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	<title>Business Intelligence Journal</title>
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	<link>http://www.businessintel.org</link>
	<description>Business intelligence, data warehousing and analytics news and resources</description>
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		<title>Jaspersoft Receives Industry Recognition for Business Intelligence</title>
		<link>http://www.businessintel.org/2011/03/15/jaspersoft-receives-industry-recognition-for-business-intelligence/</link>
		<comments>http://www.businessintel.org/2011/03/15/jaspersoft-receives-industry-recognition-for-business-intelligence/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Mar 2011 11:53:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>BI Editor</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[JasperSoft]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.businessintel.org/?p=87</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Gartner named Jaspersoft to its 2010 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms. Inclusion in the 2010 Gartner Magic Quadrant was decided by Gartner analysts who evaluated Jaspersoft Enterprise Edition version 3.7. “We believe inclusion in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for BI Platforms is a testament to the breadth and scope of our open source BI solutions,” [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Gartner named Jaspersoft to its 2010 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms. Inclusion in the 2010 Gartner Magic Quadrant was decided by Gartner analysts who evaluated Jaspersoft Enterprise Edition version 3.7.</p>
<p>“We believe inclusion in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for BI Platforms is a testament to the breadth and scope of our open source BI solutions,” said Brian Gentile, Jaspersoft CEO. “We are happy to receive recognition from such a respected analyst group. Expect Jaspersoft to continue producing award-winning, innovative technology.”<span id="more-87"></span></p>
<p>Since being named to the Gartner Magic Quadrant, Jaspersoft has revamped its award-winning suite with the release of Jaspersoft 4. This new suite version features a completely web-based architecture and a customizable GUI that makes embedding reports easier for BI builders – developers, IT or business managers tasked with creating customized analytics and reporting solutions to embed within web applications. Jaspersoft 4 also natively connects with Big Data systems such as Hadoop, NoSQL and MPP analytic databases, making it the first and only native reporting offering for any Big Data system.</p>
<p>Gartner&#8217;s Magic Quadrant evaluates vendors on their completeness of vision and their ability to execute. Overall, Gartner Magic Quadrants are a culmination of research in a specific market, giving a wide-angle view of the relative positions of the market’s competitors. By applying a graphical treatment and a uniform set of evaluation criteria, Gartner Magic Quadrants quickly help IT professionals digest how well technology providers are executing against their stated vision. </p>
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		<title>Clarity FSR Repackaged to Address Customer Demand</title>
		<link>http://www.businessintel.org/2011/03/15/clarity-fsr-repackaged-to-address-customer-demand/</link>
		<comments>http://www.businessintel.org/2011/03/15/clarity-fsr-repackaged-to-address-customer-demand/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Mar 2011 11:52:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>BI Editor</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Clarity]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.businessintel.org/?p=85</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Effective April 1, 2011, Clarity will be altering the packaging of Clarity FSR into two separate offerings, Clarity FSR for Internal Reporting and Clarity FSR for External Reporting, in order to better align with how customers are automating and managing their formal reporting processes. With Clarity FSR, organizations can easily combine financial data, operational details, [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Effective April 1, 2011, Clarity will be altering the packaging of Clarity FSR into two separate offerings, Clarity FSR for Internal Reporting and Clarity FSR for External Reporting, in order to better align with how customers are automating and managing their formal reporting processes. With Clarity FSR, organizations can easily combine financial data, operational details, commentary, notes, charts and pictures – virtually an unlimited assortment of content – into a single document. By integrating all of these information resources, customers are able to reduce the possibility of errors, while quickly and easily producing documents for external filing as well as for internal management reporting.<span id="more-85"></span></p>
<p>&#8220;As customers face more demands for both high-value internal (e.g., board books) and external reports (e.g., regulatory financial statement disclosures) rich in both performance data and accompanying text in footnotes and related discussion and analysis, companies want to have a single technology platform for managing these auditable processes with highly specialized workflows and parallel collaboration under tight time deadlines, but retain flexibility to implement in phases,” said Mark Nashman, president &#038; CTO, Clarity Systems. “With today&#8217;s announcement Clarity continues to be the only company that provides a full featured, comprehensive solution for formal reporting with different packages that match customer deployment priorities or requirements.”</p>
<p>Since its release over four years ago, over 300 companies have selected Clarity FSR including brand-names such as British Airways, Equitable Trust, Oglethorpe Power and Meridian Bioscience. By leveraging functionality such as integrated XBRL tagging, collaborative report-building, a tight audit trail and multiple output formats, Clarity FSR customers are improving efficiency while simultaneously reducing risk in their reporting processes. </p>
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		<title>MicroStrategy Delivers High Performance for Virtualized Environment Operations</title>
		<link>http://www.businessintel.org/2011/03/15/microstrategy-delivers-high-performance-for-virtualized-environment-operations/</link>
		<comments>http://www.businessintel.org/2011/03/15/microstrategy-delivers-high-performance-for-virtualized-environment-operations/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Mar 2011 11:49:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>BI Editor</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[MicroStrategy]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.businessintel.org/?p=83</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In high performance tests of MicroStrategy 9.0.1 software, MicroStrategy Intelligence Server operating in a virtualized environment maintained average response times under 2 seconds with minimal impact to system throughput. In MicroStrategy’s High Performance and Scalability lab tests, an 8-CPU configuration of MicroStrategy Intelligence Server delivered a power rating of 117 KiloCycles, or 117,000 round-trip queries [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In high performance tests of MicroStrategy 9.0.1 software, MicroStrategy Intelligence Server operating in a virtualized environment maintained average response times under 2 seconds with minimal impact  to system throughput. In MicroStrategy’s High Performance and Scalability lab tests,  an 8-CPU configuration of MicroStrategy Intelligence Server delivered a  power rating of 117 KiloCycles, or 117,000 round-trip queries per hour,  while supporting more than 20,000 active users. Meanwhile, the same  configuration operating within a virtual machine (VM) delivered a power  rating of 95 KiloCycles supporting nearly 17,000 active users.  Furthermore, running in a VM environment did not affect the average  response times observed. Both systems delivered the same sub 2-second  average response time. Tests ran using MicroStrategy 9.0.1 installed on  commodity Intel-based hardware with a typical retail price of $24,320.<span id="more-83"></span></p>
<p><strong>Performance Test Details: </strong>The performance tests were  conducted using a standard test suite of 66 reports and 5 complex  dashboards that were designed to incorporate the full range of report  sizes and usage patterns consistent with enterprise BI applications.  MicroStrategy created the test suite based on the application profiles  of a dozen of its larger customers. The smallest report contained 1 row  and 60KB of data, while the largest report contained over 218,000 rows  and 23,602KB of data. The report complexity ranged from a single SQL  pass to 149 SQL passes to calculate the report results. The average  number of SQL passes for all reports in the test suite is 17. The  database used contained 1TB of data with a 7 billion row fact table  running on Oracle 11g. The tests operated against cached data as well as  large-scale in-memory databases, within the 144GB memory space used by  the MicroStrategy Intelligence Server in-memory cube technology.</p>
<p><strong>MicroStrategy’s High Performance Initiative: </strong>In April  2010, MicroStrategy announced the launch of its High Performance  Initiative, which includes a dedicated team of performance engineers and  a multi-million dollar state-of-the-art research laboratory equipped  with the latest database hardware, software, and performance testing  tools. MicroStrategy’s engineering team runs hundreds of performance  tests each week to benchmark software performance, further improve scale  and performance, and uncover configuration options and design  techniques to deliver higher performance for customers.</p>
<p>For nine consecutive years, MicroStrategy customers have  analyzed the largest data volumes as compared to customers of all other  BI products, according to The BI Survey, the largest independent survey  of the BI market. In the latest BI Survey, 37% of MicroStrategy  customers analyze over 1 terabyte vs. an average of 9.7% of BI customers  in general. MicroStrategy’s customers have some of the largest and most  sophisticated BI deployments in the industry. Here are several  examples:</p>
<p>Lowe&#8217;s Companies: The second-largest home improvement retailer  in the world, Lowe’s has more than 38 terabytes of data. Lowe’s has  multiple MicroStrategy-based BI applications that support over 16,000  employees across a variety of business functions, including applications  that allow store managers to access store reports and business metrics.  In addition, Lowe’s uses BI to help its suppliers and vendors monitor  the performance of their products.</p>
<p>METRO GROUP: One of the largest and most international retailing  companies, METRO GROUP uses MicroStrategy to analyze 80 terabytes of  transactional, product, market, and customer data. MicroStrategy  provides METRO GROUP with detailed insights to track business  performance, optimize product assortment, and make timely decisions to  enhance customer responsiveness. More than 15,000 employees across 30  countries use METRO GROUP’s BI applications.</p>
<p>“Our research consistently shows performance is a key concern  impacting BI implementations and organizations’ abilities to provide  faster and better decision making capabilities,” said David Menninger,  Ventana Research VP and Research Director.  “A disciplined approach in  measuring and improving performance such as MicroStrategy’s High  Performance Initiative provides real value to customers by addressing  one of the key obstacles to a successful BI implementation.”</p>
<p>“These test results confirm that MicroStrategy customers can  confidently deploy BI applications on VMware-based virtual machines and  achieve the hardware efficiencies, streamlined operations, and low cost  of operation available through virtualization,” said Sanju Bansal,  MicroStrategy’s Chief Operating Officer. “With VMware-based  virtualization solutions, MicroStrategy customers can operate their BI  environment in an internal cloud or private cloud configuration,  providing a wide range of processing flexibility.”</p>
<p>For more details, visit <a href="http://www.microstrategy.com/high-performance-bi/test-results/">http://www.microstrategy.com/high-performance-bi/test-results/</a>.</p>
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		<title>MicroStrategy Announces Latest Release MicroStrategy 9</title>
		<link>http://www.businessintel.org/2010/02/17/microstrategy-announces-latest-release-microstrategy-9/</link>
		<comments>http://www.businessintel.org/2010/02/17/microstrategy-announces-latest-release-microstrategy-9/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Feb 2010 02:18:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>BI Editor</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[MicroStrategy]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.businessintel.org/?p=79</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[MicroStrategy announced MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 at its annual user conference in Las Vegas. The latest software release from MicroStrategy was made generally available on January 22, 2010. Work Faster with New Performance Enhancements MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 includes significant enhancements that make business intelligence faster for BI users, even at the highest scale of [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>MicroStrategy announced  MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 at its annual user conference in Las Vegas.  The latest software release from MicroStrategy was made generally  available on January 22, 2010.</p>
<p><strong> <em> Work Faster with New Performance Enhancements</em></strong><em><br />
</em> MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 includes significant enhancements that make  business intelligence faster for BI users, even at the highest scale of  usage.  Organizations today are faced with rapidly expanding data  volumes and users, partners, and customers that need immediate data  access to work more efficiently.  MicroStrategy’s latest release can  meet these expanding demands with even higher performance than before.<span id="more-79"></span></p>
<p>“The demand for BI systems to provide faster data access is  scaling at a rapid pace and requires dramatically more efficient  technology,” said Mark Smith, CEO and EVP of Research at Ventana  Research. “MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 introduces enhanced performance and  power to deliver interactive analytics that are easily architected,  assembled, and deployed via dashboards and new forms of information  applications.”</p>
<p><strong>Faster Analysis</strong><br />
MicroStrategy’s new release includes substantial performance  improvements that enable business users to perform speed-of-thought  analytical investigations to answer key business questions in  significantly less time. Organizations can now provide information to  thousands of employees and business partners with reliably high  performance.</p>
<p>New data compression algorithms in MicroStrategy’s in-memory BI  technology enable MicroStrategy in-memory cubes to store up to three  times as much data as before and thus provide users with greater  analytical depth and breadth. Additionally, new in-memory query  algorithms can deliver answers twice as fast.  Testing at MicroStrategy  Labs and at customer sites show that MicroStrategy’s latest release of  in-memory technology can deliver up to four times as many reports as  before using the same customer servers, with an average response time of  less than two seconds.</p>
<p>“Organizations continue to be forced to do more with less – less  hardware, less people, less time,” said Cindi Howson, Founder of  BIScorecard. “MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 brings improvements to its  in-memory algorithms that improve both real-time query performance, load  times to OLAP caches, and memory required. While MicroStrategy 9 had  excellent data scalability, the latest enhancements allow for more user  scalability, even with complex analytic queries.”</p>
<p><strong>Faster Web Interactivity </strong><br />
MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 delivers higher performance for data  interactions.  Testing shows that business users will see up to two  times faster performance for their common data manipulations such as  sorting, filtering, slicing, and calculations; and faster navigation,  browsing, and searching.  The code improvements cause less data to be  transmitted, streamline processing, and use less Web server memory.  As a  result, MicroStrategy Web users gain these performance benefits upon  upgrading to MicroStrategy 9 Release 2.</p>
<p><strong> Faster Dashboards </strong><br />
MicroStrategy’s highly-visual, data-rich Dynamic Dashboards are  significantly faster in MicroStrategy 9 Release 2.  Dashboard users will  experience faster dashboard load times and faster dashboard  interactivity as a result of enhanced data compression algorithms and  new rendering algorithms.  Also, new on-demand data transfer technology  will load data into dashboards incrementally, as users need them rather  than all at once, enabling users to view the dashboard up to ten times  faster.</p>
<p><strong>Faster Data Loading </strong><br />
Creating in-memory cubes has been enhanced in MicroStrategy 9 Release 2  to allow organizations to incorporate more data into memory within  regular data loading windows.  New data loading algorithms in  MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 allow in-memory data to be loaded 30% faster  than before, allowing companies to load more data into memory during  their batch window.</p>
<p>“The enhanced performance in MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 will  allow us to distribute more information to our BI user population in  much less time,” said Joyce Vonada, Senior Vice President IT Business  Solutions, Lowe’s Companies.  “In our recent tests, we saw a 30%  performance improvement for both in-memory BI and our most frequently  used dashboard.”</p>
<p><strong><em> Deliver More BI with Less Effort</em></strong><em><br />
</em> As BI becomes more prevalent across enterprises, the workload for IT  personnel expands dramatically.  MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 offers  numerous enhancements that enable IT staff to deliver more information  with less effort, resulting in a lower total cost of ownership.</p>
<p><strong> Easier to Get Started</strong><br />
Companies can rapidly create new BI applications using MicroStrategy’s  Jump-Start Project. New in MicroStrategy 9 Release 2, the Jump-Start  Project includes more than 30 pre-designed reports and dashboards that  can be directly connected to existing databases, providing people with  immediate use of their new BI application. Suitable for any vertical or  horizontal application, these dashboards and reports can satisfy initial  reporting requirements and can be expanded as more reports and  dashboards are needed.</p>
<p><strong>Easier to Architect </strong><br />
The ability to quickly deploy new applications is critical, and  MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 offers improved capabilities that enable  organizations to get BI applications up and running in less time. The  new Graphical Architect features auto-modeling heuristics that make  project setup as much as eight times faster for new BI applications,  reducing the time to create BI applications from days or weeks to hours.</p>
<p>“In today’s increasingly competitive business environment the  ability to quickly deploy new applications is critical,” said Wayne  Eckerson, Director of TDWI Research at The Data Warehousing Institute.  “I am impressed with MicroStrategy&#8217;s auto-modeling heuristics, which  make project setup far easier.  As an enterprise BI vendor,  MicroStrategy is up to the challenge of being as easy to use and deploy  as newer departmental BI vendors, without losing its advantage of  enterprise scalability and architectural soundness.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>Easier to Operate </strong><br />
MicroStrategy Health Center, a new product available at no cost to  MicroStrategy customers, automatically scans all MicroStrategy servers  to anticipate and correct system problems, and provides coordination  with MicroStrategy Technical Support Centers. With MicroStrategy Health  Center, system performance is enhanced through problem prevention and  system uptime is improved with faster issue resolution.</p>
<p>“Con-way is looking forward to MicroStrategy’s new Health Center  product that can provide our administrators peace of mind knowing that  system problems can be automatically identified and resolution  information would be readily available,” said Sean Devine, Vice  President Pricing and Engineering, Con-way Freight. “The new automated  administrative features in MicroStrategy’s latest release will enable  our IT personnel to work more efficiently, saving valuable time and  resources.”</p>
<p><strong> Easier Dashboard Applications </strong><br />
MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 introduces major enhancements to its Dynamic  Dashboards technology to deliver easy-to-use dashboards to thousands of  business users every day.  This next generation dashboard application,  called “DashboardApps,” can contain an entire day’s worth of information  for BI users within a single dashboard.  Simple-to-use, DashboardApps  do not require any training or special software to install.  DashboardApps are self-contained dashboards that can be personalized for  the recipients and delivered via e-mail before each work day begins.</p>
<p>“MicroStrategy is committed to delivering the best business  intelligence platform and products, and providing exceptional service to  our customers,” said Sanju Bansal, MicroStrategy COO. “MicroStrategy 9  Release 2 delivers exciting new enhancements that can improve worker  productivity, helping BI users to quickly get answers to their business  questions. In addition, the powerful new tools in our latest release  enable IT personnel to deliver more BI with less effort.&#8221;</p>
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		<title>IBM Helps MarineMax Drive Smarter Retail Operations</title>
		<link>http://www.businessintel.org/2010/02/17/ibm-helps-marinemax-drive-smarter-retail-operations/</link>
		<comments>http://www.businessintel.org/2010/02/17/ibm-helps-marinemax-drive-smarter-retail-operations/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Feb 2010 02:13:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>BI Editor</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Cognos]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[IBM]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[retail]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.businessintel.org/?p=77</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[MarineMax, (NYSE: HZO), the largest recreational boat retailer in the United States, is using IBM business analytics to streamline operational planning, improve decision-making, and enforce more consistent, collaborative information access across the company. Since implementing the solutions, the retailer has been able to cut inventory costs, improve return on marketing spending, and reduce overall planning [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>MarineMax, (NYSE: HZO), the largest recreational  boat retailer in the United States, is using IBM business analytics to streamline operational planning, improve decision-making, and enforce  more consistent, collaborative information access across the company.  Since implementing the solutions, the retailer has been able to cut  inventory costs, improve return on marketing spending, and reduce  overall planning cycles from months to just a few weeks, among other  benefits.<span id="more-77"></span></p>
<p>Over the past decade, MarineMax has experienced tremendous  growth. Today, the company can be found in 55 locations across the  United States, with a multi-channel retail model that includes  showrooms, catalogs, a call center and a full-service online presence.  With this expansion came the need for stronger, more collaborative  information management across the enterprise. Previously, critical data  was trapped in many disparate spreadsheets and systems, making it very  difficult for business leaders and frontline employees to access and  share information on sales, costs and inventory.</p>
<p>With IBM business analytics software in place, MarineMax has  benefited from significant operational efficiencies across all levels of  the company. Store managers now capitalize on self-service reporting  and faster access to their store performance, helping them make better  decisions about their merchandising and promotions. Finance is able to  enforce a more consistent company-wide budgeting process to ensure  forecast accuracy, and can focus on long-term planning and strategic  performance analysis. Additionally, senior executives gain a holistic,  real-time view of historical, current and projected enterprise  performance to ensure company objectives are always on target.</p>
<p>A more efficient budgeting, forecasting and analysis process was, in  fact, the primary driver for the new IBM system. Prior solutions were  unstable and lacked key functionality such as re-forecasting, and “what  if” scenario modeling to determine the impact of business decisions.  With IBM, operational units across MarineMax can now easily work  together from the same numbers to build integrated budgets and plans – a  process that today only takes weeks instead of months – and evaluate  performance against plans.</p>
<p>These new-found forecasting efficiencies were especially critical in  the area of demand planning. Generally, global retailers experience lead  times as long as 6 to 10 months, forcing them to make substantial bets  on inventory, consumer trends and economic conditions. This challenge is  magnified in the world of retail boating, where inaccurate commitment  planning of luxury boats can inflate inventory costs. Using IBM business  analytics, MarineMax can tap into multiple years of sales history,  enabling managers to better understand customer demand trends and more  confidently establish future commitments, adjusting forecasts throughout  the year based on sales activities.</p>
<p>Similar efficiencies have been experienced in the Marketing  department. MarineMax participates in hundreds of key marketing and  sales events every year, such as boat shows, which require considerable  labor and material resources to run effectively. IBM analytics provides  marketing executives stronger visibility into the true cost and return  on investment of each event. By easily identifying top and bottom  performing events, MarineMax can focus efforts only on those events that  drive greater returns, and has reduced their annual marketing costs  significantly while still maintaining industry leading market share.</p>
<p>IBM also underpins the company’s Management By Objectives (MBO)  program for employee performance, which helps employees clearly  understand corporate objectives and identify their individual or team  responsibilities. Using IBM technology, store managers can establish  individual goals, monitor team member performance, take corrective  measures when necessary, then roll information up to the store, region  and company levels to quickly determine the impact on payroll.</p>
<p>“IBM business analytics and performance management is helping us  achieve a smarter and more efficient operational model,” said Jeremy  Wilson, Vice President of Information Technology at MarineMax. “The  company is now better able to strengthen collaboration between finance,  human resources, marketing, and store operations, ensuring MarineMax  remains agile in responding to market challenges, capitalizing on new  opportunities and providing the best shopping experience for our  customers.”</p>
<p>In the retail world, success is premised on building customer loyalty  and trust by getting the right product into the hands of the consumer  at the right time. Yet every year, the retail industry loses $93 billion  in missed sales due to not having the right products in stock.</p>
<p>“IBM analytics helps chains like Marine Max eliminate inefficiency  and align supply with demand, putting them in a stronger position to  better serve the new breed of empowered consumer,” said Patricia Vekich  Waldron, worldwide distribution sector executive at IBM.</p>
<p>This effort with MarineMax reflects IBM’s focus on helping retailers  use their information as a strategic asset. IBM recently created a new  Business Analytics &amp; Optimization services organization, with 4,000  consultants who can help clients get up and running with deep analytics  capabilities, and made significant acquisitions in the analytics space  such as the recent $1.2 billion acquisition of SPSS and the $4.9 billion  purchase of Cognos in 2008.</p>
<p>MarineMax’s analytics and performance management system includes IBM  Cognos BI and IBM Cognos Planning, IBM Infosphere Master Data Management  Server, IBM Websphere Commerce and IBM Websphere DataStage.</p>
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		<title>Pentaho Releases Business Intelligence Platform Under GPL License</title>
		<link>http://www.businessintel.org/2008/06/11/pentaho-releases-business-intelligence-platform-under-gpl-license/</link>
		<comments>http://www.businessintel.org/2008/06/11/pentaho-releases-business-intelligence-platform-under-gpl-license/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 11 Jun 2008 02:24:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>BI Editor</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business Intelligence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Open-Source]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pentaho]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.businessintel.org/?p=76</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Current version 2 alpha release of the Pentaho BI Platform, as well as future versions, will be distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 2 (GPLv2). GPLv2 is a software license published by the Free Software Foundation. Pentaho will also provide a &#8220;FLOSS Exception&#8221;, which simplifies distribution of Pentaho BI Platform [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Current version 2 alpha release of the Pentaho BI Platform, as well as future versions, will be distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 2 (GPLv2). GPLv2 is a software license published by the Free Software Foundation. Pentaho will also provide a &#8220;FLOSS Exception&#8221;, which simplifies distribution of Pentaho BI Platform with certain other open source licenses approved by the Open Source Initiative (<a href="http://www.opensource.org/">www.opensource.org</a>).  The Pentaho BI Platform is the underlying infrastructure which supports Pentaho&#8217;s reporting,  		analysis, dashboard, data integration, and data mining capabilities.<span id="more-76"></span></p>
<p>The GPL is the most widely used open source software license. Currently, more than 60% of open source projects tracked on freshmeat.org are GPL-licensed. The GPL is well understood by the market and the legal community and has notable precedents such as MySQL, Java and the Linux kernel as GPL licensed projects. Because the GPL is what&#8217;s known as a &#8220;reciprocal license&#8221; it ensures that the software is open and remains open.</p>
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		<title>MicroStrategy Rated Top Performer in Web Deployment</title>
		<link>http://www.businessintel.org/2008/04/16/microstrategy-rated-top-performer-in-web-deployment/</link>
		<comments>http://www.businessintel.org/2008/04/16/microstrategy-rated-top-performer-in-web-deployment/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 16 Apr 2008 03:41:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>BI Editor</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[MicroStrategy]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.businessintel.org/2008/04/16/microstrategy-rated-top-performer-in-web-deployment/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The BI Survey 7, a leading independent survey of the business intelligence (BI) software market, has found that MicroStrategy customers lead in Web deployment. For the seventh consecutive year, MicroStrategy customers are more successful in deploying BI via the Web than are customers using any other leading BI product. Conducted by independent analyst Nigel Pendse [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The BI Survey 7, a leading independent survey of the business intelligence (BI) software market, has found that MicroStrategy customers lead in Web deployment. For the seventh consecutive year, MicroStrategy customers are more successful in deploying BI via the Web than are customers using any other leading BI product.<span id="more-75"></span></p>
<p>Conducted by independent analyst Nigel Pendse and BARC, The Business Application Research Center, The BI Survey 7 compiled the BI experiences of nearly 2,000 respondents. The Survey found that MicroStrategy had the highest Web Deployment Rate of 79.2%, meaning 79.2% of MicroStrategy&#8217;s customers reported that they have deployed BI via the Web to at least 50% of their<br />
users.</p>
<pre>                       BI Product        Web Deployment Rates (%)

Â                       MicroStrategy               79.2

Â                       Cognos Reporting            66.3

Â                       Cognos Analysis             56.0

Â                       BusinessObjects             52.9

Â                       SAP BW                      35.4

Â                       Hyperion Essbase            32.8

Â                       Crystal Reports             30.9</pre>
<p>According to The BI Survey 7, BI applications deployed via the Web deliver greater business value and benefits than those deployed via client/server technology. Information reach is improved, and setup and maintenance costs are significantly reduced.</p>
<p>&#8220;Since the inception of this Survey, MicroStrategy sites have had the highest rates for Web deployment,&#8221; said Nigel Pendse, author of The BI Survey 7. &#8220;The MicroStrategy product line was designed from the ground up for large scale Web deployments, rather than being converted from older desktop or client/server architectures as other vendors have chosen to do. This provides an advantage for MicroStrategy&#8217;s customers, who report on far more data, to more users, and who are much more likely to be Web connected than those using other products.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;We are pleased that The BI Survey, once again, found that MicroStrategy customers have greater success in deploying BI via the Web than customers of other BI providers,&#8221; said Sanju Bansal, MicroStrategy&#8217;s COO. &#8220;The Web continues to be a highly effective delivery mechanism for deploying BI to large user populations. MicroStrategy&#8217;s full-featured Web interface provides an intuitive array of one-click actions to make business users highly productive in their viewing and exploration of data.&#8221;</p>
<p>The BI Survey is an annual report based on the world&#8217;s largest independent survey of Business Intelligence (BI) and Performance Management (PM) users in the world. The BI Survey 7 is published by BARC (The Business Application Research Center), and the author, Nigel Pendse, is a highly respected industry expert and lead analyst for The OLAP Report. With over 1,900 users and consultants plus 365 vendor staff participating in The BI Survey 7, the analysis covers a broad range of business intelligence tools.</p>
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		<title>SAS Acquires Teragram to Strengthen Text Mining and Analytics</title>
		<link>http://www.businessintel.org/2008/03/18/sas-acquires-teragram-to-strengthen-text-mining-and-analytics/</link>
		<comments>http://www.businessintel.org/2008/03/18/sas-acquires-teragram-to-strengthen-text-mining-and-analytics/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 18 Mar 2008 04:42:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>BI Editor</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SAS]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.businessintel.org/2008/03/18/sas-acquires-teragram-to-strengthen-text-mining-and-analytics/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[SAS announced the acquisition of privately held Teragram, the leader in natural language processing (NLP) and advanced linguistic technology. The acquisition will enhance SASâ€™ own robust text mining and analytical BI offerings, and extend them to enterprise and mobile search. More than a decade ago, SAS was among the first companies to recognize the importance [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>SAS announced the acquisition of privately held Teragram, the leader in natural language processing (NLP) and advanced linguistic technology. The acquisition will enhance SASâ€™ own robust text mining and analytical BI offerings, and extend them to enterprise and mobile search. More than a decade ago, SAS was among the first companies to recognize the importance of text mining, the analysis of text and other unstructured data such as Web pages, documents, email, images and other information not stored in a structured database. Today, SAS leads this important and growing space.<span id="more-74"></span></p>
<p>â€œThe addition of Teragramâ€™s domain expertise and NLP technology will change the landscape of the BI and analytics markets,â€ said SAS CEO Jim Goodnight. â€œTeragramâ€™s technologies augment, strengthen and extend SASâ€™ ability to combine structured and unstructured data &#8211; not only in our text mining solution but embedded across the entire SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform &#8211; to drive better answers faster.â€</p>
<p>Teragram, a 40-person firm headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., will be run as a SAS company. Terms of the acquisition deal were not disclosed. Teragramâ€™s NLP technology is well-established, with a customer base including CNN, Forbes.com, NYTimes Digital, Sony, WashingtonPost.com, Wolters Kluwer, the World Bank and Yahoo!</p>
<p>â€œAs the data explosion continues, companies need an intelligent way to make sense of it all, whether data is in structured databases or in the huge variety of unstructured sources,â€ said Yves Schabes, President of Teragram. â€œTeragram and its technology fit perfectly into SASâ€™ analytics and text mining efforts, as SAS continues to innovate in this rapidly growing market. Weâ€™re pleased to join a company that delivers the software businesses need to blend structured and unstructured data and reach better, timelier and more accurate decisions.â€</p>
<p><strong>Natural Language Processing</strong></p>
<p>Teragramâ€™s natural language processing (NLP) technologies help turn text &#8211; in many languages and from many sources &#8211; into useable information. NLP enables richer data processing at the level of words, linguistic relations and word meanings. Teragram has developed and maintains large annotated dictionaries containing several hundred million words in more than 30 languages.</p>
<p><strong>Automatic Categorization</strong></p>
<p>Teragramâ€™s advanced categorization technologies provide instant, advanced classification of documents according to custom criteria, applied throughout the organization. This enables faster and more accurate access to documents organized by specific topics that match the interest of a given user, regardless of the original document&#8217;s location.</p>
<p><strong>Natural Language Enterprise Search</strong></p>
<p>For enterprise search, Teragramâ€™s NLP technologies scan structured corporate databases and unstructured sources including text-based reports and Web pages to provide comprehensive answers from these multiple information sources.</p>
<p>â€œWith todayâ€™s multinational companies and distributed workforces, as well as tremendous amounts of data in disparate systems and formats, itâ€™s more important than ever to get quick and accurate answers to key business questions,â€ said Schabes. â€œEnterprise search is a competitive weapon for tapping an organizationâ€™s existing data resources. Combining SASâ€™ business intelligence, data integration and advanced analytics with Teragramâ€™s NLP technologies will deliver answers to search queries in seconds.â€</p>
<p>Teragramâ€™s sophisticated search capabilities deliver an easy-to-use environment for BI, extending the availability and use of BI throughout organizations. The combination of SAS and Teragram technologies provides indexing driven not just by a reportâ€™s header, but by its actual content and the metadata associated with it.</p>
<p><strong>Mobile Search</strong></p>
<p>Teragram also brings SAS the next generation of mobile search, helping individuals scan information remotely and get answers faster. Using Teragramâ€™s mobile search technology, individuals can store and retrieve information, connect to outside applications such as BI systems, and search databases from their BlackBerry, smart phone or other mobile device.</p>
<p><strong>An Explosion in Unstructured Data</strong></p>
<p>Business management expert Bill Jensen first decried the downsides of today&#8217;s information explosion back in 2001, in his book &#8220;Simplicity.&#8221; According to his research, echoed by others, the most conservative estimates currently show that business information is doubling every eighteen months. This data flood has only grown more pronounced in recent years, and much of this data lies outside traditional, â€œstructuredâ€ databases. According to estimates, unstructured data comprises up to 70% of all business data. This unstructured data resides in customer comments and service notes, e-mail and chat threads, documents and surveys, blogs and RSS feeds, warranty claims, resumes, voicemail and phone logs, among other sources.</p>
<p>If businesses fail to include this unstructured data in their analyses â€“ of customers, market opportunities, internal operations, supply chains, etc. â€“ they are only seeing part of the complete picture, and can make bad decisions as a result. Powerful analytics like SASâ€™ can help organizations weave structured and unstructured data to uncover hidden patterns and trends, and then use this insight to make better decisions, solve problems and take advantage of opportunities.</p>
<p><strong>SAS: A Pioneer in Text Mining</strong></p>
<p>SAS has offered text mining capabilities within its software for more than a decade, and launched a specific text-mining product, SAS Text Miner, in 2002.</p>
<p>Today, SAS Text Miner is included in several industry-specific solutions, including SAS Warranty Analysis. Manufacturers such as Sub-Zero and Shanghai General Motors use this solution to bring together and analyze warranty claims and service data, much of it unstructured. They can discover potential problems early enough to take quick action, leading to improved product quality and enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty.</p>
<p>Banks use text analytics on transcripts of customer calls and related metadata (such as length of call, hold time, number of transfers) to determine customersâ€™ satisfaction sentiment and predict outcomes (is a customer a good credit risk or are they likely to close an account, for example). Insurance companies use text analytics on adjustersâ€™ claim notes and demographic information to detect possible fraudulent claims.</p>
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		<title>Vertica and Pentaho Introduce Database and BI Platform</title>
		<link>http://www.businessintel.org/2008/02/24/vertica-and-pentaho-introduce-database-and-bi-platform/</link>
		<comments>http://www.businessintel.org/2008/02/24/vertica-and-pentaho-introduce-database-and-bi-platform/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 24 Feb 2008 00:21:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>BI Editor</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business Intelligence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Open-Source]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pentaho]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.businessintel.org/2008/02/24/vertica-and-pentaho-introduce-database-and-bi-platform/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Companies looking to compete more efficiently by enabling more employees to conduct ad hoc business analyses can now turn to one integrated solution that combines the world&#8217;s most popular open source business intelligence suite with breakthrough analytic database price/performance thanks to a partnership between Pentaho Corporation and Vertica Systems. Together, Vertica&#8217;s column-oriented relational database management [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Companies looking to compete more efficiently by enabling more employees to conduct ad  hoc business analyses can now turn to one integrated solution that combines the world&#8217;s most popular open source business  intelligence suite with breakthrough analytic database price/performance thanks to a partnership between Pentaho Corporation  and Vertica Systems. Together, Vertica&#8217;s column-oriented relational database management system (RDBMS) and Pentaho&#8217;s complete  BI suite give companies a complete, affordable set of applications to store, analyze and report on the information they need  to better compete in their markets.<span id="more-73"></span></p>
<p>&#8220;Many companies hoping to compete on the strength of their data are running into hurdles because they can&#8217;t provide enough  people access to all the data they need to execute more effectively,&#8221; said David Stodder, vice president and research director  at industry analyst firm Ventana Research. &#8220;Companies should evaluate integrated solutions like the one stemming from the  Pentaho-Vertica partnership, which could enable companies to affordably equip more workers with state-of-the-art BI software  and give them faster ad-hoc access to larger amounts of historical and real-time data so they can innovate sooner and better  than competitors.&#8221;</p>
<p>This partnership gives companies a blueprint for extending comprehensive data analysis throughout the enterprise. Connecting  easy-to-use BI tools on employees&#8217; desktops with high-performance database management systems sets the stage for self-service  analytics. As more employees become empowered to make critical business decisions, a company can gain a market advantage by  capitalizing more quickly on business opportunities. Moreover, the simplicity of this solution enables IT staff to spend less  time on setup and tuning, and more time delivering invaluable information in the form of dashboards and reports to a wider  audience.</p>
<p>&#8220;BI tools and database management systems deliver the best business results if they&#8217;re accessible to a broad group of  employees,&#8221; said Richard Daley, founder and CEO of Pentaho. &#8220;Making more data available to more people faster and more  conveniently helps companies be more agile and competitive, which is paramount to success today and is the promise of  this partnership.&#8221;</p>
<p>The VerticaÂ® Analytic Database delivers query results 50 to 200 times faster than other databases. Vertica&#8217;s RDBMS enables  business people to make complex, ad hoc queries on the fly and affordably. Vertica also allows mixed workloads because users  can continue making queries while data is loaded into the system, eliminating the wait and sluggish performance many databases  experience during loading. Breakthrough data compression allows the Vertica Database to reduce storage requirements by as much  as 90 percent, dramatically cutting hardware overhead and energy consumption so that customers can analyze larger amounts of  historical data at a fraction of the cost.</p>
<p>The Pentaho Open BI suite provides a comprehensive BI platform for reporting, analysis, dashboards, data mining, and data integration. Pentaho&#8217;s platform consists of four key elements: Pentaho Analysis, based on Pentaho&#8217;s popular Mondrian open source online analytical processing (OLAP) server, lets users pose questions in business terms; Pentaho Reporting lets users create, generate and distribute rich and sophisticated report content from all sources of information; Pentaho Data Integration, based on Pentaho&#8217;s Kettle data integration project, uses extract, transform and load (ETL) technology to gather data from multiple sources and integrate it for faster, easier access and analysis; and Weka machine-learning software simplifies data mining.</p>
<p>The Vertica Analytic Database integrates with the entire Pentaho suite to enable companies to optimize storage space and  complex/ad hoc query speed within a comprehensive BI platform. &#8220;This partnership delivers on the largely unrealized potential  of BI technology by making it usable, affordable and critical to business success,&#8221; said Ralph Breslauer, CEO of Vertica. &#8220;With  this integration, companies can not only learn more about their customers and their markets, but they can also access that  information quickly and immediately capitalize on it to gain a competitive advantage.&#8221;</p>
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		<title>New Business Intelligence Suite &#8211; ElegantJ BI</title>
		<link>http://www.businessintel.org/2008/02/24/new-business-intelligence-suite-elegantj-bi/</link>
		<comments>http://www.businessintel.org/2008/02/24/new-business-intelligence-suite-elegantj-bi/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 24 Feb 2008 00:17:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>BI Editor</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business Intelligence]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.businessintel.org/2008/02/24/new-business-intelligence-suite-elegantj-bi/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ElegantJ BI Suite is one comprehensive product with a complete portfolio of advanced business intelligence capabilities on a state-of-the-art enterprise architecture, to help organizations consolidate and drain streamlined quality information to manage core strategies and improve performance management. The release is an important milestone for fulfilling the companyâ€™s aspirations for providing practical and affordable Corporate [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>ElegantJ BI Suite is one comprehensive product with a complete portfolio of advanced business intelligence capabilities on a state-of-the-art enterprise architecture, to help organizations consolidate and drain streamlined quality information to manage core strategies and improve performance management.</p>
<p>The release is an important milestone for fulfilling the companyâ€™s aspirations for providing practical and affordable Corporate Performance Management and Operational BI solutions. By merely expanding on the usability of data and existing IT infrastructure and technologies coupled with less training requirements that will result in better user take up and participation; ElegantJ BI ensures in giving companies the opportunity to make the most of their IT investments.<span id="more-72"></span><br />
ElegantJ BI can be deployed to Plan, Monitor, Analyze, Direct and Improve corporate performance through scorecards and KPI implementations, for proactive, forward looking and competitive enterprises. Itâ€™s easier to monitor critical business metrics, be alerted about issues, manage goals, and track performance across the organisation. When used for Operational BI, it empowers executives, line-of-business managers and other business professionals across the enterprise with effective and efficient on-time, on-demand information critical to maintaining efficient operations and business goals.</p>
<p>Designed for diverse environments, and not limited to any specific type of user; ElegantJ BI will be able to provide a single enterprise data management platform facilitating reliable, consistent, data and information integrated from a range of data sources, applications and third party systems to executive management, managers and distributed teams matching every need of end-to-end business analysis and reporting.</p>
<p>The product is the result of innovation and understanding of customersâ€™ current and future needs in mind. More often since the problem with existing business intelligence tools is that they are not intuitive enough for the &#8220;average&#8221; business user; managers have to routinely rely on external IT consultants to produce effective BI reports. One of the key aspects of ElegantJ BI is design with â€˜simplicity, without compromising the power to deliverâ€™. ElegantJ BI achieves this through an elegant design, deploying state of the art technology to deliver rich business intelligence and reporting functionality directly to the browser â€“ accessible in the office and across the internet.</p>
<p>Built on a single, user-friendly zero footprint browser interface; business users at every level of the organisation can create their own analysis and reports without depending on IT support using key features including intuitive, personalized dashboards; dynamic analysis on the fly with one click drillable reports, high-impact OLAP, graphical visualization of underlying data for deeper insight into information, automated alerts and scheduled reports, and exception management and reporting. Requiring no software to be installed for end users, itâ€™s fast to roll out and requires minimal maintenance. Also, being delivered on a scalable, consistent high-performance platform, ElegantJ BI will meet the increasing data volumes, user base and information needs, anytime in the future.</p>
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