McLeod releases BI Framework

McLeod Software has released two new tools to enhance its business intelligence (BI) offerings, reports Refrigerated Transporter.

The tools help ensure the correct data is gathered by either asking a series of questions to ensure the validity of the reporting data, or the use of Data Marts (data stored in report-ready format) which enables the creation of relevant reports customised to business requirements.

McLeod Business Intelligence Framework is an open, scalable, industrial-strength framework that enables customers to use existing tools to develop and produce custom business reports.

Knowledge process outsourcing firm Integreon has purchased Grail Research, a market intelligence and strategic research company, says MrWeb.

Grail Research provides insights to technology, consumer products and life sciences firms, helping them to release products, build brands, assess new opportunities, evaluate partnership deals and address competitive threats.

“This acquisition accelerates the expansion of our business intelligence, research and analytics business with high-end, custom market research,” explained Integreon CEO Liam Brown. 'With the addition of Grail's capabilities, we can meet the most demanding global research requirements of our clients, and expand our global delivery and service capability to SA and China, which are strategic markets for Integreon.”

The Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in California is using Smart i Appliance to improve its ability to use data from IBM's System i for business intelligence, reports Integration Development News.

The Smart i Appliance is a collaboration among IBM, Key Information Systems, Talend and Systech Solutions.

“Our executives need to access up-to-date, reliable data from our systems to be able to make key business decisions,” says Roxanne Reynolds-Lair, the institutes CIO. “The Smart i Appliance expedited our ETL processing, making it two to three times faster than before.”