Business Objects Announces WebIntelligence 2.0; Advanced extranet features and new OLAP module deliver e-business intelligence.SAN JOSE San Jose, city, United States San Jose (sănəzā`, săn hōzā`), city (1990 pop. 782,248), seat of Santa Clara co., W central Calif.; founded 1777, inc. 1850. , Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 13, 1998--Business Objects (NASDAQ NASDAQ in full National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations U.S. market for over-the-counter securities. Established in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), NASDAQ is an automated quotation system that reports on :BOBJY), the world's leading provider of integrated enterprise decision support tools, today announced WebIntelligence(TM) 2.0, a new release of its enterprise query, reporting, and online analytical processing Online Analytical Processing, or OLAP (IPA: /ˈoʊlæp/), is an approach to quickly provide answers to analytical queries that are multidimensional in nature. (OLAP (OnLine Analytical Processing) Decision support software that allows the user to quickly analyze information that has been summarized into multidimensional views and hierarchies. OLAP tools are used to perform trend analysis on sales and financial information. ) solution for the world wide web. The new release offers features for extranet deployments, a new OLAP module for drilling and charting, and numerous new options for report creation and distribution. "Business today is converging con·verge v. con·verged, con·verg·ing, con·verg·es v.intr. 1. a. To tend toward or approach an intersecting point: lines that converge. b. on the internet. This creates a great opportunity for organizations to communicate and share data over the web with customers, partners, and suppliers," said Bernard Liautaud Bernard Liautaud is chairman and chief strategy officer of Business Objects. Liautaud cofounded Business Objects in 1990 and was chief executive officer until September 2005. , president and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of Business Objects. "We call this e-business (Electronic-BUSINESS) Doing business online. The term is often used synonymously with e-commerce, but e-business is more of an umbrella term for having a presence on the Web. intelligence, and like e-commerce e-commerce, commerce conducted over the Internet, most often via the World Wide Web. E-commerce can apply to purchases made through the Web or to business-to-business activities such as inventory transfers. , it drives huge opportunities for our customers to increase growth and profit, reduce cost, and forge forge Open furnace for heating metal ore and metal for working and forming, or a workshop containing forge hearths and related equipment. From earliest times, smiths (see smithing) heated iron in forges and formed it by hammering on an anvil. new business relationships. From business-to-business  This article or section needs copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone and/or spelling.You can assist by [ editing it] now. extranets, information providers selling data to corporations, and companies delivering customer and information services See Information Systems. to consumers, the web and business intelligence is creating a whole new paradigm New Paradigm In the investing world, a totally new way of doing things that has a huge effect on business. Notes: The word "paradigm" is defined as a pattern or model, and it has been used in science to refer to a theoretical framework. of universal data access - e-business intelligence." Business Objects is helping companies take advantage of these new opportunities with WebIntelligence 2.0. Advanced extranet features for e-business intelligence WebIntelligence 2.0 is the first web decision support (DSS (1) (Digital Signature Standard) A National Security Administration standard for authenticating an electronic message. See RSA and digital signature. (2) (Digital Satellite S ) tool to deliver advanced extranet features for deploying e-business intelligence applications. These features include: -0-
-- Signed applet. WebIntelligence 2.0 utilizes digital certificate
technology from VeriSign to digitally sign the Java applet,
providing added security through third-party verification. This
is important for companies deploying extranet applications
because a "signed" applet's security is guaranteed, downloaded
once, and stored in the browser cache. This state-of-the-art
security benefits end users by reducing network traffic and
increasing overall performance.
-- Firewall support. WebIntelligence 2.0 is designed to work with
multiple firewalls, thus eliminating one of the biggest
challenges to extranet deployment. To work in extranet
environments, DSS tools must be able to function through various
firewall configurations on both the server and client side,
without requiring changes to security. Some DSS tools use network
protocols that require configuration changes to the firewall.
WebIntelligence uses HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP) which
enables it to work with multiple firewall configurations and
ensures a secure environment between companies.
-- Auditing support. WebIntelligence 2.0 now has auditing
capabilities which enable customers to track user activity and
monitor the system, store this data in a relational database, and
regularly access and use that data as the basis for billing
customers. This new feature gives information providers all the
data they need to track action on their server and generate
subscription-, time-, data- or document-based bills.
Extranet features introduced with the first release of
WebIntelligence include profile-based reports and security.
Profile-based reports enable administrators to create a single report
which, when accessed by a user, automatically gives them just the
information they are authorized to receive. This saves administrators
from creating and maintaining a separate report for every individual
customer or supplier, each of whom needs the same report format but
should see just their specific information. Profile-based security
gives administrators detailed control on a per-user basis over all
aspects of data access and resource use, from what data users can see
to the functions they can perform.
New OLAP module
A new OLAP module called WebIntelligence Explorer allows users to
drill into charts and tables for additional analysis. Users can drill
on information at three levels. First, administrators can provide
predefined interactive reports. When users drill in these reports, the
information is retrieved directly from the multidimensional cache on
the server. Then if a user requires more information they can drill
automatically through a report into the database. WebIntelligence
automatically generates the one or more Structured Query Language
(SQL) statements required to retrieve the data. All of this is
transparent to the user, who does not have to know anything about
where the data is stored. In addition, users can get to information
beyond the database by clicking on a hyperlink and drilling to any
site on the web. With the new OLAP module WebIntelligence provides
users with the only true thin-client, integrated query, reporting, and
OLAP tool for the web. Integration enables users to seamlessly perform
reporting and analysis without having to switch among several tools,
and allows information systems professionals to more easily set up and
maintain the DSS environment.
Numerous new reporting features
WebIntelligence 2.0 has a streamlined personal home page, the
user's point of entry into the system that allows quicker and easier
navigation through corporate and personal reports. The improved home
page provides expanded and compressed views, more intuitive navigation
bars, sorting capabilities, quick search options, list caching, and
inbox icons. Also, WebIntelligence 2.0 now offers standard financial
and form reports, which are especially useful for creating balance
sheets and product catalogues. In addition, users can now easily
access and refresh a wider range of documents, including sophisticated
reports from BusinessObjects 4.1, the full-client DSS tool from
Business Objects.
WebIntelligence 2.0 entered beta in June 1998. Customers
currently working with it include:
-- Bankers Trust
-- Cadence Design Systems
-- Duke Energy
-- Eli Lilly and Company
-- Pacific Investment Management Company
-- Penske Logistics
-- Philips Semiconductors BV
-- Owens & Minor
-- Syncor International Corporation
-- Telecom Italia
-- United States Postal Service
-- Zurich-American Insurance
Zurich-American Insurance "WebIntelligence is a great fit with the strategic plans of our company," said Frank Colletti, systems manager, Zurich-American Insurance, a leading provider of property and casualty insurance. "In the highly competitive insurance industry, the winners are differentiated by the customer and information services they can provide. WebIntelligence 2.0 will enable us to deliver on our vision of providing real-time 1. real-time - Describes an application which requires a program to respond to stimuli within some small upper limit of response time (typically milli- or microseconds). Process control at a chemical plant is the classic example. , paperless reports via the web to our internal users and customers. By adding new features, Business Objects has demonstrated a keen understanding of what it takes for a company to roll out a strategic information-sharing initiative." Owens Owens, river, c.120 mi (190 km) long, rising in the Sierra Nevada, E Calif., SE of Yosemite National Park and flowing SE, to enter Owens Lake, near Mt. Whitney. Since 1913, at a point c. & Minor "We are really excited about WebIntelligence 2.0 because it will allow us to share real-time information with our customers and suppliers," said Don Stoller, director of decision services at Owens & Minor, a leading wholesale distributor of brand name medical and surgical supplies. "Today, we have BusinessObjects A query, reporting and analysis suite of tools from Business Objects that runs under all versions of Windows and various Unix clients. It is the leading decision support tool in the business intelligence market, providing access to a wide variety of databases, including Oracle, INFORMIX deployed on the desktop to work with our integrated data warehouse that tracks inventory, sales, and financial information. With WebIntelligence 2.0, we will be deploying a supply chain extranet to our customers and suppliers so they can analyze purchasing patterns and identify and consolidate processes that will save them considerable time and money. The shared infrastructure between our full- and thin-client deployments makes all of this possible." Business Objects and Enterprise DSS In many enterprise deployments, customers have a mix of thin- and full -client desktops. Business Objects addresses this issue with WebIntelligence for internet and BusinessObjects for desktop query, reporting, and OLAP. The two tools share the same infrastructure, which means that customers can set up, maintain, and administer a single DSS environment to support all users across the enterprise regardless of their client platform. This reduces administration cost and is especially important for large DSS deployments that typically have a mix of both environments. "When a customer purchases thousands of decision support licenses, they are usually not able to decide up front which users will need the full- or thin-client tool," said Dave Kellogg, vice president of corporate marketing at Business Objects. "At Business Objects, we don't don't 1. Contraction of do not. 2. Nonstandard Contraction of does not. n. A statement of what should not be done: a list of the dos and don'ts. force customers to choose. Because both of our tools leverage the same infrastructure, customers can deploy their DSS solution in a flexible way, and ensure maximum value and competitive advantage." Architecture WebIntelligence 2.0 builds upon the distributed component architecture introduced with the first release. The product utilizes Object Request Broker See ORB. (programming) Object Request Broker - (ORB) Part of the OMG CORBA specification, an ORB's basic function is to pass method invocation requests to the correct objects and return the results to the caller. (ORB (Object Request Broker) Software that handles the communication of messages from the requesting program (client) to the object as well as any return values from the object back to the calling program. See CORBA and DCOM. See also ORB disk. ) technology from Inprise, Corp. and a user interface written exclusively in Java and HTML HTML in full HyperText Markup Language Markup language derived from SGML that is used to prepare hypertext documents. Relatively easy for nonprogrammers to master, HTML is the language used for documents on the World Wide Web. . This architecture eliminates the need for client-side Refers to any operation that is performed at the client workstation. Contrast with server-side. installation and maintenance of both application software and database middleware Software that functions as a conversion or translation layer. It is also a consolidator and integrator. Custom-programmed middleware solutions have been developed for decades to enable one application to communicate with another that either runs on a different platform or comes from a , providing organizations with a cost-effective cost-effective, n the minimal expenditure of dollars, time, and other elements necessary to achieve the health care result deemed necessary and appropriate. way to broadly deploy DSS capabilities. The WebIntelligence architecture also allows companies to exploit e-business intelligence opportunities with suppliers, partners, and customers. Availability and Pricing WebIntelligence 2.0 is currently in beta and is expected to enter production in 3Q98. WebIntelligence is priced at $595 per user. The new OLAP module, WebIntelligence Explorer, can be added for $395 per user. About Business Objects Business Objects is the world's leading provider of integrated enterprise decision support tools. Business Objects products provide non-technical business users with access to information stored in data warehouses, data marts A subset of a data warehouse for a single department or function. A data mart may have tens of gigabytes of data rather than hundreds of gigabytes for the entire enterprise. See data warehouse. , and packaged business applications. Business Objects provides a complete suite of decision support tools including query, reporting, online analytical processing, data mining, and DSS administration for both client/server and internet environments. Business Objects has sold more than 780,000 licenses to over 6,200 organizations in more than 60 countries worldwide. Business Objects may be reached by phone at 408-953-6000 or on the worldwide web at http://www.businessobjects.com. The company's stock is publicly traded under the ticker symbol Ticker Symbol An arrangement of characters (usually letters) representing a particular security listed on an exchange or otherwise traded publicly. When a company issues securities to the public marketplace, it selects an available ticker symbol for its securities which investors BOBJY. Note to Editors: BusinessObjects and WebIntelligence are trademarks of Business Objects SA. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated. A full-text copy of this announcement may be obtained by calling the Company's fax retrieval line at 800-414-2114 and selecting option "two." The announcement may also be downloaded from the Web; access "http://www.businesswire.com/cnn" and search on "Business Objects." Business Objects product inquiries should contact 800-527-0580.
CONTACT: Business Objects
Danielle Dawson, 408/953-6108
ddawson@businessobjects.com
or
Tracy Eiler, 408/953-6031
teiler@businessobjects.com
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