Local distributor of the BusinessObjects e-business intelligence tool set, USKO Software, has unveiled the product`s latest - and most powerful - version, BusinessObjects 5.0, to the South African market.
Announcing the product`s availability in South Africa, USKO Software`s Bruce Bond-Myatt said this month that BusinessObjects 5.0 represents a major advance for business intelligence, with significant enhancements to the user interface speeding up formatting and on-report analysis for users.
"New features for report broadcasting and financial reporting, together with enhancements in the areas of ease of use, (online analytical processing "OLAP" and application development), make this release a powerful solution for large-scale deployments, said Bond-Myatt.
He added that another significant benefit for BusinessObjects customers is that Version 5.0 has been designed with easy migration in mind, allowing customers to implement a smooth transition from the current BusinessObjects 4.1 to the new BusinessObjects 5.0.
BusinessObjects is the industry`s leading integrated query, reporting, and OLAP tool and the flagship product of Business Objects, widely regarded as the world`s leading provider of integrated e-business intelligence tools. BusinessObjects provides non-technical end users with the power to easily access, analyse, and share data stored in corporate data warehouses, data marts, and packaged applications.
Touching on the key differences - and customer benefits - of Version 4.1 over Version 5.0, Bond-Myatt noted that in the area of enterprise reporting, Version 5.0 includes new features such as enterprise report distribution, enterprise report building, and enterprise deployment.
With distribution, BusinessObjects InfoView, BusinessObjects 5.0 and WebIntelligence 2.5 users benefit from an enhanced, web-based report catalogue, which groups reports into categories searchable by key words. It also allows for report bursting, whereby reports can be sent once, via Broadcast Agent 5.0, to any number of users, using their security profile
Report formatting, too, has been enhanced, to the point where vertical tables can be created, making the formation of financial reports much quicker and easier. Another major development is the realm of conditional reporting, a feature that allows users to create reports that display different information based on the context of the report - for example, an invoice built to print a customised message for each invoice, based on a set of conditions.
In the area of enterprise deployment, the major development is the replacement of Document Agent Server 4.1 with Broadcast Agent, which is based on a distributed architecture and brings increased scaleability, load balancing and failover capabilities to the offerings.
"From a user point of view," noted Bond-Myatt, "the enhanced ease of use of the product will be particularly well-received, especially as improvements to Version 5.0 are based on feedback from users of Version 4.1. Reporting, in particular, is now so much easier thanks to features such as report styles, strengthened charting, and print-to-fit; while the enhancement of drag-and-drop, drill-through and dimension bar capabilities has streamlined analysis, as well as the addition of on-report calculation, and on-report grouping," said Bond-Myatt.
BusinessObjects 5.0 also supports Microsoft OLAP Services, SAP Business Information Warehouse, and access to a wide variety of multidimensional and relational databases, giving users access to virtually any source of data.
Finally, Bond-Myatt added that BusinessObjects 5.0 continues the company`s commitment to providing the best offering for developers, with: integrated development environments that allow developers to customise tools for specific categories of users; components that allow developers to integrate elements of Business Intelligence (BI) technology into their own applications, at reasonable cost; and APIs that open the BI tools and technologies to access from third party environments, e.g. SAP.
With Version 5.0, BusinessObjects also offers a comprehensive BI platform by introducing Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), which enables BusinessObjects to be customised. VBA replaces the existing ReportScript 4.1 language with a world-class integrated development environment, giving BusinessObjects unprecedented customisation, extensibility and integration capabilities.
"With BusinessObjects 5.0, we believe we now have a product that allows for the empowerment of entire organisations. For BusinessObjects 5.0 truly empowers all employees, from the most senior to the junior, with timely business intelligence reports that will, ultimately, allow organisations to better serve their customers - and so ensure their survival in an increasingly competitive world," concluded Bond-Myatt.
Share
