BIRT and ActuateOne: The Number One Business Intelligence Solution for SaaS Providers and Independent Software Vendors The architecture match was significant. [With the] open source-based BIRT technology platform, APIs and XML rolling up in an extensible open architecture, the technology roadmap and scaling are key. Actuate has enabled us to deliver complex functionality in far less time. Faster time to market results in cost savings, revenue growth potential and higher customer retention as well. A software application should have the ability to make data sing, to increase its visibility so that it becomes more useful to end users. It should be flexible and customizable, and not too heavy or complex. ActuateOne, built on BIRT, provides everything software companies need to implement Business Intelligence (BI): It is dynamic, flexible and easy to use. ActuateOne is an open source-based BI suite that meets the dynamically changing needs of information consumers ranging from average business users to power users via interactive reports and dashboards, ad-hoc queries or high-powered analytics. Leonid Igolnik, Vice President, Engineering at Taleo The #1 Open Source BI Technology It s no coincidence that BIRT along with value-added commercial products from Actuate is now used by more than one million developers and recently passed the 10 million downloads mark. Adoption is increasing, particularly among Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers. These vendors are now embedding the highly customizable, visually rich data analysis and reporting environment into their software products, rather than choosing to develop tools of their own. SUMMARY > PARTNERS PROFILED Sybase Taleo JBoss by Red Hat Integeo AssetWorks ABS Nautical Systems REPORTED Increased revenue Expanded market opportunities, broadened portfolio Ease of integration Architectural flexibility with access to a wide variety of data sources A significant increase in customer satisfaction, with an interactive and scalable BI solution Incredibly fast time to market, saving money Dramatic cost reduction in development and maintenance Large community support
The BI Platform for ISVs and SaaS Providers ActuateOne --Actuate s value-added product suite built on BIRT, the technology created for the Eclipse BIRT open source project --offers new deployment options for organizations seeking to provide customers with multiple choices. In addition to on-premise deployment, Actuate offers new options such as SaaS, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and cloud deployments. These options allow organizations to host and deploy applications in the most expedient, costeffective yet secure way possible, while also extending on-demand information services to mobile users. For ISVs and SaaS providers, ActuateOne s scalable, flexible and embeddable reporting and BI platform is a perfect fit. Actuate s OEM partners consistently say that Actuate BIRT is the only BI and reporting technology that seamlessly adopts the look and feel of their application, provides an intuitive and fully interactive end-user experience, and offers a comprehensive set of APIs to all BI and reporting functionality. Why BIRT and ActuateOne? Many ISVs and SaaS providers are choosing BIRT instead of developing their own reporting tools. BIRT s open source architecture offers an unprecedented opportunity for software companies to add flexible and affordable information consolidation and reporting functionality to their existing portfolio of products and services. IT developers can create BIRT content and embed it into their own user interface, offering decision-supporting information in near real time to users via a full range of consumer platforms. Those end users can then easily refine and polish content without IT intervention. BIRT output is displayed within their application and not as a separate tool, providing seamless presentation. BIRT has become the top BI tool for ISVs and SaaS providers: 1. Reduced cost and containment - BIRT is the number-one open source-based BI and reporting technology available today. Actuate redefines the BI category by moving away from a set of disparate tools to a suite of integrated capabilities within a single environment: a common architecture for development and deployment, utilizing one server and one design for a seamless unified enduser experience. BIRT allows developers to quickly deliver powerful and highly intuitive BI applications for users to interact with and manipulate their own data and reports. And, because IT involvement is kept to a minimum, there is not only a reduction in a software company s cost of support and maintenance, but a dramatic increase in customer satisfaction and user adoption. Engineering costs are reduced as well, thanks to BIRT s collaborative development methods and component reuse, in addition to its ease of integration with a diversified range of other products, information sources and apps. 2. Increased customer satisfaction, drive adoption and revenue - In a highly competitive market, retaining customers and ensuring that they continue to use a product means offering them the flexibility to customize and create information reports from their apps and products. Actuate does that with BIRT s highly intuitive end-user interface. SYBASE > PRODUCT Sybase Workspace for Data Analytics Integrate BIRT to complete Sybase s design tool with a reporting plug-in for Sybase IQ analytics server Ease of integration, with complete and flexible environment for client s development needs Provides reporting system with data access, transformation and presentation features with compelling reports A single tool for developers to manage all components of building out an analytics solution with Sybase IQ 2
ASSETWORKS Leading provider of Enterprise Asset Management solutions Figure 1: AssetWorks AiM software, with BIRT reporting. 3. Expedited time to market - Clients are constantly amazed by how fast it is to integrate and deploy Actuate products. (Taleo, for example, went to market in under 120 days read on to find out more.) 4. Extended community of BIRT developers - Over one million developers use BIRT worldwide. What better assurance is there that your embedded BI tool has a large pool of strong development feedback, support and code updates? 5. Unequaled scalability - Underpinning BIRT s adoption by ISVs and SaaS providers is the extremely scalable BIRT iserver, designed to ensure that BIRT deployments are not locked into a particular end-user experience, hardware configuration or data structure. The technology easily scales to thousands or millions of users as your business grows. 6. Recognized leadership - Actuate and its value-added offerings for BIRT have been recognized as a leader in The Forrester Wave : Open Source Business Intelligence (BI), Q3 2010 report. The Forrester Wave report, created as a global vendor assessment tool, rated Actuate as a leader based on Actuate s pure play BI application and highly scalable, function-rich reporting. BIRT and ActuateOne are used by companies all over the world, from small start-ups to global leaders. In fact, with over 10 million downloads, BIRT is the leading open source Business Intelligence tool worldwide among software vendors. Among Actuate s 300-plus OEM and SaaS partners are some of the biggest names in software, including Cisco, Computer Associates, BMC Software, GE Healthcare, Infor and VeriSign. Other leading ISVs and SaaS partners include: AssetWorks AssetWorks is the company behind AiM, an enterprise asset management software solution that, among other things, helps colleges and government agencies manage their physical assets, tracking maintenance and construction requirements in all of their facilities whether those facilities equal two million square feet or 50 million square feet. All of the information that AiM collects is rolled into a BIRT-fuelled report, allowing clients to keep a close eye on the status of their facilities. BIRT reports track key performance indicators, such as: What s the cost per square foot of managing a building? How much money is being spent on supporting specific organizations? How much work is AiM Enterprise Asset Management BIRT is embedded to provide capabilities for clients to manage and track KPIs on their physical assets > CLIENTS State of Utah s Division of Facilities Construction and Management Wyoming School Facilities Commission Drive customer satisfaction and retention with complete KPIs and statuses of physical assets instantaneously Information is readily available to decision-makers anywhere, on demand 3
INTEGEO Leading provider of Geographic Information System and Location Intelligence solutions Map Intelligence (MI) Figure 2: Map Intelligence, by Integeo, powered by BIRT. being spent on reactive maintenance as opposed to planned maintenance? That information is valuable and easily available at the fingertips of AssetWorks clients, presented in a visually dynamic way. BIRT provides enterprise-wide portal functionality, giving them the ability to deliver bills in the form of a BIRT report, or invoice or serve reports with just a couple of clicks. And since both technologies are web based, that functionality is available anywhere, on demand. An example is State of Utah s Division of Facilities Construction and Management. This agency performs much the way a business does, acting as building manager for all state-owned facilities. Users need to be able to track all the facilities, monitoring every penny spent and reporting each detail to the agency in question. AssetWork s AiM software with the help of reporting capabilities from Actuate BIRT helps do just that. Another AssetWorks client, the Wyoming School Facilities Commission, oversees the school construction across the state of Wyoming. When a representative of the commission is asked to present at a meeting of its legislative body to report on the division s activities, he is able to thoroughly answer each question using AiM with the help of BIRT. Integeo Integeo s software solution, Map Intelligence, examines data in a location context, offering companies a fuller picture of their organization. Integeo brings mapping visualizations and analytical capabilities to a diverse range of customers, including federal, state and local government; banking and insurance organizations; and retail companies. Map Intelligence allows those clients to filter through areas, narrow down locations and access Google Map plug-ins as a way of seeing down to the street level; this helps them pinpoint which of their services might be necessary or redundant in any given location. Their clients including The Irish Society for Quality and Safety in Healthcare and the Australian Business Atlas want to generate thematic maps from their company data, cluster information based on geographic context, or examine their business through other location-based advanced visualizations. Integeo gives them the capacity to do so. Map Intelligence allows organizations to visualize their information better. BIRT provides the rich data visualizations that fuel that capability: the up-to-date information business users need to understand their organization clearly. The end result extends the power of BIRT by allowing organizations to present fully dynamic maps. BIRT adds mapping visualizations and dynamic analytical capabilities to MI for a diverse range of customers Access to Google Map plug-ins to see down to street level > CLIENTS Irish Society for Quality & Safety in Healthcare Australian Business Atlas Drives customer satisfaction with fully dynamic maps within GIS applications Eliminates the need for expert programming for companies wishing to integrate maps and spatial analytics into applications 4
JBOSS BY RED HAT > PRODUCT JBoss Enterprise Middleware: JBoss Enterprise Application Platform & JBoss Developer Studio Figure 3: A Sybase WorkSpace Data Analytics report created through BIRT. Integrate with BIRT through Open Source project JBoss Tools JBoss by Red Hat Red Hat is the world s leading provider of open source solutions and has consistently delivered value-based solutions across every industry vertical since its inception in 1993. Red Hat integrated BIRT into the JBoss Community based on the increased community participation, input and interest from users. The JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and the JBoss Developer Studio are two commercial offerings from Red Hat, integrated with BIRT through the open source project JBoss Tools, via a plug-in that works with JBoss Developer Studio enabling BIRT reports to be deployed in Seam applications and through data sources via a hibernate ODA driver. The combination of Java application services from JBoss Enterprise Middleware and data visualization capabilities from BIRT enables the deployment of Rich Information Applications of all types and sizes. This means development organizations can repurpose people and budget to address more projects with significantly less risk. Companies can also more readily deliver the applications and services that differentiate their business. BIRT together with JBoss presents a number of significant benefits. Many of the most important benefits are provided by the valueadd products and services that Actuate and Red Hat offer; these products and services take open source technology and elevate it to an enterprise-class, pre-built platform capable of handling the most demanding scale and workloads while providing users with even more dynamic, interactive and useful experiences in working with information. Sybase Sybase has a wide range of products meant to enhance its core solutions and to build in functionality designed to respond to the most modern of needs. Sybase WorkSpace for Data Analytics is one example, designed to enhance the Sybase IQ analytics server. BIRT provides several useful resources for the Sybase IQ developer, adding value to the data analytics tool by allowing a rich variety of reports via the Sybase WorkSpace for Data Analytics toolkit. Sybase chose BIRT largely for its open architecture and ease of use and because BIRT could easily be plugged into the Sybase tool. BIRT also provides the important resource of a reporting system that provides data access, data transformation and presentation features that integrate into a Java/J2EE application to produce compelling reports. Adds rich data visualizations to web applications built with JBoss Enterprise Middleware Enables deployment of Rich Information Applications of all types and sizes Provides companies with a set of technologies to readily deliver applications and services that differentiate their business 5
TALEO Leading provider of on-demand talent management solutions Human Resource Management Sybase WorkSpace for Data Analytics with BIRT provides a streamlined and comprehensive development environment for Sybase IQ architects and developers. Taleo Figure 4: Powered by BIRT, TBE Insight helps Taleo deliver an interactive experience to its customers. A leading SaaS talent management solutions provider, Taleo helps customers gain a better understanding of their most critical asset their talent and grow their businesses. Customers outgrew the homegrown reporting in Taleo Business Edition (TBE), demanding greater scalability, dashboards, analytics and ease of use. They turned to Actuate and BIRT to help them close the talent intelligence gap. Taleo s key internal challenges were finding an experienced OEM vendor that could adapt to its SaaS production model and offered rapid time to market, ease of integration and an open architecture. This challenge drove Taleo to incorporate Actuate BIRT technology into the TBE Insight module of its SaaS-based talent management software. The new BIRT-based Insight module in Taleo Business Edition (TBE) enables clients to access reports, analytics and dashboards from any TBE module, and was successfully deployed and launched in under 120 days. Managers can now run their own queries and easily share information with colleagues. Actuate BIRT has provided new functionality and helps Taleo sell to larger prospects. ABS Nautical Systems A leading software provider to the maritime industry, ABS Nautical Systems (NS) and its NS5 modular ERP system help customers manage principal operating expenses associated with vessels and offshore rigs. NS provided basic scheduled reporting and offered ad-hoc reports in response to specific customer requests, but customers asked for better functionality, including the ability to easily extract and create both standard and custom reports. This customer challenge drove ABS Nautical Systems to incorporate BIRT into its NS5 fleet management software. With its own expertise in Java development, combined with existing reporting functionality, NS searched for an informationreporting tool it could leverage and seamlessly embed in its software one that would deliver for NS and its customers, both immediately and with expansion. The BIRT open source platform allows for a great deal of flexibility in the development stages. Additionally, the ease of integration into NS was a great benefit and Actuate s roadmap showed that Actuate BIRT-based offerings were well suited for its needs. After considering several vendors, NS selected Actuate and BIRT for its rich information application solution. > CHALLENGES Customer demand for enhanced analytics, more data sources Rapid growth pushed limits of scalability Integrate OEM BI solution into multitenancy SaaS model Open, interactive and scalable BI solution Ease of integration, development flexibility Incredibly fast time to market, saving money Drive customer satisfaction, empower users with selfservice performance insight Expand new market opportunities 6
Conclusion Adoption of BIRT is growing steadily among ISVs and SaaS providers. They are choosing to embed BIRT s highly customizable, visually rich, open source-based data analysis and reporting environment into their software products as an alternative to developing their own reporting tool. This allows them to focus their resources while saving them money and accelerating their time to market with enhanced BI capabilities. Actuate: The people behind BIRT Actuate founded and co-leads the Eclipse BIRT open source project. ActuateOne is a unified suite of products for rapidly developing and deploying BIRT-based custom Business Intelligence applications and information applications. Applications built with ActuateOne provide one user experience regardless of task or skill level; are supported by one server for any deployment, including cloud; and are built with one BIRT design that can access and integrate any data source, including high-volume print streams. ActuateOne adds rich data visualizations, including interactivity, dashboards, analytics, and deployment options to web and mobile BIRT applications, helping organizations drive revenue through higher customer satisfaction and improved operational performance. Actuate has over 4,600 customers globally in a diverse range of business areas including financial services and the public sector. Founded in 1993, Actuate is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with offices worldwide. Actuate is listed on NASDAQ under the symbol BIRT. For more information, visit the company s web site at www.actuate.com or visit the BIRT community at http://www.birt-exchange.com. To read more about these and other software vendors success stories, go to http://www.birt-exchange.org/org/resources/ assets/?articleid=20957. Learn how other software companies are using BIRT at: http://www.birt-exchange.com/ be/partners/birt-adopters/. ABS NAUTICAL SYSTEMS Integrated fleet management software for marine and offshore industries NS5 fleet management software > CHALLENGES Customer need for better, more timely reports Enable customers to self-serve for ad hoc needs and regulatory requirements Integrate Actuate s open source-based BIRT reporting with NS5 fleet management software Faster time to market, broadened portfolio Ease of integration, development flexibility Increased visibility into operations aid customer efficiency Users empowered to customize reports Actuate Corporation 2207 Bridgepointe Parkway Suite 500 San Mateo, CA 94404 Tel: (888) 422-8828 Web: http://www.actuate.com 7