Business Objects joins the growing list of software companies offering virtual appliances compatible with the VMware infrastructure.

Business-intelligence software never makes it past the wish list at many companies. Why? Because of the time and commitment it takes to install and get the software working right. It’s an even bigger problem at smaller businesses with limited IT resources.

Several tech vendors earlier this year introduced BI appliances; boxes that are pre-configured with business intelligence software and ready to go. But that doesn’t get around the annoyance some IT shops have with that approach — you’re stuck with yet another box to fit into the data center.

Now BI appliances are going virtual. Business Objects, the largest pure-play BI vendor, announced this week its first virtual appliance, which it will sell both direct and through VMware’s Virtual Appliance Marketplace. A business with a virtualization infrastructure in place can install a pre-configured, pre-optimized version of Business Objects Crystal Decisions, including a ready-to-go database, and the proper security protocols, on any available box in its data center. More of the company’s offerings will be available as virtual appliances next year, the company said.

Consider the virtual appliance an alternative, and not a replacement for the BI appliances that come in actual hardware form. IBM (IBM) and Netezza in March began selling BI appliances loaded with Business Objects software through a partnership with the company, and Cognos introduced its BI appliance in May. And for pure maintenance-free BI, Business Objects also offers its software as a service.

Business Objects is targeting all its appliance offerings at small and midsize businesses, a customer base that’s been growing 50% faster than Business Objects enterprise business, said VP Todd Rowe. The sale of BI appliances through IBM and Netezza already has resulted in “significant revenue,” he said.

About 600 virtual appliances are sold through VMware’s marketplace. Microsoft (MSFT) Exchange Server and SQL Server are among the most popular downloads, as are various flavors of security systems and firewalls.

But Business Objects and a smaller BI vendor, Panorama Software, are the only ones–so far — to venture into the virtual appliance world (Panorama announced its offering in June). Many Business Objects customers are already running the software on a VMware infrastructure, Rowe said, but the virtual appliance approach requires less IT involvement. He claims a company can be turn on a virtual appliance and have it in operation within several hours.

As Business Objects and other vendors try to help businesses tick away at the cost of BI through virtual appliances and hardware appliances, it’s making it possible for more small and midsize companies to invest in business analytics. Yet barriers to entry for smaller companies remain with BI that appliances — virtual or otherwise — haven’t yet solved, including ease of use, data quality problems, and the cost of good data architects and BI software licenses.

Leading Venture Capital Firms Invest in an Accelerated Growth Plan for The World’s Most Popular Open Source BI Suite

Pentaho Corp., creator of the world’s most popular Open Source business intelligence (BI) suite, today announced that it has received an additional $8M in funding in order to further fuel its accelerated growth. Pentaho’s existing investors, New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Index Ventures, funded the entire series B financing round.

Andre M. Boisvert, Pentaho’s Chairman and co-founder stated, “We are delighted with the fact that the market’s adoption of our leading Open Source BI platform has gathered such momentum. In order for the Company to be in a position to fully capitalize on this trend, the Board of Directors approved the acceleration of the initial business plan and additional growth capital.” Boisvert went on to add, “Savvy venture firms always want to put additional capital to work in their most promising portfolio companies. Our existing investors clearly saw the opportunity to increase their stake in Pentaho and accelerate the company’s growth in the process.”

Demand for the Pentaho BI project has grown from 5,000 downloads/month in August 2005 to more than 55,000/month in June 2006. These numbers show that there is clear demand from the marketplace for Pentaho’s Open Source BI solution.

Vladimir Jacimovic, NEA Partner and Pentaho Director, stated, “The success behind the Pentaho BI project is an indication and validation that Open Source BI is being seriously considered and implemented by customers. A recent survey by Ventana Research has found that 43% of organizations are evaluating Open Source BI solutions and that another 40% are actually deploying Open Source BI solutions. When you couple these facts with Pentaho’s leading position in the Open Source BI market place, it was an easy decision to step up our investment.”

Industry surveys continue to rank Business Intelligence as one of the top five focus areas for IT investment. Leading research firm IDC is predicting that the BI market will grow by 10% to almost $6.5B in software spending in 2006. Richard Daley, Pentaho’s CEO and co-founder, stated, “We felt that by taking in additional capital we could more rapidly execute on our product roadmap, thereby giving customers and the community more reasons to give up on proprietary offerings sooner rather than later.”

Bernard Dalle, Partner at Index Ventures and Pentaho Director, said, “We believe that Pentaho has the vision, a strong team, the best technology and the support of a smart, global community to become the single most significant force in business intelligence. As such, we were eager to increase our investment and we look forward to continuing to work with such a dynamic and exciting company.”

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, more commonly abbreviated as MOSS 2007, is one of the critical business intelligence tools available today. According to Microsoft itself, MOSS 2007 can be used to “facilitate collaboration, provide content management features, implement business processes, and supply access to information that is essential to organizational goals and processes (1).” As such, this is a product that is important to understand in today’s business world and that can be used by both large and small enterprises.

What is MOSS 2007?

MOSS 2007 is a cohesive integration of business intelligence tools established by Microsoft to ease collaboration by using specialized websites, or portals. These portals can host documents, files, and even run programs and services such as blogs and wikis. Multiple users can be granted access to these portals and to all or some of the items hosted there. Users can then log in and make changes directly to these items in a centralized space.

The business intelligence tools offered by SharePoint are of particular use to companies that have employees in multiple offices around the world or employees that telecommute, but it can also be used within a single location when collaboration on a single document is critical.

The Six Pillars of MOSS 2007

The biggest selling point for MOSS 2007 when it comes to its business intelligence tools is that it enables easy collaboration between users, whether they are in a single office or located around the world. It is commonly accepted that the MOSS 2007 system is based on six pillars (2):

* Business intelligence
* Collaboration
* Portals
* Enterprise search
* Enterprise content management
* Business processes and forms

These pillars work together to create a comprehensive system of business intelligence tools that enables an entire enterprise to work together as a team. MOSS 2007 is extremely useful to any business that has to collaborate with its employees via documents or e-mail, printed or voice communication. It hosts all of this information in a single space and allows for information gathering and updates without major hassles. SharePoint is installed quickly and easily on a server and replaces many free utilities (Joomla or Mambo, for example).

Business Intelligence Tools that Seamlessly Integrate with Microsoft Office

One of the key benefits of MOSS 2007 is its ability to integrate with Microsoft Office, a system that many businesses already use on a daily basis. This program offers an assortment of business intelligence tools and processes that allow employees to quickly and easily collaborate with one another. Through SharePoint Portals, a website can be established to which Microsoft Office files can be uploaded and distributed outside of an e-mail setting. An online task list can also be established for all users to utilize, and templates are available as well. Users can either log into the portal site via a standard web browser or can open up the Office application from within MOSS 2007 directly.

MOSS 2007 has the greatest benefit with its business intelligence tools when people are dealing with Microsoft Excel. For example, a user can upload an Excel spreadsheet to a SharePoint website. The original user can choose to make all or just part of the spreadsheet accessible by others. The benefit of this is that proprietary formulas and other data can be kept confidential while still allowing outside users to provide the necessary new information for the spreadsheet.

In addition, with MOSS 2007, there is a single spreadsheet that all users are accessing. If e-mail had been used to distribute the same spreadsheet, then various users would have different versions and it would require extra time to find out who was in control of the “latest and greatest.” If different users were handling different copies of the spreadsheet, the data would be scattered and would need to be compiled at a later time. Instead, all users can take advantage of the business intelligence tools offered by SharePoint and can log in to interact directly with a single worksheet.

Helping Create a Solid Team

Users of the business intelligence tools provided by MOSS 2007 are brought closer together as a team. MOSS 2007 allows users to contact one another via e-mail and instant messaging, which can enhance productivity. MOSS 2007 also provides the ability to create templates that can be accessed easily through a consistent user interface.

In addition, one of the business intelligence tools provided by MOSS 2007 enables team leaders to establish and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs). In this way, everyone on a team can see at a glance what goals have to be met and what milestones have already been attained. In this way, team members can make intelligent business decisions. Team members can also look at aggregate data from a variety of sources to monitor trends, which can then help to make decisions about future concerns for the business.

Conclusion

MOSS 2007 benefits business intelligence because its business intelligence tools allow for easy collaboration and for various team members to adjust and approve a single document in a central location. Almost any industry can benefit from the use of SharePoint, particularly if the company already uses Microsoft Office. By installing MOSS 2007, a company will find that it can strengthen existing teams, help create new teams, and eliminate confusion while making it easier for employees to work together on a wide variety of projects.

For the past two years I have been wading through the waters of Business Intelligence or BI as it is commonly referred as. I have been developing universes (a meta layer that binds to tables and columns, this is the short definition) and reports as well as modeling data for analytical purposes. My tool set is pretty standard as my company has invested in Oracle as the database and Business Objects XI , also known as BOXI, as the BI analytics tool.


BOXI is a tool that provides end users with the ability to answer their business questions by creating a data cube and slicing through the data. BOXI allows users to choose their dimensions and measures and output the data in various formats (excel, csv, pdf, etc) or a Web Intelligence document. The Web Intelligence document allows the user to drill down, up, and across the cube to find the ‘one version of the truth,’ the holy grail of BI.

BOXI provides an SDK for Java and .net that has allowed developers to embed BOXI reports into web applications, but now there is a new tool for integrating data from BOXI. Hold on, because this is where it gets cool. BOXI Release2 offers ‘Query as a Web Service.’ This tool enables a developer to create a web service through a desktop interface that is then published to an application server. Think of this as ‘black box‘ development. The developer selects dimensions and measures from a universe, provides some filters, and selects the publish button. Presto! There is a soap based web service waiting to be consumed . “But what does this have to do with Flex” you ask.
Flex the Service

By utilizing the Flex 2 framework you can consume a web service in a very few lines of mxml. We consume the service created by Query as a Web Service and then we bind it to a visual component (DataGrid, List, Chart, etc.). Here is a snippet of Flex 2 code that shows how to consume the service.





{userid.text}
{password.text}

{scac.text}





So What’s the Big Deal?

What’s the big deal?! I created a web service based off of a Business Objects universe and deployed it without having to write any code! Then I took the data retrieved by the web service and wrote a few lines of Flex to create a component that can provide my end user with data within any web application or device that has the Flash runtime. Now that’s what the big deal is! Fast and efficient development cycle that produces useful Business Intelligence data without having the user to muck around with the BOXI interface. Well, maybe it isn’t that big of a deal, but it’s still pretty cool.

The American Sentinel University announced the availability of their newly accredited online degree program, Master of Science in Business Intelligence (MSBI). This new online degree is designed to hone the analytical skills and prepare the student for a position in the fast growing business intelligence field.

With this degree in Business Intelligence, students will now be able to address the needed core strength in real-time analytics and data-driven operations. They will be able to acquire the necessary competencies that are required to gain insight and intelligence for the efficient operations of modern business enterprises. The needs for qualified professionals to fill the high-growth sectors of our economy will now be supplied.

For more information about the Master’s Degree in Business Intelligence, and how this course works, please click here.

Of interest: As businesses grow knowing more about business telephone systems and the uses of steel buildings may become more important to you, so research steel buildings ahead of time to save money and buy good merchandise.