Business Objects XI

BusinessObjects XI integrates BusinessObjects and Crystal products to deliver a complete set of Business Intelligence capabilities.

• BusinessObjects XI delivers a complete set of market leading BI capabilities: best in class reporting, query and analysis, performance management, and data integration.

• BusinessObjects XI completes the integration of the Crystal and Business Objects product lines, and introduces significant innovations that will deliver Business Intelligence in new ways to a much broader set of users.

 

• This groundbreaking platform will drive much wider adoption of BI in organizations, and will allow them to standardize on a single advanced platform for all of their BI needs.

BI Encyclopedia Puts Information in Context

  • For widespread adoption of BI to be truly effective, BI must provide both technical and business users with more than just raw data: it needs to provide context around where the information came from, how it was calculated, what it means, and guidelines for how to use it most effectively.

  • BusinessObjects XI includes an important innovation called the BI Encyclopedia. Embedded directly in BusinessObjects XI reports, the BI Encyclopedia tells users the definition of business terms and the questions the report answers, as well as how to find other reports with related information.

    Collaborative Discussions in Reports Facilitates Problem Solving

  • BusinessObjects XI uniquely allows users to engage in collaborative analysis and decision making directly within dashboards, scorecards, and reports.

  • For example, if a sales manager looks at a dashboard and notices that sales in a particular region have decreased, he can initiate a secure discussion within the BI environment and work with other sales managers to understand the business problem more fully.

    Business Intelligence Directly Within Microsoft Office

  • Most employees today, from financial analysts to business managers, work in Microsoft Office every day and store critical business data in Office applications.

  • BusinessObjects XI brings BI directly to these users by embedding business intelligence directly in the Office applications, and it allows Office documents to be secured and managed in the BI platform. With BusinessObjects XI, Microsoft Office is transformed into a secure, trusted, and live source of business intelligence.

  • For example, a business user can read a BusinessObjects XI report directly within a PowerPoint document. If they want to drill down into the data, or refresh the report, they can perform this analysis directly within PowerPoint. With most point products from other BI vendors, the user must export the report back into the BI environment, perform their analysis, and then import it back into the PowerPoint.

    Modern Service Oriented Architecture Makes BI More Adaptable

  • The BusinessObjects XI platform is built on a modern, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and builds on the only BI platform that is Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Datacenter certified for reliability. Because the platform is based on SOA standards, organizations can adapt their BI deployments as business strategy and heterogeneous computing environments evolve. Traditionally, applications have hardwired interconnectivity to perform specific business tasks. With SOA, Business Objects XI allows applications to communicate openly and without limits on what business functions they can handle.

    Automatic Failover and No Single Point of Failure Deliver Unprecedented Reliability

  • The BusinessObjects XI platform is unmatched in its ability to intelligently distribute processing among servers based on server performance and availability. This ensures that server errors or system failures remain invisible to end users, and content is preserved. This also means that a critical BI application is not dependent on a single server in the system. In case any server fails, BusinessObjects XI automatically and intelligently re-directs processing to another server that can handle the load. With point products from other BI vendors, if a server fails, users must log-out, re-boot, and begin their session again.

    High Performance from Intelligent Server Provisioning

  • BusinessObjects XI includes an innovative capability that allows the system to automatically turn on and turn off server resources based on user demand.

  • For example, a large company that uses Business Objects XI to distribute human resources reports to thousands of employees one day a month would automatically turn on more server resources during that peak period, but for the rest of the month, BusinessObjects XI would automatically revert back to using fewer server resources.