Streamlining the Process of Business Intelligence with JReport

Transcription

1 Streamlining the Process of Business Intelligence with JReport An ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES (EMA ) Product Summary from 2014 EMA Radar for Business Intelligence Platforms for Mid-Sized Organizations Written by John Myers October 2014 IT & DATA MANAGEMENT RESEARCH, INDUSTRY ANALYSIS & CONSULTING

2 Table of Contents Jinfonet Software JReport... 2 Key Observations... 3 EMA Radar Explained... 3 Value Leaders... 3 JReport Ranking Explained... 4 Deployment Cost Efficiency... 4 Deployment and Administration... 4 Cost Advantage... 5 Product Strength... 5 Architecture and Integration... 5 Product Functionality... 6 Vendor Strength... 7

3 The practices and the implementation of Business Intelligence (BI) are no longer reserved for large enterprises with dedicated Information Technology (IT) teams. Business intelligence practices such as reporting and analytics are making their way to businesses of all sizes. Smaller organizations once considered that business intelligence was beyond their capital budgets, staff resources and technical environments. These companies under 500 headcount, or their independently operating department brethren in larger enterprises, are often referred to as mid-sized organizations. These organizations are generally characterized by operating teams that due to operating constraints are focused more on effectively managing the top and bottom line of their businesses than they are on the technical elegance of how they operate their businesses. However, despite the focus on general business operations rather than technical implementations, mid-sized organizations have a strong interest in managing their businesses and utilizing all the resources at their disposal to drive revenue, lower costs and improve their margins. The technical drivers of global ecommerce and mobile applications are providing a level of information to mid-sized organizations that is unprecedented. Whether the information is made available via on-premises technology installations or cloud-based interfaces, mid-sized organizations find themselves in the midst of the same data tsunami that larger organizations have been experiencing for years. This is where business intelligence practices and technologies come into play. It is one thing to use these data sources for operational considerations such as ordering, shipping and billing. Yet, mid-sized organizations are moving beyond those transactional data uses to expand their knowledge of their business, their customers and their markets. Mid-sized organizations are finding that not only can they implement business intelligence practices and environments, but also those practices are providing them with an advantage over their competitors. Some studies indicate that as much as a 20% increase in business performance can be achieved by mid-sized organizations that use business intelligence technologies and practices when the competition does not take advantage of those same facilities. This EMA Radar report, prepared in partnership with WiseAnalytics 1 a leader in mid-sized business intelligence practices focuses on how business intelligence platforms meet the unique needs of the mid-sized marketplace and which influences have the most impact on the operation of those smaller businesses. Looking at 12 vendors in the business intelligence platform marketplace, EMA and WiseAnalytics found that mid-sized organizations could expect to derive robust benefit from the participating vendors in this EMA Radar report. Four (4) were rated as Value Leaders the highest-ranking category in the Radar evaluation. Another seven (7) of the 12 vendors were scored in the Strong Value the second-highest ranking category. This scoring shows that mid-sized organizations that are considering any of the solutions included in the EMA/WiseAnalytics Radar report will find significant value. Many of the solutions evaluated in this EMA Radar for Business Intelligence Platforms for Mid-Sized Organizations report have recognized the trends of cloud access, self-service and data discovery, and collaboration and information sharing. They have worked to expand their specific areas of product strength to bring these to the marketplace. In this Radar report, you will find the current state of the business intelligence platform market for mid-sized organizations. You will also find a detailed evaluation of JReport, developed by Jinfonet Software, a Value Leader in the report. 1 WiseAnalytics Mid-Sized Organizations are companies with less than 500 headcount or similarly sized independently operating departments within larger enterprises. PAGE 1

4 Jinfonet Software JReport Jinfonet Software develops and markets the JReport product suite, a business intelligence and reporting solution, with the goal of simplifying the complexity of data visualization and analysis. With an extensible API set and flexible architecture, JReport embeds easily into any application or OEM product for Java and.net environments. JReport s reporting and data visualization enables data consumers to make better business choices. With customizable, highly scalable dashboards, visualizations and reports in any format, Jinfonet meets the information delivery requirements of any organization. JReport supports a wide variety of clients across many industries such as: Financial services Manufacturing Government Telecom Healthcare Jinfonet Software was founded in 1998 and has focused on embeddable reporting, data analysis, and visualization since then. The company is privately held and is headquartered in Rockville, MD. In the 2014 EMA/WiseAnalytics Radar for Business Intelligence Platforms for Mid-Sized Organizations, JReport was reviewed along with 11 other business intelligence platforms. EMA assessed Jinfonet Software s JReport to be one of the EMA Radar Value Leaders, as it demonstrated above average scores in all five evaluation categories. Jinfonet (JReport) AVERAGE Architecture & Integration Functionality Deployment & Administration VALUE LEADER Vendor Strength Cost Advantage PAGE 2

5 The overall strengths of the JReport platform center on its product and implementation cost advantages as well as the flexibility of its solution architecture. JReport s cost advantages are in the form of hard dollar budget considerations, implementation resources and time to value. The overall flexibility of embedding, configuration and deployment based on the needs of the implementing organization also demonstrates JReport s advantages over many of the other evaluated business intelligence platforms. Key Observations High performance: JReport is a BI platform based on a clustering technology that tolerates simultaneous points of failure and supports high-end performance and scalable implementations. Multiple implementation strategies: Strategies allow for both on-premises and cloud-based implementations to provide flexibility and choice of technical strategy. Configuration simplicity: Multiple configuration and usage patterns serve both the technical and business stakeholder. Data source connections: Connections to traditional structured, leading edge multi-structured, and unstructured big data sources to provide mid-sized organizations with the ability to utilize all the data sources available to them on a single platform. EMA Radar Explained Taking the information from each individual vendor s scores, vendors are aligned according to Value Categories to provide a context between vendors. The scores for deployment and administration and cost advantage are combined into an overall deployment cost efficiency score. The scores for architecture and integration and product functionality are combined to provide an overall product strength score. Used together, these scores identify the following categories: Value Leader Strong Value Targeted Value Limited Value The participating vendors in the EMA/WiseAnalytics Radar report demonstrate strong implementation value for mid-sized organizations. Four (4) of the 12 participating vendors were rated as Value Leaders including Jinfonet Software (JReport), and another seven (7) were scored in the Strong Value category. This scoring shows that mid-sized organizations that are considering any of the solutions included in the EMA/WiseAnalytics Radar report will find significant value. Value Leaders Value Leaders represent solutions that achieved the best combinations of product strength and deployment cost efficiency. Product strength is based on support for the EMA Business Intelligence Continuum. The EMA Business Intelligence Continuum reflects not literal requirements, but the functional aspects of each of the building blocks for business intelligence. These building blocks include: Data acquisition Data management Business analytics Knowledge delivery Actionable intelligence PAGE 3

6 Platforms that combine the functional elements of the EMA Business Intelligence Continuum along with advanced architecture and integration functionality while optimizing the resources required to implement a business intelligence environment for mid-sized organizations have the highest product strength scores. This balance of functionality with attributes for efficient time to value represents superior options for mid-sized organizations to implement a business intelligence environment. In the EMA Radar for Business Intelligence Platforms for Mid-Sized Organizations, JReport 12 was categorized as a Value Leader. JReport displays the value that mid-sized organizations look for in a BI platform. From flexible implementation options across on-premises and cloud models to a wide range of options for data acquisition, JReport provides an array of architecture and integration options. In addition, JReport delivers the type of product functionality for a BI platform that often is only available from much larger vendors. JReport offers an array of analytical features, from an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the do it yourself developer to Visual Analysis functionality a self-service data discovery interface for business stakeholders. These features translated into a Top-5 product strength score. Along with high product strength scores, JReport earned a strong deployment cost efficiency score, which is based on the ability of JReport to meet multiple deployment and administration objectives. With strong application performance features and ease of deployment configuration functions, JReport received the second highest deployment cost efficiency score among the evaluated vendors. JReport Ranking Explained Above, the combined components of the EMA Radar for Business Intelligence Platforms for Mid-Sized Organizations were explained to categorize the participating vendors. As you saw in the EMA Radar chart above, Jinfonet Software and JReport scored well above average against the scores of those vendors. In this section, the individual components are described in the context of how well the JReport platform scored within those areas. Deployment Cost Efficiency The criteria for deployment cost efficiency span two topical areas deployment and administration and cost advantage. The following are the primary evaluation criteria used as part of this research and analysis within each of those areas: Deployment and Administration Deployment and administration represents the ability of a software platform to improve time to value or the stage at which the business intelligence platform is providing meaningful value to a mid-sized organization and how well the organization supports an implementing organization with its deployment. JReport s deployment and administration score was well above the average due to the wide range of deployment options provided by the platform. Originating from a heritage that combines elements of both Java software development and licensed software implementations, JReport allows mid-sized organizations to make business decisions on how they implement their BI solutions as opposed to tolerating the technical limitations of their software. JReport s strengths in embedding enable OEM and SaaS applications to integrate reporting, analysis and visualization capabilities directly into their applications. Using multiple API access points and an architectural approach that supports both standalone and embedded implementation, JReport flexes to meet the needs of most deployment decisions. PAGE 4

7 The combination of diverse deployment options and the breadth of configuration options demonstrates why JReport has a strong deployment and administration score. The options to configure JReport range from a business stakeholder-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) to a more application developercentric API interface. By utilizing both of these options, Jinfonet allows mid-sized organizations to flex to the right path for their teams. Cost Advantage Cost advantage in this EMA Radar evaluation refers to not just the capital, or hard dollar investment, associated with a business intelligence platform. It rather represents the overall investment in human assets, capital costs and time resources associated with the implementation of a business intelligence platform to a stage of providing value to a mid-sized organization. JReport provides a significant set of cost advantages through its licensing model and breadth of implementation options. The Jinfonet licensing model for JReport is based on the number of CPU cores that the application utilizes to process information. This model allows mid-sized organizations to make either a commercial decision based on how much processing power they wish to utilize with their BI platform; or they can make a performance decision based on the response time their analytical and reporting requirements need. For commercial purposes, mid-sized organizations on a budget can manage the level of hardware associated with their BI platform. For performance reasons, mid-sized organizations will have a defined level of cost associated with the implementation. Since the licensing is based on the number of supported core processors, the number of users does not impact the overall cost. For internal projects, this model can allow mid-sized organizations to grow into a larger user base without incurring additional costs. For external applications, the ability to scale with the adoption of a business application without incurring additional costs is compelling. For mid-sized organizations that base their business models on significant user growth, a per seat license can present a business challenge. JReport allows those organizations to grow to match the organic pace of their business as opposed to running into limits associated with seat licensing. This licensing model, in association with JReport s ability to support both cloud and on-premises implementation models, means that mid-sized organizations can manage their costs based on business goals as opposed to technical constraints. Moreover, alternative flexible licensing models are available for OEM partners to meet their business goals. Product Strength Product strength covers the areas of architecture and integration and product functionality. The following details the breakdown of the criteria used as part of this research and analysis. Architecture and Integration A business intelligence platform s ability to support connectivity to and configuration of source data systems is part of the architecture and integration Radar evaluation. Associated with these integration attributes, the flexibility of implementation architecture that includes the configuration and management of internal data structures to support analytical workloads is considered. The ability of the JReport platform to integrate with multiple platforms contributes to its score for architecture and integration. The ability to link to multiple data sources, from structured to multi- PAGE 5

8 structured to unstructured, is key in the world of BI platforms. Traditional analytical and reporting use cases focus on the ability to connect to structured sources from relational databases (RDBMS) such as operational platforms and analytical environments. Consistent with the trends associated with big data and new data sources that represent multi-structured and unstructured data sources, JReport provides the ability to not only connect with multi-structured data sources, but also with structured sources to make the link between those two domains. The JReport architecture supports more than just multiple implementation models such as on-premises and cloud; the product also supports clustered performance architecture. This type of architecture allows organizations to scale to meet their business objectives. Aligned with the pricing model to allow for scaling without relative penalties, the Jinfonet architecture gives mid-sized organizations the ability to scale out on multiple commodity hardware resources as opposed to scaling up into a single large technology investment. Whether on-premises or in the cloud, the ability to make this type of clustering and scale implementation means that both uptime and performance can be attained without a massive investment. Product Functionality Support for the EMA Business Intelligence Continuum components represent the product functionality evaluation scores as mentioned above. The EMA Business Intelligence Continuum reflects the functional aspects of each of the categories. The components include: Data acquisition Data management Business analytics Knowledge delivery Actionable intelligence JReport satisfies these functional components with a set of core product feature functions that score above the average of the participating vendors. For data acquisition, JReport provides a long list of data sources from which to connect and provides multiple ways to configure those connections, an important quality for the self-service aspects of the mid-sized organization. Mid-sized organization business stakeholders are often looking for the ability to handle their own configurations for analytics and reporting. Since a significant portion of that effort is associated with the connection with and preparation of data sources, JReport enables the data acquisition component of the EMA Business Intelligence Continuum. In addition, JReport creates compressed in-memory cubes or on-disk detail data caches. Scheduling or running on-demand reports and dashboards using the in-memory cubes and caches results in performance benefits such that large numbers of concurrent users can interact with their visualizations without impacting the data sources. The JReport platform delivers considerable facilities for metadata management, which is a core component of the EMA BI Continuum Data Management. Metadata management allows organizations to manage their configurations for metrics, dimensions and time periods well beyond a single user or desktop implementation. The ability to use catalogs to provide a centralized resource for management and re-use means that JReport implementations exceed what might be considered for an average BI PAGE 6

9 platform. For mid-sized organizations, the ability to manage those definitions and shared resources means that their business and technical staff members can focus on how to implement business strategy rather than how to manage BI definitions. In terms of business analytics, JReport offers many ways to analyze information associated with their Visual Analysis and interactive visualization components. These facilities provide the ability to create standard multi-dimensional analytical and reporting solutions. In addition, the Visual Analysis and interactive visualization facilities are augments to the JReport 13 product, released after the EMA Radar evaluation was completed, that also add the ability to perform geographic and geo-location analysis. In addition to the ability to look at information across many of the traditional forms of analysis, JReport presents this information in multiple graphical formats, including the ios app JReport Mobile. The geographic and geo-location analysis is presented using either Google Maps or the OpenStreetMap external mapping packages. Visual Analysis and interactive visualization utilize all standard data visualization tools including bar, bench and line graphs. JReport combines these standards with the capacity to show time series bubble and line graphs over time. These dynamic elements are augmented with the functionality to create and present pixel-perfect reports on both an ad-hoc basis and scheduled to match standard delivery timeframes. Vendor Strength Vendor strength is a qualitative measure of vision and market credibility of the vendors included in the 2014 EMA Radar for Business Intelligence Platforms for Mid-Sized Organizations report. Components of vendor strength include: Product vision Go-to-market strategy Partnership channel Financial strength Jinfonet provides mid-sized organizations with the confidence that they have made an appropriate choice for a BI platform based on its above-average vendor strength score. JReport s product vision is based on a long history of executing on business intelligence platform projects with quality results. With over 1000 customers and a 95% customer retention rate, the ability of Jinfonet Software to execute on vision has been proven over the years. JReport is focused on meeting the needs of the mid-sized organization market in terms of its go-tomarket strategy. Years of experience in providing enterprise departments and small and medium sized businesses with economical solutions and ease of implementation features and functions proves that JReport has a strategy focused on the needs of mid-sized organizations. Jinfonet Software s worldwide strategy for supporting customers is supported by both direct channels based in North America and re-seller and support arrangements in Europe and Latin America. Jinfonet s emerging strategy for sales and implementation channels in the Asia Pacific region is based on their partners in Singapore and the development of a network in China. PAGE 7

10 About Wise Analytics WiseAnalytics is a boutique analyst firm that conducts research and provides advisory services to organizations. Founded in October 2007, WiseAnalytics is a privately run organization that focuses on the following: Consulting, advisory services, and targeted research for small and mid-sized organizations looking to implement business intelligence solutions, including data warehousing, dashboards, and analytics. Market research to identify industry trends, adoption of technologies and solutions, and the fit of vendor products within the business intelligence market. Analyst services and marketing support to solution providers within the business intelligence and data visualization space. About Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. Founded in 1996, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) is a leading industry analyst firm that provides deep insight across the full spectrum of IT and data management technologies. EMA analysts leverage a unique combination of practical experience, insight into industry best practices, and in-depth knowledge of current and planned vendor solutions to help EMA s clients achieve their goals. Learn more about EMA research, analysis, and consulting services for enterprise line of business users, IT professionals and IT vendors at or blogs.enterprisemanagement.com. You can also follow EMA on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. This report in whole or in part may not be duplicated, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or retransmitted without prior written permission of Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All opinions and estimates herein constitute our judgement as of this date and are subject to change without notice. Product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies. EMA and Enterprise Management Associates are trademarks of Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. in the United States and other countries. EMA, ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES, and the mobius symbol are registered trademarks or common-law trademarks of Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. Corporate Headquarters: 1995 North 57th Court, Suite 120 Boulder, CO Phone: Fax: