Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ), the world's leading provider of e-business intelligence (e-BI) solutions, today announced the availability of BusinessObjects(TM) InfoView Mobile 4.0, the new version of the company's Mobile business intelligence (BI) portal. BusinessObjects InfoView Mobile enables Mobile workers to access key corporate information from their cellular phone and personal digital assistant (PDA) devices and view and analyze this information in several formats including color and charts.
In March 2000 Business Objects launched the first interactive, wireless business intelligence portal that provides a true Mobile BI environment offering easy and secure access to corporate information from anywhere, anytime, whether users are at their desk or on the road. This information is personalized to ensure that only the relevant data is displayed and users do not waste time scrolling through irrelevant information. Business Objects subsequently released two updates to the wireless BI portal to work with additional Mobile standards, providing anyone with a wireless internet-enabled phone or modem-equipped PDA in the US, Europe, or Japan with access to corporate information from the road.
The new version announced today extends support for PDA users by enabling customers to download WebIntelligence(R) reports onto PDAs via synchronization and then view and navigate on these reports in an offline mode. For example, a sales manager could get an update on revenue by territory or sales of top customers while in the subway or on a plane. The product name has changed from BusinessObjects InfoView Wireless Edition to BusinessObjects InfoView Mobile to reflect these new product features.
"Historically we have based our product delivery strategy on the right markets -- from the enterprise, to the internet, to extranet --and now Mobile. With the delivery of the fourth iteration of our Mobile BI portal, Business Objects pushes Mobile access to information to the next stage and solidifies its position as the leader of the Mobile BI movement," said Gene Villeneuve, director of portal and Mobile product marketing at Business Objects. "Seeing how customers are evolving their work strategies and extending access to information beyond personal computers has enabled us to meet the next wave of information delivery requirements, not only for future plans but for concrete applications today. Mobile BI is a reality."
BusinessObjects InfoView Mobile 4.0 provides users with richer reporting and analysis from Mobile devices, access to BI data via PDAs in either online or offline mode, and support for additional global Mobile devices, protocols, and browsers.
Mobile device users now have full reporting and analysis capabilities
InfoView Mobile delivers rich BI reports with more drill capabilities to Mobile devices. Version 4.0 enables reports to be displayed optimally for PDAs, meaning tables are displayed properly and charts can be resized to fit the screen dimensions of the output device. Reports designed for PDAs take maximum advantage of the PDA display dimensions and provide an easy and intuitive workflow requiring no end user training. Reports can contain rich graphics and or simple text depending on the target device.
In addition, now users can navigate reports to look at the data from a different view or drill into underlying details. For example, a marketing manager looking at revenue by product line and by year could drill into a product line and then see the revenue generated per product.
Dual online/offline mode gives users more flexible remote information access
With report synchronization between the PC and PDA, users have more options for accessing information. With a new report synchronization feature, InfoView Mobile 4.0 now enables users to access corporate and personal reports that have been downloaded from the WebIntelligence server. Now users can also download their preferred WebIntelligence reports from the InfoView server to the PDA device for offline viewing and drilling. For example, a sales executive might download the latest key performance indicator (KPI) reports for each region under his responsibility and could drill into each region to view sales KPI by individual account. Customers can also access their information in online mode, where they would run a report on the server, send the report to the PDA, and view the report on the PDA while connected.
Support for additional Mobile devices and platforms enables wider BI deployments
With InfoView Mobile 4.0, Business Objects has added support for the Pocket IE HTML browser, HandSpring's Blazer HTML browser, and Pocket PC devices, thus providing access to WebIntelligence reports from an even wider number of Mobile devices. This enables enterprises to deploy InfoView Mobile to a larger user and helps companies get even more value from their existing BI infrastructure.
Customer Acclaim for InfoView Mobile 4.0
BusinessObjects InfoView Mobile 4.0 has been tested at more than 20 customer and partner sites worldwide, including:
-- Aspective -- Leroy Merlin
-- Arjo Wiggins -- MFI Furniture
-- British Airways -- Montage
-- Compaq EMEA -- Nortel
-- Compuexcel -- Palm
-- Fiat -- SQL Liason
-- Icon Infosystems -- Tesco
-- Infineon -- US Army CECOM
-- J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
"As business becomes increasingly Mobile, access to mission-critical corporate data is essential," said Marina Levinson, vice president, and chief information officer at Palm, Inc. "Palm is committed to helping Palm economy players like Business Objects extend Mobile business intelligence solutions while enabling fast ROI to companies investing in Mobile technology on the Palm platform."
"British Airways aims to leverage our existing corporate standard solutions to provide a range of business intelligence capabilities across client/server to web to Mobile," said Anthony Jones, data exploitation architect at British Airways. "Building upon the ease of use and functionality of our existing Business Objects solutions, InfoView Mobile 4.0 offers us the opportunity to extend our existing business intelligence infrastructure to Mobile workers."
"Providing our leadership with timely, concise information is a core function of the US Army CECOM Acquisition Electronic Initiatives Group," said Matthew Meinert, US Army CECOM. "We have been rolling out PDAs to a pilot group to facilitate information sharing. We saw the opportunity to expand the PDA pilot and incorporate InfoView Mobile 4.0 into the mix. The leadership now have the ability to use their PDAs with Business Objects executive reports and have instant access to the information. We hope to soon enable leadership to refresh reports while on travel or in a meeting and provide instant, real-time answers to critical business questions."
Platforms and Availability
BusinessObjects InfoView Mobile 4.0 has completed beta and will be generally available at the end of this month. InfoView Mobile 4.0 runs on both NT and UNIX platforms and runs on any Palm OS PDA including Palm Pilot, IBM Workpad, HandSpring Visor, and Prism, as well as Windows CE-driven PDAs including Compaq iPAQ and HP Jordana. InfoView Mobile 4.0 also adds native support for PocketIE HTML to the support for WML, HDML, and i-mode provided in the earlier versions. Business Objects has worked with NTT DoCoMo on platform support and has recently achieved certification of BusinessObjects InfoView Mobile 4.0 on i-mode, the Mobile internet standard from NTT DoCoMo.
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