Industry News from InetSoft and the Business Intelligence Marketplace

We have created this page to be a place to share InetSoft's position on topics in the business intelligence market, to point to what other people are saying about InetSoft and to link up with other business intelligence information, like-minded people, and what they are saying.

We are sure you agree there's a tremendous amount of clutter in the business intelligence marketplace, dozens if not hundreds of companies offering solutions or services. Some of the more established players seek to put up barriers to democratization of information and the intelligence to be gained from it. In some cases they make their solutions so complex and expensive in order to perpetuate an aura of "to be good, it has to be expensive and complex."

Well, with our software solutions we aim to disprove that. You can find technology like ours, that any size company can afford, doesn't require specialized staff or consultants to deploy, and aims to empower the business end-user to the fullest while recognizing that software needs to be as easy to use as the spreadsheet and presentation software they are comfortable with.

One thing that is unique about our software and really proves our point about empowering end-users and making BI implementations more efficient for an organization is end-user defined data mashup. Read this BI white paper on the topic for a discussion of how it compares to traditional business intelligence solutions such as data warehousing.

To further this discussion we post things that we write, or others write so if you have something to add here, a blog or an article that is of kindred spirit or just a comment, email us at buzz@inetsoft.com, and we'll look to add it here.

Buzz about InetSoft

• Industry analyst firm Butler Analytics ranked InetSoft #1 among 21 BI suppliers. Read the summary and find external links
  
  
• Campus Technology covered the story about Simpson University's adoption of Style Intelligence and how they see a very quick ROI from resource savings.
  
  
• Industry analyst firm Gleanster conducted a business intelligence marketplace survey of almost 300 organizations using 45 different solutions, and InetSoft ranked among the top 10 BI vendors for all 4 dimensions, including in the top 5 for overall value. The full report can be downloaded for free upon registration.
  
  
• InetSoft was included once again in Gartner's 'Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms,' published in February 2014.


• Our partner Bison Analytics issued a business intelligence news release about its recent customer successes taking advantage of the custom solution they built for QuickBooks users powered by InetSoft's Style Intelligence platform.


• InetSoft was included once again in Gartner's 'Magic Quadrant report on BI and Analytics Platforms,' published in February 2013.

• Industry analyst firm Gleanster conducted a business intelligence marketplace survey of almost 400 customers using almost 40 different solutions, and InetSoft ranked among the top 10 BI vendors, including in the top 5 for ease of use. The full report can be downloaded for free upon registration.
  
  
• Ventana Research wrote a review of the latest product release of Style Intelligence. Highlighted features include the mobile device support and the database writeback functionality. Referring to the developer tool in the application, they note "InetSoft’s Style Studio is one of the easiest-to-use business intelligence tools." Here is the full BI product review.


• Dashboard Insight has reviewed our dashboard product, Style Scope, which shares the same code for the visualization, dashboarding, and data mashup components that are included in our BI solution, Style Intelligence.
  
  

• Information Management Magazine conducted an in-depth interview with one of InetSoft's Academic Alliance partner schools, Seton Hall's Stillman School of Business.


• CMO Mark Flaherty was interviewed by CreditCardProcessing.net about how small businesses get started with dashboarding software.
  
  
• InetSoft is included in Gartner's 'Who's Who in Interactive Visualization for Analysis and Dashboarding', published in September 2011. InetSoft also was included in the original report from September 2009. While only Gartner subscribers may access the report, here is the report summary with vendors listed.


• Managing Automation covered the recent mobile BI news release for Style Intelligence.


• Business intelligence industry analyst firm Ventana Research comments on why to consider InetSoft's business intelligence and analytics application out of a crowded marketplace that includes the megavendors.


• Information Management says InetSoft is among the "40 Vendors We're Watching in 2011"


• Enterprise Systems Journal says "InetSoft Gets Agile BI Right"


• TEC (the Technology Evaluation Center) compiled a report (registration required) based on users' research of business intelligence solutions and ranks InetSoft as the #2 most searched BI vendor.


• InetSoft is credited for being a pioneer of data mashups in the business intelligence industry in Peter Evans' article in the Database Journal, "BI Datasources - The Great Mash-up."

Buzz by InetSoft

• InetSoft's Principal Technologist, Byron Igoe, appeared on Information Management's DM Radio again, this time speaking about how today's data visualization technologies help businesses in the broadcast, "The Eyes Have It: Ten Reasons Why Data Visualization Rocks."

• InetSoft's Principal Technologist, Byron Igoe, joined industry analysts and other BI vendors for a discussion about "Avoiding Bottlenecks and Hurdles in Data Delivery," particularly by taking advantage of self-service BI.


• The Mashup - InetSoft's Business Intelligence Blog. A look at BI industry news, topics, and best practices for report and dashboard design.


• Using our Visualize Free app, one of our marketing staffers created the Green Car Dashboard, a free interactive tool for people researching a car purchase to sort cars by gas mileage and emissions ratings.


• Style Chart was the first part of our technology base that we made free to use. We developed our own charting engine - which we designed for maximum customizability and interactivity in our own BI application, and we thought why not make part of it available to give Web developers a free option for embedding charts in their own pages. There are some other free charting options out there, but we think ours is the most customizable and lends itself especially well to generating charts on the fly.

• Five Tips for Successful Self-Service BI - We preach the benefits of self-service BI, but their are some pitfalls to avoid, so read up on these useful recommendations.


• The Case for Data Mashup - This is a white paper where we explain what is truly unique and revolutionary in BI tools, end-user defined data mashup, and why this democratization capability makes sense for business.

Buzz about the Business Intelligence Market

• Agile BI, not Automatic BI - Forrester's Boris Evelson wrote a very good piece on agile BI, something we've been championing for the past 4 years in our "Easy, Agile, Robust" tagline. Read our take on agile business intelligence.


• 3 More BI Tips - BI analyst David Linthicum's post about three more BI tips to a list of 10 is perfect, especially about taking advantage of mashup technology like InetSoft's to satisfy more of end users' data demands. Embrace all legitimate data sources, don't fight them, and users will flock to the BI soltion. Another great point David makes is the stress on making any BI software intuitive to use, another mission of ours.
  

• BI Shift to Analysis - We agree with this article at Intelligence Enterprise, it's time for the next generation of business intelligence software to focus on data analysis and discovery rather than just reporting. That's what is the focus of our visualization-driven approach to business intelligence. We aim to make visual analysis and exploration as user-friendly as possible, no training necessary, just point-and-click visualization with the use of filtering check-boxes and simple drop-down selection of dimensions or measures.
   
• Five Reasons for BIg Discrepancy - Doug Henschen, editor at Intelligence Enterprise, posted interesting points that Gartner Group is raising about the gap between expectations for and investments in BI and the value that the technology is actually delivering to business users. These points echo our view, too, especially in championing the inclusion of business users in driving BI needs. We would go one step further by advocating giving BI users the capability to explore their data with user-friendly visualization tools and giving them the ability to mash up data on their own.
   
• Self-service Business Intelligence - This is a great blog post that is a lengthy discussion of the history of end user behavior when it comes to business intelligence and why self-service is so necessary, plus a detailed explanation of how to proceed in deploying self-service business intelligence.