Seagate Software announced the availability of Seagate Info 7, an integrated suite of Business Intelligence tools that enables users - from individuals, to tens of thousands of people - to analyse and reliably share information across the enterprise.
Formerly known as Seagate Crystal Info, Seagate Info 7 is the fourth generation edition based on experience and customer feedback. Seagate Software recognised a new direction for Business Intelligence and developed Enterprise Information Management (EIM) solutions, which address the complex business problem of bringing together people and information for competitive advantage.
It integrates a complete suite of BI tools that are easy to deploy for a range of information needs and user skills, and it uses Windows and Web information access technologies to ensure that the right people get the right information to do their jobs.
"Traditional BI tools were never designed for widespread deployment, and the increasing demand for shared information across the enterprise emphasises their limitations. Seagate Software`s EIM solution embraces this "BI suite" concept and extends it with a reliable delivery infrastructure," says Vivek Thomas, regional manager for Middle East and Africa at Seagate Software Information Management Group (IMG). "According to the Gartner Group, enterprise Business Intelligence "suites" that enable all users across an organisation to share information will be the primary technology used to address the needs of everyone throughout the enterprise by the year 2000.
"The changing enterprise is having a profound impact on the BI market. Seagate Software is emerging in the areas of product vision, enterprise deployments, and developing solutions designed to give everyone throughout the enterprise access to decision-making information," he says. The product incorporates a set of data access and analysis components including report design, ad hoc query, advanced SQL editing, OLAP cube building, multidimensional analysis, report viewers, schedulers, and processing servers. Seagate Info 7 also integrates with the power of Seagate Holos for complex, business specific application development, data mining, and statistical analysis.
"Delivering information across an organisation means recognising the varying needs and system requirements of all information producers and consumers. Seagate Info 7 builds on its enterprise reporting architecture and provides Business Intelligence tools to allow any user to easily create information and publish it automatically for use by all other people on the system," says Thomas.
This collaborative access to information enables an organisation to rise above the data collection challenge, focus on solving business problems, and become more responsive to changing information. A consistent server-side architecture is accessed by both Windows and Web client tools, which minimises administration and maximises flexibility.
Seagate Info 7 also provides a new end-user focused report and ad hoc query design tool with identical functionality via the Web or Windows. Unlike historical approaches to ad hoc query, this component is built around a common data format and is integrated into the information sharing architecture. Any user can create a new query or report and publish it to the Seagate Info environment, where others may access it or use it as a template to avoid duplicated effort. It is viewed, edited and analysed using all of the same client tools, including a new client interface integrated with Microsoft Outlook.
"We selected Seagate Info for our enterprise information delivery system in order to quickly develop and deploy business applications via the Web, replace our various reporting technologies with a single technical architecture, and reduce our hardware/network infrastructure costs through a common utility," said Paul Urban, vice president, Enterprise and Internet Reporting at Bankers Trust.
"Seagate Info`s infrastructure for report creation, and broad-scale deployment is designed to meet our enterprise requirement to scale to several thousand desktops with minimal manual processing or network strain. The addition of monitoring tools for proactive management of the production environment will ensure optimum performance is achieved and maintained."
Seagate Info 7 is easy to deploy to 10 users in a department, yet flexible enough to support the largest enterprise deployments. Seagate Info 7 is built on a multi-tier architecture that provides a reliable and fault-tolerant foundation for managing continuously increasing users, objects, data, and transactions.
An intelligent middle tier manages transaction traffic, load balances, and provides security through a sophisticated repository. It is supported by powerful processing servers on UNIX and NT, and new in version 7, integrated system monitoring and management through Microsoft Management Console (MMC) and Seagate Manage Exec, as well as backup and archiving through Seagate Software`s technology including Seagate BackUp Exec.
The new version offers simpler pricing, more tools with the basic licence, and more flexibility. User licencing enables customers to buy exactly what they need and licences are purchased for each named user accessing the Seagate Info system.
The licence allows users to access, schedule, and analyse reports, queries and cubes; it also allows users to design and edit ad hoc queries and reports with the new Seagate Query component. For power users, the Designer Module is an add-on that provides the sophisticated design capabilities for reports, OLAP cubes, and meta data layers. Enterprise licencing entitles customers to deploy the Seagate Info back end with a set number of concurrent access licenses. This flexible and open form of licencing makes it easier for customers to distribute information and tools to large numbers of users-both internally and by special arrangement, to business partners through an extranet.
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