Condor’s Safari InfoTools Takes Flight on AS/400
Condor Technology Solutions, Inc (Annapolis, Md.), an enterprise portal and e-commerce solutions provider, has announced that its Safari InfoTools suite of business intelligence, report writing, data management and connectivity products now supports AS/400 environments. This offering allows Condor to provide AS/400 customers with real-time data access and reporting capabilities from multiple, dissimilar data sources in a graphical environment.
Using the Safari InfoTools’ connectivity capabilities, organizations can now link users, through the desktop tools of their choice, to any combination of multiple data sources in Unix, IBM, Windows, VMS, and MPE environments. Condor also encompasses major components of business intelligence, such as a decision support system capability (more commonly termed OLAP) for data analysis. This is coupled with fully Web-enabled scheduling, delivery and distribution processes for production and reports.
Among the first organizations to use Safari’s tools on the AS/400 will be customers of Baan Company (Santa Clara, Calif.), who introduced Baan ERP on the AS/400 in the fourth quarter of 1998.
“Our data access and reporting software is leveraged by Baan, our largest ERP partner on the AS/400, in support of their offering. We provide a Business Intelligence solution across the enterprise. Baan’s AS/400 initiative made us realize we had to alter our strategy to deal on a more direct basis with potential customers,” says Dan Brower, Condor’s VP of sales and marketing. “The introduction of the AS/400 allows us to expand our data penetration and access to really bring together data access from multiple systems from within the enterprise—from either in production, a data warehouse or a data mart mode.
“We expanded our initial product offering to encompass multiple databases, multiple platforms, and created capabilities which have since been titled a virtual data warehouse. We differentiate ourselves with the ability to natively access disparate data sources in a non-intrusive manner and to have--within the same tool set--ad hoc reporting, as well as the full range of production reporting,” adds Brower.
“A key element of our products is a customizable window for complex data structures that spans the entire operating database topology of the enterprise to encompass an enterprise business operation,” adds Mike Bachman, Condor’s business development manager for AS/400. “Through our window, users gain the benefits of our technology using the existing tools they have already invested in and prefer to work with.
“A big issue with e-commerce today is accessing legacy data, such as back-office, inventory warehousing, accounts receivable, or a combination of different types of database structures,” explains Bachman. “With Safari InfoTools, we address the legacy issue by giving businesses access to all the data in their enterprise and presenting it in a way that will be consistent with their e-commerce applications.”
Renee Leffew, ERP systems administrator for furniture manufacturer Herman Miller Inc. (Zeeland, Mich.) says her company selected the Safari InfoTools because Baan dubbed it the “Best of Breed” tool for reporting. Leffew uses Safari InfoServer and three of the client tools—ReportWriter (which connects with the Baan environment and obtains data from database), DataViewer and Administrator. The Zeeland division of Herman Miller has 1,275 people that can access the Safari InfoTools suite, 400 concurrently.
“I have been using the Safari InfoTools for almost two years. It’s very easy to use. Since the reporting format is specified by the user, you can manipulate data to look the way you want,” says Leffew. “The biggest benefit of the Safari InfoTools is that an end user who knows nothing about the Baan environment, but knows that they need data, can get a simple report from the system in only a matter of minutes. I only need to set up their configuration and connect them to the server, then they can get the data they need on their own.”
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