Jaspersoft 3.7: Visualize This

[This post returns us to my Jaspersoft 3.7 Enterprise Edition features series, after two short posts on important, timely Community matters. To catch you up, my earlier posts on this topic provided an overview of Jaspersoft 3.7 and a dive into its new integrated, in-memory analysis features.]

Many of the most important industry prognosticators cited advanced visualization as a “Top Ten BI Trend in 2010”. Two of my favorite Top Ten lists came from Lyndsay Wise and Nenshad Bardoliwalla. Coincidentally, both ranked advanced visualization seventh on their lists. No surprise, really, as huge growth in data volume, variety and veracity (truthfulness) creates an even more compelling need to discern the critical nuggets from the mountains of seemingly important morsels. What better way to mine information than through rich, interactive visualization techniques?

Jaspersoft 3.7 includes hundreds of Flash-based charts, maps and widgets, many of which are available in 3-D and can be animated. The goal is to provide the report and dashboard developer with richer tools to display information so that increasingly-sophisticated users can interact with and explore information to gain insight more rapidly and accurately.

It’s exciting stuff. Animated 3-D gauges and charts can drive powerful new insights. But the biggest “Aha’ reaction occurs when customers consider using interactive maps that bring the geographic dimension of data to life. So much enterprise data exploration could begin with a geographic component, which enables greater understanding and faster insight, but the data is not placed in the context of an actual map because this type of visualization has traditionally been difficult or unavailable. IT systems management information, consumer packaged goods distribution flow, retail location performance, and financial services customer profitability analysis are all customer conversations I’ve had in the past few months – and which will be improved through the more advanced, interactive visualization capabilities available in Jaspersoft 3.7.

Here’s a screen shot of a Jaspersoft Dashboard displaying Flash-based charts (3-D pie and column) and an interactive map. Note that all of these receive commands from a common input control. Note also the mashed-up web content below the graphs, which delivers relevant contextual information for the dashboard user (and which can also receive common input control).

How could you use interactive, animated 3-D charts, maps and widgets to make your data much more useful? To learn more about this and other features of Jaspersoft 3.7, check out our brief demo. I look forward to your comments.

Brian Gentile
Chief Executive Officer
Jaspersoft