Redefining enterprise intelligence: Why the ibi^™ WebFOCUS® Data & Analytics Platform version 9.3.8 marks a new era for analytics

The enterprise software industry is at a historic inflection point. The sudden explosion of artificial intelligence has fundamentally altered what business leaders expect from their technology stack. Yet, for all the hype surrounding Generative AI, a frustrating reality has emerged for CTOs and Chief Data Officers: most business intelligence tools have merely added superficial "chatbots over charts" that summarize what you already see on a dashboard, without solving real operational problems or respecting enterprise data privacy.

At ibi, we believe the era of the static, passive dashboard is over.

Today, I am thrilled to announce the official launch of the ibi^™ WebFOCUS® Data & Analytics Platform version 9.3.8. This is a landmark milestone in every sense of the word. Driven by incredible cross-functional momentum across our teams, this release represents the culmination of intense co-innovation with our customer base—delivering nearly 200 new features and addressing over 500 direct customer requests.

WebFOCUS 9.3.8 is built to answer a critical industry challenge: how to give organizations cutting-edge, agentic AI and agile self-service, while maintaining the industrial-grade data governance, security, and hybrid data connectivity that the world’s largest enterprises rely on every day.

Here is how version 9.3.8 is redefining the analytics landscape.

1. Empowering the business user: The ibi^™ AI Assistant

Historically, generating complex reports or diving deep into operational data required specialized technical expertise or a deep understanding of procedural code.

The ibi WebFOCUS AI Assistant completely changes the equation. It democratizes the platform for everyday business consumers, department managers, and analysts—empowering anyone, without any knowledge of FOCUS syntax or complex scripting, to interact directly with enterprise data using natural language.

Rather than just summarizing charts, our AI Assistant introduces an autonomous, 3-tiered operational loop:

• Tier 1 (Descriptive): Identifies what happened across your metrics.

• Tier 2 (Diagnostic): Runs background root-cause queries to pinpoint why it happened.

• Tier 3 (Prescriptive): Recommends tactical business actions to take next.

For business users, this means true automated visual content authoring—you can ask a question in plain English and the assistant will instantly create custom visual reports, charts, and interactive dashboards. For technical teams, it acts as an embedded developer co-pilot inside the editor, authoring, optimizing, and debugging complex database logic to accelerate IT workflows.

Crucially, this assistant is model-agnostic and enterprise-governed. Organizations can connect directly to commercial LLM providers (including OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, and Anthropic) while maintaining strict role-adaptive security—delivering executive recommendations to business users while enforcing underlying database permissions, data lineage, and schema governance.

Watch the WebFOCUS AI Assistant in Action.

2. Data trust at the source: Unified data engineering

You cannot build trustworthy enterprise AI or executive dashboards on top of unverified, fragmented data pipelines. The era of separating data movement from data integrity is over.

In WebFOCUS 9.3.8, we have eliminated pipeline latency by embedding native ibi Data Quality validation, address matching, and structural profiling routines straight inside active ibi Data Migrator ETL processing streams. Instead of treating data cleansing as a separate administrative task, data quality is now an automated architectural byproduct.

Unified data engineering in version 9.3.8

• Live pipeline cleansing: Inline validation and address matching execute directly inside active ETL steps.

• Expanded REST API access: Directly query server data, automate synonym management, and stream governed metrics directly to external web services and cloud platforms without UI overhead.

• Non-destructive debugging: Easily enable or disable individual pipeline blocks with a single click during execution.

• Schema drift protection: Automated alerts lock pipeline execution before corrupt data moves downstream.

• Hybrid cloud CDC: Real-time VSAM streaming brings live mainframe transactional changes directly to modern cloud warehouses.

Data engineering teams can now isolate errors on the fly with single-click pipeline block toggling, protect downstream dashboards against physical database schema drift, and leverage native connectivity for Azure Blob storage, Google BigQuery, and Microsoft Fabric SQL. Furthermore, our real-time VSAM Change Data Capture (CDC) engine allows organizations to stream live transactional updates directly to modern cloud warehouses, maximizing the value of heritage enterprise data.

Download the Unified Data Engineering Datasheet.

3. Mass distribution, localized delivery: ReportCaster 

Getting the right insights to frontline operational teams shouldn’t require manual administrative effort. While traditional reporting relies heavily on email inboxes, modern work happens inside active collaborative workspaces.

Building on our recent scheduling modernization—which introduced native distribution capabilities for Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Google Chat—WebFOCUS 9.3.8 continues to expand how our ReportCaster engine streams real-time analytics directly into active operational workflows.

From a unified, browser-native administrative console inside the WebFOCUS Hub, teams can:

• Push live workspace alerts: Stream personalized metrics or threshold alerts straight into active team channels and group chats.

• Automate cloud storage archiving: Burst and deliver complex regulatory summaries directly into corporate Microsoft SharePoint or AWS S3 buckets.

• Execute dynamic data segmentation: Slice a single core database output into thousands of personalized, secure PDF, Excel, or HTML documents, distributing custom variations automatically based on strict security permissions.

ReportCaster ensures your workforce receives trusted metrics exactly where they collaborate, while giving compliance teams centralized oversight.

Watch the latest ReportCaster demo.

4. Modern Canvas & Self-Service BI Content Authoring: WebFOCUS Designer

To support organizations looking to streamline their analytics stack, the latest release of ibi WebFOCUS Designer continues to build a unified bridge from heritage capabilities straight into a single web canvas. It allows business analysts doing agile data discovery and core developers building pixel-perfect operational applications to work within a continuous browser session.

Key capabilities enhanced in version 9.3.8 include:

• Complex filter expressions: Apply layered logical conditions (such as nested AND/OR rules) natively to global page filter menus for deeper data discovery.

• In-browser presentation & styling controls: Complete layout authority and report border styling controls natively inside the browser, giving developers precision formatting control.

• Dynamic interaction controls: Advanced reference lines, dynamic slider filters, contextual AHTML column menus, and single-click conversions from calendar pickers to compact dropdown selectors for cleaner dashboards.

By uniting pixel-perfect operational reporting and self-service visual exploration on the same canvas, WebFOCUS Designer accelerates application delivery while eliminating tool sprawl across departments.

Download the WebFOCUS Designer Datasheet.

The path forward: empowering your organization

At a fundamental level, version 9.3.8 of the ibi™ WebFOCUS® Data & Analytics Platform elevates analytics for everyone across the enterprise.

We are empowering frontline business users to author visual content and discover root-cause insights conversationally. We are enabling data engineers to automate data trust at the source. We are equipping enterprise architects to bridge legacy data assets directly into multi-cloud environments.

I invite you to explore the new features in 9.3.8, watch our video demonstrations, and see how ibi continues to deliver dependable, cutting-edge technology designed for the modern AI era.