Business Objects Tosses Out New BI Portal
There has been an explosion of companies offering Web-based portals. Now, another player is about to join the line up. Business Objects SA revealed plans to launch its business intelligence portal (BIP) InfoView in the third quarter of this year.
A BIP can provide a company with an invaluable way to communicate in-house by sharing information amongst employees. The goal of InfoView is to provide users with the ability to store reports to a single Web-based repository, and provide access to any report in the repository with proper security clearance -- all from a personalized interface.
Business Objects' (www.businessobjects.com) InfoView is a portal that has a lot to offer business users, especially through its enterprise information portal (EIP) vendor partnerships with IBM Corp. (www.ibm.com) and Viador Inc. (www.viador.com). The partnerships with EIP vendors are intended to supplement Business Objects' InfoView offerings. This means if users are looking for more than the standard features of the BIP, such as document management or text searching capabilities, then they can turn to one of Business Objects EIP partners and know those products will fully integrate with their BIP.
Business Objects says the portal's key, standard elements are fast data access, security, personalization, report classification, and easy collaboration.
On the data access front, InfoView's repository will be able to collect and store different types of files, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and ZIP, as well as Web-based reports. These items will all be subject to document-level security -- which ensures that reports are only read by those who have the authority to do so.
"My InfoView" allows users to personalize the portal interface, which is their entry point into the BI system. Since "My InfoView" is Web-based, users can display specific Web pages inside their portal in addition to BI information.
One of the most important factors of all Web-based BIPs is the ability for users to collaborate with one another. InfoView offers discussion threads that let users post notes on reports; browser-based notification, which alerts a user when new BI information has been sent to them; and content publishing, which gives users the ability to publish reports and other documents via an intranet or extranet.
Whether you are looking for a standard BI portal, or one with more sophisticated features, Business Objects InfoView has tried to cover all the bases.