12. Jaspersoft 4: 100% Web App BI Stack Web Standard Customizable Front-End Clients Interface with Service APIs Jaspersoft UI Framework Extensions Presentation (.css) Web Service Integration Interfaces JSR-168 portlets Events (.js) Structure (.jsp) Web Services / C/C++, PHP HTTP API Java API XML/A (OLAP) *** Business Logic: Service APIs *** Report Scheduling Reporting Engine OLAP Object Permission User Authority Ad Hoc Reporting Repository Scheduler JasperReports Library OLAP Engine Spring Security JasperReports Server Pro Hibernate ORM Back-End Implementations can be Configured and/or Replaced SSO connect any data source JDBC LDAP, JAAS, MS Active Directory, IBM Tivoli, SiteMinder, CAS XML, XML/A TXT& CSV RDBMS
A few logistical notesOn your right hand you will see the webinar control which you can collapse and expandIf you have questions, please submit them to the questions box and we will respond to them at the end of the presentation. Unanswered questions will be responded to by email.Everybody will be muted
The promise of BI is to improve business performance, and this can be said to have fulfilled its promise if the perceived benefits have been achieved. And this certainly includes reduced operational spend and customer satisfaction. Increased revenue and competitiveness. And certainly improved profitability.But the challenges and reality is, only a few people are using BI.
Based on a research from Forrester, for example, of the entire 66 million workers in the US, only over 2% are actually using a BI tool. <pause> This is astonishing. The other is from Aberdeen Group, based on a study of 800 or so companies, only about 25% uses a BI solution. <pause> This is really an interesting paradox when the promise of BI is very strong. The reality is that there’s very few who are taking advantage of it. So we have to ask ourselves, how is it that the tremendous opportunity is not broadening the adoption of BI.
Let’s look at the factors that can impact broader adoption.First is Cost. IT budgets are not what they once were, due to a variety of conditions. Due to this, BI initiatives have become smaller in scale and cost. Organizations that are growing or facing competitive pressure must invest in BI for strategic reasons. Second is Architecture. The architecture of traditional BI systems were designed in an era of large ERP style systems. They are monolithic, rigid in their architecture, closed, and expensive to extend and expand beyond its core capabilities. Many IT organizations are limited with their BI investment in being able to capture new requirements of users, specifically when trying to integrate BI with solutions that are custom built or acquired from different application vendors. And finally, is Usability. User expectations have changed for BI applications. Consumers are able to achieve tremendous productivity with their own consumer web based applications specific to managing email, finances, or their social networks. The UIs of most BI systems were not designed for consumerization of information but for the power user, those within the under 20% of the organization, leaving the 80% which comprises the information consumers, with a complex interface that ultimately does not get used. And we have actually talked about this in our previous webinars.
So how do we expand on the promise & value of BI to more users in our organization. After that last slide, it’s more obvious.First the solution must be affordable, not just in the acquisition costs commonly associated with license and user fees, but also in terms of the integration, deployment, and usage. Organizations are no longer willing to spend significant percentages of their IT spend for their BI initiative that may takes months to years to roll out.Second the architecture must be built for the web world, which means designed to be deployed and configured in a variety of ways, whether its via web services that are called from other applications, or modular by surfacing specific BI functions across the reporting and analysis spectrum. This architecture should enable the convergence of BI, which is surfacing BI capabilities within the appropriate context of information consumers, whether that means inside their existing application or device of choice. And finally, its has to be easy to use, by more than just a handful of power users. Consumer expectations are driven by a new breed of applications that are intuitive and available from a variety of devices. Lets face it, the iPhone was able to converge several different application experiences into a single easy to use device. So user expectations have increased for BI tools which means the UI has to be easier to use by a larger user profile than just the data analysts – but also the day to day operational workers.
Announcing Jaspersoft 4 is the World’s First end-to-end BI suite designed for web application, uniquely suited for the BI of the new IT World. It delivers a new modern, consumer look and feel UI that is interactive and easy to useIt is now a 100% complete web application BI stack, from the back end server environment to the front end UIResulting in a dramatically easier environment for converging or integrating BI into the application workspaces of end users.
The new UI of Jaspersoft 4 responds to the requirements of todays users. It provides a more intuitive layout. The interactive interface allows end users to customize the layout to meet their needs and present the information they require to make operational decisions.
Demo the UI starting at the homepage of the admin user, type in search box, open mashboard, explain components of dashboard, drill to ad hoc, re-size UI components, hide UI components, etc.
Jaspersoft 4 unveils the first BI UI framework. We call it the Jaspersoft UI Framework. This environment is a complete re-write of its UI layer using many of the W3C standards utilized by most web pages and applications. The separation of structure & content from the presentation allows developers to work more rapidly.
Lastly, because of Jaspersoft 4’s new UI Framework, the entire product is dramatically easier to embed or integrate with other applications. For IT applications, organizations can now quickly prototype and implement the BI capabilities they need for their users while fitting the standards of their existing applications, whether those are portals, standard Uis, or with identity management systems for single sign on. Now IT organizations can determine which BI functions should be surfaced to their users without delivering the overwhelming Uis of todays BI tools. This control allows the BI builders within IT to truly dictate the success of their BI deployment. For commercial applications, Jaspersoft 4 gives ISVs an affordable package that is easy to quickly adapt to any existing application environment, whether its on-premise, SaaS-based, or in the cloud. With the new UI framework, ISVs can now deliver BI without changing the look and feel of their existing application, and do it with little additional cost. The new UI Framework helps extend Jaspersoft’s leadership position as the BI-in-the-cloud solution for SaaS based applications by providing a per-tenant theme UI. Theme’s are simply a collection of fonts, colors and layout of the UI and now with Jaspersoft 4, SaaS based ISVs can apply unique themes on a per-tenant basis, without requiring additional installations of configurations.
A good example of the simplicity of the new UI framework can be seen with this code sample. This happens to be another BI product and the underlying HTML of the UI. This sample shows what appears to be a simple list of folders on the left which hold various components of reports & report objects, dashboards, and analysis views. (click build slide) Now if I look at the underlying structure, you’ll see pages of HTML used to render the fairly small amount of UI. For those developers out there, you’ll see the use of a table within a div, within another table with style and semantics, JSP logic, all mixed together. Now if I were to look at a similar portion of this UI within Jaspersoft 4, you’ll see a different structure.
As you can see, firstly, that the amount of markup to render a similar set of folders is dramatically less. But more importantly, this markup is much easier to read and understand. Here the list of folders is a list in the HTML code with meaningful semantics and it doesn’t blend JSP logic within the HTML markup. The thought of customizing the UI with this structure is no longer a specialist job but could be done by a web designer. So, what does this is all mean? (next slide)
You’ll see this screenshot of the Jaspersoft 4 web based design environment displaying the default theme view. Now with the underlying logic and its improved structure…
…I can morph the UI to become something I want, in a color palette and layout that fits my standards. This simple example is just one way to visualize how our new UI Framework provides the flexibility of customization, helping BI builders layout the BI in the way they require. Doing a customization like this in a traditional BI tool would be prohibitively more expensive and difficult to do, which typically means no one does them except for the very motivated or those with large budgets, ultimately the result is using the standard UI layout out of the box.
So to recap, Jaspersoft 4 is a new BI platform that is built and designed for web applications helping to change the adoption trends of BI. Its new user interface is easy to use and consumer web-app-likeIts completes our architecture by becoming a completely web standard BI stackAnd ultimately delivers on the promise of an affordable easy to embed or integrate BI environment for organizations who need an affordable, web based architecture, that comes with a consumer friendly interface.
Here’s our full list of commercial editions, starting from the bottom in green is our JasperReports Professional product providing the JasperReports Library and Report Designer, and professional animated charts. Above that is the JasperReports Professional package with a report server environment. This report server helps organize, secure, and distribute reports to thousands of users. The next package up is our Jaspersoft BI Professional edition which comes with the reporting library, the report designer, the reporting server, but then adds the web based design tools with a meta data layer for ad hoc report design, dashboard design and integrated in-memory analysis. Finally, the last package is called Jaspersoft BI Enterprise which adds to the Jaspersoft BI professional edition with data integration for building data warehouses and data marts along with a more powerful R-OLAP based analysis environment and additional features such as multi-tenancy and audit logging. Audit logging allows you to track and record every action that occurs to your reports and analysis views for compliance or performance monitoring purposes.