Insight Into Any Data Source

I’ve spent many hours talking to customers who are driven to respond assertively to the manybusiness challenges and opportunities presented to them nowadays. Top on their list is harnessing the deluge of data available to them to make more timely, fact-based decisions, which I’ve written about previously. Their businesses depend upon it. So, I’m proud that today, Jaspersoft is in better position than ever to help its customers rise to this challenge and create new opportunities.

Yesterday, we launch Jaspersoft v4.1. It may be just a single digit improvement from v4.0, but it’s a giant leap toward delivering insight from any data source (and released just four months after Jaspersoft 4!). Utilizing the enormous architectural improvements and the ground-breaking UI framework designed into Jaspersoft 4, we are quickly delivering a simple, elegant new interface to ROLAP-based, multi-dimensional data. And we’ll deliver that interface purely within our natural, web-based, drag-and-drop environment that allows querying of and interaction with nearly any data source. Here’s a sample screen to provide a view of this new ROLAP interface.

In total, our Jaspersoft BI Server architecture now supports integrated analysis capabilities across relational, OLAP and Big Data sources. Which means that our broad array of Big Data connectors can be used to bring gobs of data into this unified analytic and reporting environment, yielding new business insight simply and at an unbelievably low cost. Kind of makes the deluge of data seem tame-able.

Jaspersoft is fortunate in that its product’s breadth of use affords us a front row seat to some of the most demanding reporting and analytic requirements in the world. We know that scalability and performance will become ever-more important as data sizes and expectations for near real-time results grow. Clever then that Jaspersoft v4.1 comes wrapped in a native 64-bit installer, which allows this powerful BI server to be up-and-running on the most powerful hardware with the click of a button. Smells like more timely, fact-based decisions are on the horizon for organizations of any size.

Because this powerful, scalable, integrated analytic BI server still comes with our incredibly affordable commercial open source subscription pricing, we’re doing all we can to eliminate the barriers for anyone to create their own new opportunities.

My only hope is that everyone will check out Jaspersoft v4.1 before they consider using any other BI server. To learn more about our new product, you can check out the updated information on our web site or consider attending an up-coming webinar.

In the meantime, all comments and feedback are encouraged. Let me know what you think.

Brian Gentile

Chief Executive Officer

Jaspersoft

Meet the Jaspersoft Business Intelligence Rock Star Award Winners

This year, Jaspersoft was proud to start a new tradition – an awards program designed to recognize excellence in Jaspersoft implementations by customers and members of our open source community. In our search for the most creative and effective deployments, we found that Jaspersoft BI touches almost every industry sector: Telecommunications, Computer Software and Technology, Higher Education, Financial Services, and many more - as well as almost every region across the globe.

The Jaspersoft BI Rock Star awards, recently announced at JasperWorld 2011 in San Francisco, recognized three of our customers whose BI innovations excelled.

The winners for the inaugural awards were:

· Dave Jarvis- White Magic Software, British Columbia, Canada

· John Kearney- The Commonwealth Medical College, Scranton, Pennsylvania

· George Mehok- Revol Wireless, Independence, Ohio

Dave Jarvis, our Grand Prize winner and principal at White Magic Software, developed a Climate Reports tool with JasperReports, iReport, and the R programming language to display local climate trends. The software has been used by Environment Canada, environmentalists, climatologists, and the general public. The purpose of the software is to give businesses (such as vineyards) that are climate-sensitive in nature the ability to adapt as our climate changes. One of the reasons Dave developed the climate reports tool was to produce an interface that was unique amongst tools offered in the climate/weather industry. By unique Dave means, "usable by the general public."

John Kearney at The Commonwealth Medical College (TCMC) purchased the Jaspersoft BI suite to query data and create reports from a data mart that houses the College’s Administrative Systems Portfolio. TCMC successfully built domain sets across eleven functional units, trained end users, and released the application in a production environment within 3 months of acquiring the Jaspersoft BI suite.

The rollout of the application was a huge success in the College. Units such as the Registrar, Admissions, Financial Aid, Payroll and Faculty Developments now have access to the raw data contained within the source systems for the first time, providing an immediate return on investment of the application. These users became the basis of the TCMC Jaspersoft user group and serve as an alternate means of “how to” within the College rather than needing to rely heavily on the IT department.

George Mehok at Revol Wireless utilized the full Jaspersoft BI suite to create a comprehensive data warehousing and business intelligence platform that provides:

Operational Reporting, Dashboards, Data Exchange and Business Analytics Tools. The most pervasive use of Revol’s Jaspersoft-based BI toolkit is Key Performance Indicator (KPI) reporting and dashboards. Because of the competitive nature of the wireless industry, it is critical that Revol Wireless track their performance at various levels, including company, region, store, and employee. Every report or dashboard includes a KPI to compare performance to targets – and that keeps them all focused on accountability.

Revol Wireless also uses BI analytics to uncover opportunities, validate assumptions and solve problems associated with sales, marketing and customer service performance. For example, they were able to identify ways to make their ecommerce purchasing process more effective using data analytics. The result was a 25-35% improvement in web-based credit card approvals on www.revol.com. That improvement translates into increased sales and ultimately more satisfied customers.

Jaspersoft’s Rock Stars embody the attributes of the new hero in the solution equation, the BI Builder, in order to achieve true BI success. Industry studies show that business Intelligence solutions achieve greater organizational success when information is used for decision-making. Jaspersoft’s flexible architecture, modern design, and cost-effective business model allow the BI Builder to be successful, helping to make BI pervasive within an organization.

We’d like to hear from more BI Builders about how they’re using Jaspersoft tools to make BI more widely deployed and useful. Let the comments begin.

Brian Gentile

Chief Executive Officer

Jaspersoft

Business Intelligence 2011: Toward the New IT World

The connected world of the Internet has given rise to a new software development paradigm – built on open, web standards and calling for access to resources and services that weren’t previously - or formally - integrated. Geoffrey Moore projects this trend into the modern organization by simply stating that,

“Tectonic shifts are occurring in today’s enterprise IT environment, which are giving rise to a network-centric stack of software.”

I absolutely agree.

Based on these shifts, the 3^rd generation of business intelligence is born, built on new and open technology standards and vastly new user and business requirements. Traditional BI platforms and technologies are poorly suited for this new world because of their complex and inflexible architectures. The customers and uses for which these aged, proprietary BI platforms were designed are already sated.

Enter a new breed of BI platform that is built specifically for this new IT world and you have the context and underpinnings for a new class of truly pervasive BI that holds the promise of reaching the 85% of knowledge workers who have been forsaken by traditional BI tools and approaches. I see significant and continued advancement toward this vision during 2011.

In early January, Jaspersoft launched a new version of its BI platform specifically architected for a networked world and the important, emerging class of users we call the “BI Builders.” The world needs a next-generation BI platform to be used as an integrated reporting and analysis service. We simply call it: Jaspersoft 4.

That’s business intelligence in 2011. You’re going to want to learn more about this BI future by attending JasperWorld 2011 (San Francisco, February 7 – 9). As always, your feedback is requested.

Brian Gentile

Chief Executive Officer

Jaspersoft

A BI Platform to Tame Big Data

Big data is a popular topic these days. Though often misunderstood and commonly misrepresented, few deny that the volume and variety of data types now available to an enterprise is skyrocketing. In a separate article on the TDWI web site, I’ve tried to describe the likely sources of value to be derived from this deluge of data. In short, I see the harnessing of big data as an enormous opportunity.

Which is why Jaspersoft today announces the most comprehensive collection of Big Data connectors available from any Business Intelligence provider. In fact, we broadly consider three distinct categories of Big Data sources – all of which can now be natively accessed from Jaspersoft’s BI suite and very affordably deliver new value for an organization. These three categories are:

• Hadoop – Jaspersoft supports Hadoop via the Hive SQL interface, reading files via HDFS including the Avro file format, as well as via HBase.

• NoSQL – Jaspersoft offers NoSQL support for the following, broadly recognized major categories of data stores: Key Value Stores, Document Databases, BigTable Clones, Graph Databases, and Data Grid Caching among others. Jaspersoft’s open source projects for reporting against NoSQL technologies include: Cassandra, MongoDB, Riak, HBase, CouchDB, Neo4J, Infinispan, VoltDB and Redis. A non-open source connector is in beta for VMware GemFire.

• MPP Analytic Database – Jaspersoft supports IBM’s Netezza MPP analytic database data warehouse and soon will add commercial analysis support. Vertica and EMC Greenplum are also supported.

We are passionate about making most of these connectors available through an open source license (A/GPL), true to the origins of many Big Data projects. We also expect to commercialize some of these connectors over time, expecting that many enterprises will want fully-supported and tested products complete with a commercial contract from Jaspersoft.

By supporting this breadth and depth of Big Data file types and data stores, Jaspersoft is extending its leadership as the most modern and flexible business intelligence platform available today. At once, our customers can install and use the Jaspersoft BI suite in a traditional, on-premises server – or deploy our tools as a platform-as-a-service reporting and analytics layer in the cloud. Now this architectural flexibility includes the most complete support for Big Data types in the industry.

I encourage you to learn more about our Big Data announcement, all the partners that have supported us through the development process, and the wide variety of connectors by going here. And, join us at the Strata Conference to see a demonstration of Jaspersoft 4 and its support for Big Data. Lastly, I also encourage you to participate in our Big Data community project, now live on JasperForge.

Of course, to see all-things Jaspersoft in action, I invite you to attend JasperWorld 2011, where the future of BI is now.

Brian Gentile

Chief Executive Officer

Jaspersoft

Jaspersoft 4: The New Foundation

Today Jaspersoft makes available the fourth major generation of its business intelligence platform and I couldn’t be more proud. I’m proud because we’ve taken the time, with this major new release, to make significant architectural improvements that a software company rarely (if ever) takes the time to do. In fact, we’ve re-written the upper third of the overall platform architecture, creating a new and remarkably powerful, consistent, extensible layer that adheres purely to web standards. We refer to this new layer as the Jaspersoft UI Framework and the flexibility and sophistication it will provide to BI Builders is unparalleled.

We’re big fans of the BI Builder as the key new hero in the BI solution equation. I’ve written about this important role separately. This technical professional goes by many titles (software engineer, product manager, report developer, DW/BI Manager, Data Architect, and so on) and is responsible for developing, integrating and / or customizing a BI solution for an end-user audience. The BI Builder applies critical domain knowledge and BI expertise to turn data into information and insight, enabling a broader (and arguably less-skilled) group of users to benefit from business intelligence – making BI genuinely more pervasive along the way.

So, what does Jaspersoft 4’s UI Framework provide for the BI Builder? Lots. Here’s the summary:

• Consumer Web Application-Style UI – the new UI Framework within Jaspersoft 4 delivers improved interactivity and usability typically found in consumer web applications. Its modern look and feel enhances web applications and gives end users access to intuitive, self-service BI.
• 100% Web Application Architecture – Jaspersoft 4 is the only BI environment that is 100% web application ready. The new UI Framework completes Jaspersoft’s architecture as a web application stack, from the back-end server to the front-end UI. Built on flexible, open web standards, Jaspersoft 4 can be deployed out-of-the-box on-premises, in a multi-tenant SaaS environment, or in the cloud.
• Easy BI Web Application Customization and Integration – the Jaspersoft UI architecture separates the content and presentation layers allowing quick and easy UI customization through simple markup changes in cascading style sheets (CSS), without impacting the underlying functionality. Customizations are automatically carried forward as new Jaspersoft versions are deployed. The UI framework enables fast creation of alternative UI themes for different users, different SaaS tenants and different devices. This capability also facilitates the integration of the Jaspersoft BI server within existing web applications.

All by itself, I expect the concept of UI themes will set the new standard in customized BI applications, similar to what WordPress has done for the blogging platform market. Here are two screen shots of two Jaspersoft 4 themes.

The first screen (above) shows the out-of-the-box look-n-feel we’re delivering with Jaspersoft 4 and the second (below) provides a visual sample of some of the many elements that can be easily and radically changed. Previously, such substantial changes would need to be performed by expert personnel with technical familiarity with the complete platform. Now, these customizations can be done by any web designer or a savvy IT person. Customizing the UI of a BI application has traditionally been out-of-reach for most organizations – but now, with Jaspersoft 4, it won’t be.

Now that we’ve taken the time to create an even more flexible and sophisticated architecture, you can expect an impressive array of innovation coming on top of this. That’s because Jaspersoft 4 provides our customers and community with the foundation for the future. Stay tuned.

Jaspersoft 4 is available now and there is much more information available here. Take a look - I’ll be thrilled to get your feedback and comments.

P.S. I invite you to a complete and behind-the-scenes review of Jaspersoft 4 during JasperWorld 2011 (February 7-9 in San Francisco).

Brian Gentile
Chief Executive Officer
Jaspersoft

A New Day, A New Forge (JasperForge, that is)

It was July 2008 when we initially launched what is today our modern JasperForge community web site. How proud we were. Shiny new features all designed to make our community members more capable, engaged, and productive. Now, we’re just as proud of the new version of JasperForge that made its debut a few weeks ago.

How to expand on some pretty sophisticated features already delivered? Our initial Forge already sported features like JasperBabylon, the section of our site where community members can help translate and localize Jaspersoft’s core open source products – or feature voting which allows community members to help prioritize which features are the most important to add or improve next. And, we had already delivered some relatively unmatched scalability and performance, as our Forge hosts more than 180,000 registered community members who collectively log nearly 1M page views and thousands of Forum entries every month.

So, advancing our already advanced Forge platform wasn’t easy. Thanks to our colleagues at Essentia, though, we did it. And so we are now proudly live with the latest release of what may be the open source world’s most advanced individual Forge. What’s key to this new release?

• Upgraded monitoring and tracking of total visitors to a project page
• New project download monitoring
• 40+ canned reports to improve measurement of key site metrics
• Mercurial support for a de-centralized, high performance version control system
• Advanced search features to enable faster, more granular results

Of all the new capabilities, I may be most proud that JasperServer is now integrated within the JasperForge platform. This new Forge delivers a wide variety of Administrative reports and analyses designed to allow thorough review of the traffic and activity within the Forge community. Currently only available for Administrators, you can expect future Forge releases to expose relevant analytics to the entire Community.

In summary, I couldn’t have said it any better than Jaspersoft’s technical co-founder Giulio Toffoli:

"I'm extremely pleased to see Jaspersoft broaden JasperForge.org with a number of features that will increase productivity and ease of use. These are big benefits to community users, especially those who rely on low-cost, open source BI. The ongoing improvements to the forge tools re-enforces why Jaspersoft's user community continues to thrive and grow."

If you’ve not stopped by the new Forge, this is your formal invitation to do so. Comments and feedback encouraged.

Brian Gentile
Chief Executive Officer
Jaspersoft

JasperWorld: The Open Source BI Conference

During the past few years, Jaspersoft has (mostly) quietly hosted a wide number of local “meet ups” called JasperDirections. These evening events bring together several of our closest partners along with attendees from our community and customer base. The results have been fantastic, as we’ve hosted nearly 30 JasperDirections events around the world in the past two years, meeting with thousands of customers and partners in the process. As valuable as our customers and community tell us these events have been, I have to believe that Jaspersoft has benefited even more from the interaction and feedback we receive that helps us constantly calibrate our company and product direction. To all of you who have attended a JasperDirections event, you have my thanks and appreciation.

But, now the time has finally come. We’ve reached the point where adding an annual event to these local meet-ups is required. Our thousands of commercial customers (across more than 100 countries), nearly 1,000 software subscription customers, and more than 180,000 community members require and deserve the next step: JasperWorld.

And so we’re in the countdown to our inaugural JasperWorld event, to be held in San Francisco on February 7 – 9. We’ve chosen the Hyatt Regency Fisherman’s Wharf for this first-ever event because of its landmark location and willingness to put up with a bunch of open source BI fanatics for a few days. And we’ve lined up some world-class speakers and entertainment as well.

I’m thrilled to announce that Howard Dresner will provide a keynote address on February 8 and Marten Mickos will do so on February 9. Howard is the well-known business intelligence analyst and industry expert who spent so many years at Gartner, then did an executive stint at Hyperion (until it was acquired by Oracle) and now is the principal of Dresner Advisory Services. Marten is the former CEO of MySQL, the current CEO of Eucalyptus Systems and has been a good friend to Jaspersoft for some time. I’m eager to share the stage with these gentlemen during JasperWorld.

We’re planning a wide variety of technical sessions that enable our partners, customers and community to learn, share and advance their BI agenda – all focused on Jaspersoft products and technologies. Of course, our technical founders (Teodor Danciu – JasperReports, and Giulio Toffoli – iReport) and many of our key technical staff members will attend, lead sessions and be available to meet with customers and community members. And, we have some great partners who will help sponsor this event, enriching the value for everyone. Lastly, we have some fun planned (of course) – Jaspersoft style. You’ll have to attend to learn more!

I hope to see you at JasperWorld 2011.

Brian Gentile
Chief Executive Officer
Jaspersoft