Entrinsik Expands Functionality of its BI Platform with the Release of Informer 5.1
The new version introduces new features and dozens of productivity enhancements to the reporting and data analytics software platform used by thousands of business users around the world.
This latest release of Informer introduces a new multi-tenancy architecture that enables VARS and ISVs who develop and deploy software to quickly serve multiple customers using a single instance of Informer. Companies can now run one instance of Informer on one database and provide web-based access to their clients, with each client's data isolated and invisible to other clients.
By supporting multi-tenancy, software vendors and their clients can be hosted separately and securely on shared server infrastructure with the client-facing view featuring the vendor's branding. Multitenancy significantly eases the maintenance and administration of these deployments and optimizes resource usage.
"Informer can provide an additional revenue stream opportunity for companies who have an existing client base by seamlessly delivering more robust reporting and data analysis capabilities as part of their service offering," said Sharon Shelton, VP Marketing at Entrinsik. "By partnering with Entrinsik, software vendors can instantly deliver more value under their brand."
It is a particularly compelling model for businesses that may not choose to spend their IT resources on developing more advanced data analysis capabilities in-house and then managing ongoing upgrades on their own.
Informer 5.1 betas have been tested in the field for quite some time. "Multi-tenancy has been huge. Informer is quickly becoming our custom reporting toolkit, where our clients will be able to envision whatever reports they want, from whatever datasets they want and then create audit-ready reports and visuals," says Wendy Gustafson, Full Sail Partners ( http://www.fullsailpartners.com/ ).
Informer 5.1 also includes the Mapping Suites feature which greatly simplifies reporting from databases with partition schema layouts found across various sectors, including the Education space. A Mapping Suite is a set of related tables in the database that is segregated by a common attribute, typically with base tables that define the columns for the common attribute. For example, general ledger summary tables and detail tables may be separated into multiple tables for each fiscal year, with a base table that defines the columns for each of the year-specific tables. Using Mapping Suites, Informer Reports can be created using the base tables, and the appropriate year is specified at runtime, eliminating the need to have mappings and Reports for each year table.
Mapping Suites can be used in any schema that has partitions. It can also be used to combine snapshots of data and report from the snapshots. Organizations can now combine snapshots in one Informer Report and segment them out based on partition, e.g., year, department, division, practically anything. These snapshots often already exist for organizations and Informer radically simplifies this type of multi-dimensional reporting.