Integrated Enterprise Report and Broadcast Server to Provide Personalized Information Broadcasting to Pager, Phone, Email, and Other Devices
Business Objects, the world`s leading provider of integrated enterprise decision support tools, today announced BusinessObjects Broadcast Server, an integrated reporting and broadcasting server. Broadcast Server enables customers to provide personal information broadcasting via email, pager, and fax to their users throughout the enterprise.
Broadcast Server is a robust, multi-tier server that enables non-technical users to quickly and easily publish, push, and broadcast pre-built or ad hoc reports on corporate data. Broadcast Server provides users with the following three key advantages: enterprise scaleability, personal information broadcasting, and low total cost of ownership.
Enterprise scaleability
Broadcast Server scales to meet the needs of users across the enterprise. With a sophisticated architecture first developed in WebIntelligence, the thin-client DSS tool from Business Objects, Broadcast Server relies on an advanced distributed component architecture. This architecture is built on a CORBA-compliant object request broker (ORB) and provides the following features:
- Scaleability. Broadcast Server enables multiple instances of each component to be run on separate machines. Because of this flexible distributed architecture, supplemental machines can be added to the system on demand to meet the needs of additional users. This allows for virtually unlimited scaleability for enterprise deployments.
- Load balancing. Broadcast Server includes a dispatcher component that routes requests to available servers on the network. Therefore, demand is spread among different servers, providing users with consistent performance and response time.
- Automatic failover. Should one of the servers running a Broadcast Server component become unavailable, the system will route tasks to surviving servers. This ensures that users will have a consistently available system, a key requirement for today`s increasingly mission-critical decision support applications.
- Self healing. If an instance of a Broadcast Server component fails for any reason, Broadcast Server will automatically restart the failed instance. This provides a "self healing" environment that minimizes information technology (IT) administration and ensures continuous system availability.
Personal Information Broadcasting
Broadcast Server can trigger time-based, regularly scheduled reports. Using intelligent agents Broadcast Server can automatically trigger reports and natural language messages based on unusual business events or conditions.
For example, an intelligent agent would detect that, in a Manhattan Beach branch of a national automobile parts distributor, the month-to-date sales of air filters have fallen 25% compared to the same period last year. Broadcast Server could send a short message to the appropriate sales representative`s pager, enabling him to take immediate corrective action, and could also send a multi-page fax to his home office giving a detailed sales history for the store. Broadcast Server could also send an analysis-ready report via email to a marketing analyst in New York. This report could show quarter-to-date sales and open orders for all stores nationwide. Using online analytical processing (OLAP) capabilities such as drill down and slice and dice - or even desktop data mining technology - the analyst could determine if the Manhattan Beach results represent an isolated incident or if they are a leading indicator of a more serious underlying issue.
Broadcast Server provides users with numerous options for distributing corporate information to other users in their enterprise, including:
- Report bursting. With Broadcast Server, users can provide mass customization of standard reports. Broadcast Server can distribute a single report to many users across the enterprise and "burst" it so that users automatically see just the information they are authorized to receive based on their individual or group security profile. This saves administrators from creating and maintaining a separate report for every individual customer or supplier, each of whom needs the same report format but should see their specific information only.
- Push. Using Microsoft Channels, and in accordance with channel definition format (CDF) standard, Broadcast Server enables customers to push reports out to users` active desktops or internet browsers. This provides a system-directed way for sharing reports via a corporate intranet or externally to partners, suppliers, and customers via an extranet.
- Report publishing. Broadcast Server can post reports to BusinessObjects and WebIntelligence users, to a corporate intranet, and to the world wide web, thus enabling customers to share information with other users across the enterprise.
- Broadcasting to devices. Broadcast Server can broadcast information to business users via a variety of mechanisms including email, fax, and pager.
Low total cost of ownership
Broadcast Server has been designed to meet needs of large-scale intra-enterprise and extra-enterprise deployments. Broadcast Server provides the lowest cost of ownership with:
Access from both thin and full clients. Both thin- and full-client users can access Broadcast Server, meaning that only a single back end environment is required for both types of users.
- A single infrastructure. Broadcast Server leverages the Business Objects decision support infrastructure, including the BusinessObjects repository, security system, and semantic layer. Because this infrastructure is used by both BusinessObjects and WebIntelligence, Business Objects can provide customers with a single infrastructure to support both classical decision support for both full and thin clients as well as personal information broadcasting to a wide number of consumer devices.
- A single administration toolset. Because Broadcast Server uses the same infrastructure as all other Business Objects products, the entire decision support environment may be managed with a single toolset for setup, security, and operations.
Advanced Event Notification and Response
In addition, through a technology partnership announced today with CuraSoft, Broadcast Server can provide advanced event notification and response services for the enterprise. [Editors note: please see related press release dated September 29, 1998.]
"Broadcast Server provides organizations with an easy way of reaching more users in the enterprise, in the supply chain via the extranet, and beyond into consumer applications," said Dave Kellogg, vice president of corporate marketing at Business Objects.
"As the leader in enterprise DSS, we believe that information broadcasting is a key requirement for decision support applications in both traditional deployments and in today`s extended enterprise. Broadcast Server rounds out the Business Objects product family, enabling us to provide our customers with the most complete and integrated DSS solution. "
Availability
Broadcast Server is expected to enter beta in October 1998. Broadcast Server is a replacement product for the existing BusinessObjects Document Agent Server*. Pricing will be announced at availability.
Editors Note
About Business Objects
Business Objects is the world`s leading provider of integrated enterprise decision support tools. Business Objects products provide non-technical business users with access to information stored in data warehouses, data marts, and packaged business applications. Business Objects provides a complete suite of decision support tools including query, reporting, online analytical processing, data mining, and DSS administration for both client/server and internet environments. Business Objects has sold more than 870,000 licenses to over 6,700 organizations in more than 60 countries worldwide.
Business Objects is distributed by Usko Software and may be reached by phone at (011) 807-0777 or on the world wide web at http://www.businessobjects.com. The Company`s stock is publicly traded under the ticker symbol BOBJY.
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