Brio Software Inc. and Actuate Corp. announced new versions of their respective software applications, both designed to put information in the hands of users, but in different ways and for different users.
Brio announced Brio Metrics Builder 7 Monday, a new application for managing business performance and making sure that performance aligns with corporate goals. Meanwhile, Actuate announced Actuate 6, the latest version of its reporting platform, designed to deliver information to users both within and outside of an organization.
Brio Metrics Builder allows users to set criteria by which to measure business performance, then takes data from operational or other business intelligence systems to give users, typically executives, a snapshot of how an organization is meeting its objectives and what can be done to improve on that performance.
Users can view business trends through personalized dashboards, drilling through charts, graphs and reports specific to their individual information needs. Brio Metrics Builder features role-based security, including hierarchy, column and time functions. It also supports secure HTTP to extend the technology outside the firewall to partners and suppliers.
Extension of information delivery beyond the firewall is also a central feature of Actuate 6. Actuate 6, which can be used in conjunction with executive dashboard systems like Brio Metrics Builder, providing a reporting interface, features improved support for embedded Excel spreadsheets as well as graphics and linked documents.
It also adds improved integration capabilities to both .Net and Java 2 Enterprise Edition-based systems thanks to SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and XML support. Scalability and reliability have been improved thanks to support for clustering, load balancing, automatic failover and recovery, and hot backup.
There is also support for enterprise portal integration, Unicode and multilanguage capabilities for global report distribution, and a new wizard-based development for creating Excel spreadsheets that run in Web browsers.
Brio Metrics Builder is available now; Actuate 6 is scheduled to ship May 24.