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Information Builders recently released version 7.6 of Active Reports, a part of its WebFocus family of business intelligence (BI) products. Active Reports now includes dashboard capabilities that enable organizations to generate personalized dashboards for just about any user, including those who are mobile. Active Reports can dynamically generate data for reports and dashboards without having to interact with the database every time and can drill down into, filter and pivot across data without complicated database query interfaces. It thus can reduce the tasks and resources required to access data and create personalized views, which also decreases the costs and time it takes to get information to individuals.
With this new version, Information Builders makes BI more mobile, bringing information to people when and where they need it, and more efficient, reducing needed IT time and costs. Ventana Research believes that these new capabilities potentially will make BI more pervasive in the enterprise by providing access to information through e-mail, mobile devices and Web browsers. Information Builders’ approach to BI also integrates with established Microsoft technologies, particularly Office and SQL Server, without upgrades being required. Organizations should examine how to reach the larger community of potential users of BI and consider whether Active Reports can do this in a less costly manner than other approaches to deploying dashboards and reports.
About the Author
Mark is responsible for the overall direction of Ventana Research, and drives the global performance management research agenda, which covers both business and technology areas. He researches the specific areas of Workforce Performance Management and Business Process Management. He is also the Director of the Intelligent Business Performance Management Conference and the community editor of IntelligentBPM.com, the industry's first independent forum for information, news, and discussion about business performance management. An industry veteran with more than 17 years of industry experience in business and technology, before founding Ventana Research, Mark worked at companies including SAP, META Group, Oracle and IRI Software. Mark can be contacted at .
