Intelligent extranets on cards as BI meets Web

Business intelligence (BI) vendor Business Objects has unveiled a Web services offering which will allow companies to connect more easily with more partners, give them better mechanisms for exchanging information over the Internet, and provide a better infrastructure for using that information.

The application programming interface (API), known as the Web Services SDK (Software Development Kit), allows developers to build second-generation business intelligence extranets that link companies with their business partners and value chains by integrating data from disparate information sources through an easy-to-use portal interface.

These second-generation BI extranets will enhance the reach and integration of today`s extranets by linking more companies in the value chain and providing a better integration of the information shared by each company.

With BI Web services, companies have greater access to information and can leverage this information more effectively.

Organisations will immediately have a clearer view of their sales channels and a better picture of their customer needs, eventually improving efficiencies along the entire supply chain by eliminating the problems of delayed deliveries and excess inventory buildup that exist in collaborative business today. By removing these problems, companies can reduce costs and increase customer satisfaction.

"Today`s businesses are attempting to work together to form a collaborative business, but with the current technology limitations each company in the extended enterprise is operating with only partial information, usually from internal systems or a small number of key partners," said Gary Lawrence, country manager at Business Objects SA.

"Many companies have started solving this with BI extranets, using business intelligence outside the organisation to share information with customers, suppliers and partners. BI extranets lead to increased customer satisfaction, new revenue opportunities and decreased costs."

"Web services is the future of business intelligence for global enterprise analysis and inter-company collaboration," said Wayne Eckerson, director of education and research at the US-based Data Warehousing Institute. "Business Objects continues to demonstrate leadership in advancing business intelligence capabilities that will become mainstream in the near future."

Web services provide a standards-based distributed application development environment. This means that companies can build an intranet, or internal, application, that includes parts of an extranet, or external, application, without requiring the end-users to switch back and forth between the different applications. For example, using BI Web services, an appliance manufacturer could compare orders from its SAP system and track shipments from its delivery partner, all from within the corporate portal, without having to log on to separate information sites.

BI Web services also enables companies to integrate information from multiple extranet applications. Web services exchanges information as extensible markup language (XML), which makes it easy for a user to integrate information coming from multiple extranets. In the past, users had to log in to each extranet and somehow, often manually, assemble information from each separate extranet in one place. With BI Web services, a company will be able to combine information from multiple suppliers` BI extranets and perform local analysis to compare, for example, product pricing and inventory levels.