The SaaS space continues to roll forward at lightening speed and
Birst is moving faster than most. With only a year on the market they are launching Version 4.0 and adding features to their system that will make the enterprise IT guys stand up and take notice.
SaaS BI is a great way for many companies to address analytic needs but since the beginning security, data integration, governance and control have made many tentative to embrace the technology. Birst's latest upgrade addresses all of these hurdles. The parts I liked most are
Birst Live Access it allows you to access your own data from behind the firewall and include it in your SaaS based analysis. They have also built out connectors that will allow you to integrate data from other applications like SalesForce and Google Analytics and even connectivity to desktop Access DB's and Excel to bring together a federated view of your business data.Your data stays where you have it but at the same time you benefit from a SaaS hosted BI application. The other exciting feature here is if the data you own is configured in a real-time model you can leverage that performance on Birst so real-time in the cloud becomes much simpler too.
Version 4 also has added
Birst Advanced ETL this upgraded feature gives you the ability to
customize the ETL to meet special corporate and analytical
requirements.
There are many other feature upgrades in this version including newly enhanced dashboards and administration that now includes Flash Flex providing a more rich and interactive experience with the solution. On the Dashboard front the Flex Flash provides the business user with a more discovery rich interface allowing for easier drill downs, views and even drag and drop features to make getting answers from the data easier.
SaaS continues to be a leading area of interest with our audience at the NETWORK and these types of product announcements are proof that the segment is evolving fast to meet the needs of the growing user base.