Business Objects, the world`s leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced the availability of Crystal Reports XI, the industry standard in reporting from Business Objects. Crystal Reports XI enables developers and other IT professionals to design, manage and deliver reports via the Web, as well as embed reporting in enterprise applications.
Report authors are often weighed down with hand-coding reports and working through orders for customised reports. Crystal Reports XI delivers significant new features that will benefit organisations of all sizes with easier report design, simplified report maintenance, expanded data access and complete integration with the BusinessObjects XI platform.
"Crystal Reports is the de facto industry standard in enterprise reporting and IT professionals count on Business Objects to provide them with continued innovation," said Bernard Liautaud, chairman and CEO of Business Objects.
"Reporting is critical to running today`s successful businesses. We are listening to our customers and have filled Crystal Reports XI with new features that take reporting to the next level. Now report authors will be able to easily keep up with the reporting demands of their organisations and give employees secure, independent access to information they need to run their business effectively."
"Our experience with Crystal Reports XI has been very positive in terms of large-scale report publication," said Paul Zanis, director of business information systems at Simon & Schuster. "The efficiencies are apparent immediately and will enable us to provide everyone in the organisation with complex information contained in highly formatted reports. With Crystal Reports XI, we can securely deliver the most requested pieces of information to end-users both inside and outside Simon & Schuster."
Customers and partners worldwide have praised the new version of Crystal Reports. To read more about their support for this release, please click here and here.
New features increase flexibility, decrease workload for report authors
Developers and other IT professionals need to access data quickly, easily embed reporting functionality into enterprise applications, and manage the formatting and delivery of information over the Web. Crystal Reports XI provides the following new features to answer these demands:
* Extended leadership in data access and language support: Crystal Reports XI provides developers with enhanced data drivers that make it easy to access virtually all data sources. In addition to our long-standing commitment to .NET developers, this new release offers significant new functionality to Java developers.
* Advanced prompting for end-user report customisation: Rather than building hundreds of individual reports, developers can now distribute report templates with drop down menus (also known as dynamic and cascading prompts) that enable business users to customise reports. Crystal Reports XI also delivers reports to business users in a new RTF format so they can easily modify reports rather than going through the IT department.
* Simplified report design: Crystal Reports XI gives developers intuitive design tools to create reports. For example, now developers can preview their reports in HTML before they are published to the Web and distributed across the organisation. Additionally, the new version of Crystal Reports automatically evaluates data within the report and gives developers the most appropriate charting options for viewing that type of data.
* New report management workbench: The new version of Crystal Reports gives developers a virtual workbench on which they can organise reports as well as decide how to schedule, manage, distribute and secure access to reports.
"Developers will applaud the dynamic pick list capability that will reduce report maintenance efforts," said Cindi Howson, independent consultant for Analytic Solutions Know-How. "Crystal has long had some of the best native data connectivity of any reporting tool. The addition of XML and the Business Objects universe as data sources extends those capabilities."
Availability and pricing
All versions of Crystal Reports XI are currently available in English, and all major languages will be generally available during the first half of 2005. More information, including pricing, can be found at www.businessobjects.com.
Share
Business Objects is the world`s leading business intelligence (BI) software company. With more than 29 000 customers worldwide, including over 80% of the Fortune 500, Business Objects helps organisations gain better insight into their business, improve decision-making, and optimise enterprise performance. The company`s business intelligence platform, BusinessObjects XI, offers the BI industry`s most advanced and complete platform for reporting, query and analysis, performance management and data integration.
BusinessObjects XI includes Crystal Reports, the industry standard for enterprise reporting. Business Objects has also built the industry`s strongest and most diverse partner community, with more than 3 000 partners worldwide. In addition, the company offers consulting and education services to help customers effectively deploy their business intelligence projects.
Business Objects has dual headquarters in San Jose, California, and Paris, France. The company`s stock is traded on both the Nasdaq (BOBJ) and Euronext Paris (ISIN: FR0004026250 - BOB) stock exchanges. More information about Business Objects can be found at www.businessobjects.com.