SAN MATEO (03/28/2000) - With product launches touching on an array of business intelligence needs, vendors such as Business Objects SA, Informix Corp., and Actuate this week are advancing the ease with which corporate decision makers receive and view reports and business analysis.
Business Objects has extended the reach of its WebIntelligence query, reporting, and analysis tool to include the wireless world. WebIntelligence Wireless Edition will ship in the second quarter of this year with support for any first generation WAP-enabled mobile phone. Business Objects expects to extend that support to other wireless devices, including phones with larger screen displays or keyboards, or WAP-enabled PDAs (personal digital assistants).
The benefit of such a solution, said Business Objects officials, will be the ability to receive and interact with business intelligence reports on a real-time basis, an ability company officials say can be invaluable to mobile sales forces.
Database vendor Informix is also stepping up its business intelligence offerings this week with the release of a new product, Visionary 2.0, at the Boston Internet Commerce Expo.
Unlike Business Objects' WebIntelligence Wireless Edition, which itself is a business intelligence application, Visionary 2.0 is designed to serve as a graphical development and deployment environment for creating visually rich analytic applications. The product is expected to be available at the end of this month.
Finally, "e.Reporting" vendor Actuate has introduced a content creation tool designed to simplify the creation of Web sites and increase the number of people within an organization able to publish data to the Web. Called Actuate e.Report Designer, the tool features a design wizard and user-friendly GUI, and is targeted at enabling the creation of content that can then be easily tailored into targeted business-intelligence reports.
Actuate is also set to announce a partnership with Allaire this week. The two companies, according to officials at Actuate, will work together to tie Actuate's business intelligence offerings with Allaire's ColdFusion Web application server.
Business Objects, in San Jose, California, is at http://www.businessobjects.com/. Informix Corp., in Menlo Park, California, is at http://www.informix.com/. Actuate Corp., in San Mateo, California, is at http://www.actuate.com/.