Question: If I want to run business reports that are better than what Excel and Access does, where can I go? 

I have seen Google charts API, and some of the things like the time series chart with events really appealed to me. I have seen Adobe AIR and Flex, that is something really strong. Amount of coding needed seems to be quite a lot too. 

Needs:  

Fast live reports  

Good graphic tools for visualization  

Ability to drill down to specifics  

Online front end (Minimize sending chunky reports through emails) 

Yes, I am almost asking for a mini-Bloomberg terminal, or something like Business Objects by SAP. 

Cost wise: hopefully not too much. Not looking into a 5 man IT support team, hopefully everything can be done by 1 guy. 

About me:
I have strong background in using Excel for Business Analytics, reports, forms, automated population of fields, statistical studies, forecasting, scenario and model building, and optimization. But that's about it. I am willing to learn, but hopefully it would be a strong platform that withstands the ages.

Answer: 
I use Jasper and JFreeChart for Business Analytics

<http://jasperforge.org/projects/>

<http://www.jfree.org/jfreechart/samples.html>

From the Website 

**JasperReport** 
The world's most powerful and widely used embeddable Java reporting library for report designers and developers. JasperReports Professional includes iReport, the most popular graphical design tool for JasperReports

**iReport** The heart of the JasperReports interface is iReport the visual report designer specifically designed for JasperReports. iReport gives administrators and report designers total control over the contents as well as the look and feel of every report 

**JasperServer**
An interactive, ad hoc, and managed report and dashboard server for end-users; built on a secure and robust Business Intelligence platform

**JasperAnalysis**
A relational OLAP server with an easy-to-use web-based user interface and integration with Microsoft Excel. JasperAnalysis Professional (includes the Jaspersoft ODBO Connect utility) 

**JasperETL**
Graphically design, schedule, and execute data extract transform and load (ETL) operations for business intelligence projects, such as operational data stores (ODS), data marts, and data warehouses
Ok, i think i got another solution:

<http://www.tableausoftware.com/>

This is paid, but it looks pretty marvelous really.