BusinessObjects wants to light up the business intelligence market by putting a spotlight on its new logo and new products it says will make BI more accessible in organizations.
James Thomas, senior director of marketing in the company’s information discovery and delivery group, said together the initiatives are a way of being seen as a tools company to one that helps the pervasive use of information across the enterprise.
The new logo is a small refinement of the old one – there’s a globe in a spectrum of colours above its name and below the usual swoop, which Thomas said is aimed at suggesting the company is “illuminating the information in your organization than never sees the light of day.”
The company’s Web site and supporting marketing materials have also been overhauled to push the theme that its products put light into companies.
More practically, Thomas said it will do that with several new additions to its portfolio:
–BuisnessObjects Mobile is an application that allows reports created in BusinessObjects XI to be viewed and actionable on handhelds through embedded links.Thomas said the application doesn’t need a separate server to run, but uses the company’s Web Intelligence query and analysis tool to convert documents.The application is sold either on a US$400 named user basis or a per-server, per-CPU –basis.
–Xcelsius Enterprise is an application that can take information from BusinessObjects XI Release 2 to create easily manipulated Flash-based dashboards.
Thomas said it capitalizes on technology BusinessObjects obtained when it bought Xcelsius to create personalized “what-if” scenarios. For example, it can create an on-screen dial that can be twisted so a user can see how much sales will increase if costs go up by a given percentage.
These dashboards can run in PowerPoint, Excel, Word, a portal or within XI.
Xcelsius Enterprise costs US$50,000, plus there is a per user fee.
–a productivity pack for BusinessObjects Release XI includes enhanced connectivity through Web services and service oriented architecture. Thomas pointed to an improved and simplified search capability that not only finds reports but also shows data within reports that it thinks goes along with a query.
The pack also includes the ability to gather and view OLAP data from multiple sources.
–an improvement to BusinessObjects On Demand BI has added an open data connector and a universal Web services connector so users can access both on demand an local data sources.
