ball was originally introduced in 1986 by Decisioneering Inc. to integrate Monte Carlo techniques into spreadsheets and systems to more accurately forecast risk and variance.
1998 - Decisioneering introduced Crystal Ball Professional Edition, the first desktop software suite to combine the technologies of Monte Carlo simulation and global optimization. Crystal Ball Pro was hailed as a breakthrough product and received several awards and nominations.
June 2004 - Decisioneering launched Crystal Ball Premium Edition, combining time-series forecasting, Monte Carlo simulation, optimization and real options analysis.
March 2007 - Decisioneering was acquired by Hyperion to add predictive capabilities to its business intelligence suite that uses Microsoft Excel as its primary interface.
July 2007 - Oracle Corporation acquired Hyperion including Decisioneering, in order to offer a best-of-breed business intelligence product family that will work with heterogeneous information from both Oracle and non-Oracle sources.
从上面的文字可以看出，Crystal Ball 并非被Oracle直接收购的，而是先被Hyperion 公司(该公司提供商业智能解决方案)收购，然后Hyperion 被Oracle收购，所以Crystal Ball 现在是ORACLE麾下的一款产品。这也就可以解释Oracle是做数据库的，为什么对决策软件感兴趣的问题？Oracle不只是提供数据库产品，更提供商业智能解决方案，Crystal Ball 所用到的蒙特卡洛模拟从一定程度上来说是一种智能决策方法。
