BI Additions Aid Data Access

New business intelligence offerings from Hyperion Solutions Corp. and Information Builders Inc. are targeting enterprise BI needs for usability, integration and data integrity.

This week Information Builders will announce Version 7 of its WebFocus BI platform, and last week Hyperion announced updates to dashboard technologies in its BI platform and compliance management product. Both companies are attempting with these releases to make it easier for users to access and manage more relevant data.

Information Builders is strengthening ties between its core WebFocus product and data integration tools from its iWay subsidiary. Using the management console in this release of WebFocus, customers will be able to access iWay adapters; extraction, transformation and loading tools; and Web services development tools. The move adds data integration and management capabilities to WebFocus core query, reporting and analysis capabilities.

In addition, Information Builders, in New York, is introducing autonomic server and capacity planning capabilities so that the WebFocus server can, in effect, manage itself in response to user demands. Also being introduced are more front-end wizards to allow nontechnical users to run self-service analyses.

Hyperion is introducing a drag-and-drop, wizard-driven dashboard development tool to its Hyperion Performance Suite 8.3, enabling business users without programming skills to develop personalized dashboards, said company officials in Sunnyvale, Calif. The Hyperion Performance Management suite is part of Hyperions BI platform.

Hyperion is also introducing in this release its Hyperion MDM (Master Data Management) Server, which synchronizes data sources across financial and analytic applications.

Hyperion also launched last week Hyperion Compliance Dashboard, which brings together internal controls data from third-party vendors with financial data from the Hyperion Financial Management platform.

Third-party Sarbanes-Oxley Act solutions vendors whose products should work with the new compliance dashboard with minimal customization and integration required include Axentis Inc., Deloitte & Touche LLP, IBM, OpenPages Inc. and Upstream Solutions Inc.

The products will be available around midmonth, said Hyperion officials. Information Builders plans to ship WebFocus 7 by the third week of April, said officials there.

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