Information Builders Unveils New Version of WebFOCUS Business Intelligence Solution at Summit 2001
WebFOCUS: The Most Scalable, Deployable, and Usable Solution Available in the Business Intelligence Market
Summit 2001, Orlando, FL – May 22, 2001 – Information Builders, the leader in Web business intelligence, today introduced an upgraded version of its revolutionary business intelligence solution, WebFOCUS. The unveiling of the newly enhanced WebFOCUS took place today during Summit 2001, Information Builders' annual user conference, in Orlando, Florida. Upgrades made to WebFOCUS include the ability to support a larger set of users via its new Java-based servlet implementation, extending its business intelligence capability to mobile and wireless devices, and providing ease-of-use features to enhance users' ability to get actionable information. Together, they make this complete business intelligence solution designed to support today's most critical e-business and e-government initiatives – B2B, B2C, and B2E (Business to Enterprise) – the most scalable, deployable, and usable business intelligence solution available in the competitive market.
WebFOCUS is one of the few business intelligence platforms that have the ability to scale from NT and midrange systems to the mainframe. Load balancing assists to ensure consistent performance, regardless of the scope of a customer's applications. As a company scales up, WebFOCUS also gives it the power to use resources intelligently and manage the demands put upon its systems. With facilities for monitoring usage, governing queries, and efficiently meeting multiple and large requests, customers are now able to retain control of their resources while still giving people the information they need.
"Ongoing innovation and enhancements of Information Builders' WebFOCUS business intelligence solution showcase the talents and mission of our outstanding technological team," said Gerald D. Cohen, CEO of Information Builders. "We are proud and excited to introduce the new version of WebFOCUS, the most scalable, deployable, and usable solution on the market, which only further validates Information Builders' position as the leader in Web Business Intelligence."
Built on Information Builders' leading-edge technologies, WebFOCUS provides the new features to assist in turning complex data into valuable business insight. Samplings of the new upgrades are easily described under three categories – Scalability, Deployablity, and Usability:
Capabilities Currently Shipping:
Scalability
In addition to existing ISAPI- and CGI-based implementations, WebFOCUS now offers a Java Servlet option as well. This new architecture enables WebFOCUS to run seamlessly in any of the leading Java Application Server Environments, such as WebSphere, Weblogic or iPlanet. Even with CGI implementations that require separate resources for each connected user, WebFOCUS sites have scaled applications to tens of thousands of users. The new Servlet option provides for new levels of scalability; WebFOCUS exploits resource management capabilities handled by Java Application Servers.
The new Maintain Shared Application Server provides greater scalability for BI applications that require write-back transactions.
Deployability
New mobile initiatives for WebFOCUS extend business intelligence to handheld devices. The Two-Way Email option enables users to request and receive enterprise information on their PDAs, including alert-based systems that can now deliver actionable information based on business rules. A second mobile option is the WebFOCUS/AvantGo Internet Server, an integrated product offering that allows for the delivery of reports to handheld devices via synchronization technology.
Support for Unicode extends WebFOCUS' globalization capabilities by enabling information from different languages and currencies to be displayed on a single report. This capability is particularly important to multinational corporations that require analysis of information from different markets and regions of the world.
The WebFOCUS Developer Studio has been enhanced to provide an integrated development environment that easily deploys forms, reports, and graphs to the Web. This enables developers to compress the time-to-market for Web-based reporting applications.
Major security enhancements include integration of LDAP and support for single sign-on.
Integration with third-party portals such as Plumtree enables WebFOCUS to deliver information to these enterprise portal environments.
Usability
New DHTML capability enables exact, personalized placement of reports in the WebFOCUS application, facilitating easy viewing and printing.
Business Intelligence Dashboard (BID) allows sites to tailor the user's view of the WebFOCUS environment via a set of customizable templates. This customization includes links to external applications as well as WebFOCUS reporting objects. Each user can then personalize his or her environment to include the automatic execution of reports and information upon entry into the WebFOCUS environment.
Information Builders' customers include leading organizations in every industry, such as Allstate, Sony, Federal Express, and Traveler's Insurance. By using Information Builders' business solutions to meet their data challenges, these customers are able to see large cost savings, revenue-escalating business exchanges over extranets, easy-to-use self-service customer/employee information, and support portals/systems enabling mobile devices to track and resolve inventory problems, schedule deliveries, or obtain timely public information.
About Summit
Summit is Information Builders' annual developers and product education conference. Established in 1985, it is the leading product education conference for Information Builders' WebFOCUS, FOCUS, EDA, and iWay Software. Summit provides an extensive educational forum on Information Builders' business intelligence and integration solutions, and is a showcase for Information Builders' future products. For more information, go to www.informationbuilders.com/summit.
About Information Builders
Information Builders is the leader in Web Business Intelligence. Headquartered in New York, Information Builders helps companies and government organizations improve their mission-critical operations by transforming data into usable intelligence and delivering it through the Internet. With its market-leading WebFOCUS product, Information Builders boasts more than 9,000 global customer sites, including 93 of the Fortune 100, among its current customers. The company employs 2,000 professionals worldwide and generated revenues exceeding $300 million in 2000.
