International Business Intelligence (BI) software vendor, Yellowfin, has announced the general availability of its new release Yellowfin 5.2: Making Business Intelligence even easier.
The new release builds on Yellowfin’s renowned ease-of-use reporting and analytics solution, offering organizations the ability to achieve superior Return on Investment (ROI). The release achieves this through new analytical visualizations that make data analysis easier and more insightful; an upgraded User Interface (UI) for improved navigation and independent reporting building; and improved scalability to allow organizations to easily grow the Yellowfin platform to meet their changing reporting needs.
“This release has been developed with one goal in mind – making Business Intelligence easier,” said Yellowfin CEO, Glen Rabie. “Making BI easy enables widespread user adoption – the key to BI ROI.
“This latest release strengthens Yellowfin’s position as the world’s easiest-to-use, integrate and manage BI solution.”
To find out more about how Yellowfin 5.2 is making Business Intelligence even easier, visit our latest release page.
Ease-of-use now the number one priority for Business Intelligence
According to the Gartner Research Note, BI Platforms User Survey, 2011: Customers Rate their BI Platform Functionality, ‘ease-of-use’ has surpassed ‘functionality’ as the number one selection criteria when purchasing a BI platform: “Strong functionality is clearly no longer enough... Vocal, demanding and influential business users are increasingly driving BI purchasing decisions, most often choosing easier to use data discovery tools over traditional BI platforms — with or without IT’s consent.”
Yellowfin a leader in BI usability: Dresner Wisdom of Crowds
Yellowfin is responding to this demand and the consumerization of BI. Dresner Advisory Services latest Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study identified Yellowfin as a global BI vendor on the rise and a leader in BI usability. The study compared and ranked 16 of the world’s leading BI vendors on a five-point scale, across 32 criteria, and awarded Yellowfin an overall score of 4.23 out of five. Overall, Yellowfin outperformed Open Source and traditional big name vendors, and was one of only three vendors recommended by 100 percent of survey participants, scoring particularly highly on product usability related criteria, including ease of administration, overall usability, ease of installation and third party integration.
Making data analysis easier: Delivering better insights to everyone with new intuitive analytical visualizations
Yellowfin 5.2 incorporates new chart types, including Histograms, Trellis, Box and Whisker, as well as Heat Maps, to make the implications of data analysis easier for everyone to understand and act on. New HTML 5 integration also provides interactive rollovers for Yellowfin’s range of data visualizations and includes enhanced chart tool tips.
“The integration of HTML 5 into Yellowfin’s various charting options, where applicable, provides a more interactive user experience,” said Yellowfin Data Visualization Engineer, James Bardsley. “Allowing areas of a chart or graph to be easily highlighted enables users to quickly, accurately and effortlessly interpret particular trends or aspects of a data set, to transform analysis into action.”
Enhanced usability
Yellowfin 5.2 also includes a number of enhancements directly linked to usability. New filter options allow commonly used filters to be saved for specific reports, and filter sets to be saved in a named list within a report. Filter sets applied to analytic dashboards can be saved for the length of a users’ session.
“Filter changes will also make it easier and more intuitive to set-up analytic dashboards,” said Yellowfin Product Architect, Peter Damen. “Period filters and the ability to alter filter width are both included as options for power users [administrators].”
Changes to the view have made report building faster and more instinctive. The source connection of the view can be changed, and a new display allows users to see the table from which a view field originates.
“Yellowfin 5.2 also includes view level converters that allow users to convert values at the view level instead of the report level,” said Yellowfin Senior Software Engineer, Steve Joynt. “This means that those values can then be applied to all subsequent reports, whereas before, the values had to be converted separately for each report. Filters can also be converted based on time zones to suit user locality.”
The introduction of precautionary view features allows users to clearly see all fields that are set to secure. Users are also prevented from being able to accidentally delete fields that are in use.
The usability of the release is further enhanced with the inclusion of new out-of-the-box usage reports. These reports enable organizations and administrators to track the frequency with which individual reports are accessed, to determine both popular, and redundant report types.
At the report level, improvements to the report builder and sub query UI make it easier to create queries and sub-queries.
“Reports are also easier to manage and build, with the ability to tag individual reports and search for them by their tag,” said Damen. “A new search box allows report fields to be easily searched for in the report builder page.”
The UI has also been restyled, for a modern, sleek appearance that improves navigability, and reflects Yellowfin’s maturity as a world-class BI solution.
Improved scalability: Easily adapt to your changing reporting needs
The enhanced scalability of Yellowfin 5.2 makes it easier to adapt to the shifting and expanding needs of enterprise reporting.
“The scalability of a BI solution is critical because if there’s one certainty, it’s that a company’s reporting needs will constantly change as they grow, and the strategic direction or data collected changes,” said Joynt. “Yellowfin 5.2 addresses the need for product robustness and easy scalability by making clustering easier, introducing the ability to share session tokens across instances, and by optimizing Yellowfin’s start-up process to minimize dashboard loading time.
“Security is also paramount to scalability and widespread BI deployments, so we’ve improved Yellowfin’s external user authentication process. New features automatically log users out from mobile devices after 20 minutes of inactivity. Additionally, authorized users can also now apply security settings to specific user groups.”
Yellowfin 5.2 also includes a significant OLAP overhaul, with the introduction of OLAP4j and support for PALO, BW as well as enhanced connectivity for SQL Server 2005+.
Yellowfin 5.2 is available from Friday 10 June. Simply visit the Yellowfin website – www.yellowfinbi.com - and ask for Yellowfin’s proven roadmap to assist you to successfully implement Yellowfin 5.2 into your organization.
What is Business Intelligence software?
Business Intelligence refers to a broad range of computer software applications and tools used to report, analyze and present data in a range of formats, to help businesses identify trends and opportunities, and support fundamental decision-making.
About Yellowfin
Yellowfin is a global Business Intelligence software vendor headquartered and developed in Melbourne, Australia. Yellowfin is a highly intuitive 100 percent Web-based reporting and analytics solution.
For further media information, interviews, images or product demonstration, please contact:
Lachlan James, Communications Manager on +61 03 9090 0454, 0431 835 658 or lachlan.james@yellowfin.bi
For regular updates and news follow Yellowfin on Twitter (@YellowfinBI) or subscribe to our free e-newsletter. www.yellowfinbi.com
The new release builds on Yellowfin’s renowned ease-of-use reporting and analytics solution, offering organizations the ability to achieve superior Return on Investment (ROI). The release achieves this through new analytical visualizations that make data analysis easier and more insightful; an upgraded User Interface (UI) for improved navigation and independent reporting building; and improved scalability to allow organizations to easily grow the Yellowfin platform to meet their changing reporting needs.
“This release has been developed with one goal in mind – making Business Intelligence easier,” said Yellowfin CEO, Glen Rabie. “Making BI easy enables widespread user adoption – the key to BI ROI.
“This latest release strengthens Yellowfin’s position as the world’s easiest-to-use, integrate and manage BI solution.”
To find out more about how Yellowfin 5.2 is making Business Intelligence even easier, visit our latest release page.
Ease-of-use now the number one priority for Business Intelligence
According to the Gartner Research Note, BI Platforms User Survey, 2011: Customers Rate their BI Platform Functionality, ‘ease-of-use’ has surpassed ‘functionality’ as the number one selection criteria when purchasing a BI platform: “Strong functionality is clearly no longer enough... Vocal, demanding and influential business users are increasingly driving BI purchasing decisions, most often choosing easier to use data discovery tools over traditional BI platforms — with or without IT’s consent.”
Yellowfin a leader in BI usability: Dresner Wisdom of Crowds
Yellowfin is responding to this demand and the consumerization of BI. Dresner Advisory Services latest Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study identified Yellowfin as a global BI vendor on the rise and a leader in BI usability. The study compared and ranked 16 of the world’s leading BI vendors on a five-point scale, across 32 criteria, and awarded Yellowfin an overall score of 4.23 out of five. Overall, Yellowfin outperformed Open Source and traditional big name vendors, and was one of only three vendors recommended by 100 percent of survey participants, scoring particularly highly on product usability related criteria, including ease of administration, overall usability, ease of installation and third party integration.
Making data analysis easier: Delivering better insights to everyone with new intuitive analytical visualizations
Yellowfin 5.2 incorporates new chart types, including Histograms, Trellis, Box and Whisker, as well as Heat Maps, to make the implications of data analysis easier for everyone to understand and act on. New HTML 5 integration also provides interactive rollovers for Yellowfin’s range of data visualizations and includes enhanced chart tool tips.
“The integration of HTML 5 into Yellowfin’s various charting options, where applicable, provides a more interactive user experience,” said Yellowfin Data Visualization Engineer, James Bardsley. “Allowing areas of a chart or graph to be easily highlighted enables users to quickly, accurately and effortlessly interpret particular trends or aspects of a data set, to transform analysis into action.”
Enhanced usability
Yellowfin 5.2 also includes a number of enhancements directly linked to usability. New filter options allow commonly used filters to be saved for specific reports, and filter sets to be saved in a named list within a report. Filter sets applied to analytic dashboards can be saved for the length of a users’ session.
“Filter changes will also make it easier and more intuitive to set-up analytic dashboards,” said Yellowfin Product Architect, Peter Damen. “Period filters and the ability to alter filter width are both included as options for power users [administrators].”
Changes to the view have made report building faster and more instinctive. The source connection of the view can be changed, and a new display allows users to see the table from which a view field originates.
“Yellowfin 5.2 also includes view level converters that allow users to convert values at the view level instead of the report level,” said Yellowfin Senior Software Engineer, Steve Joynt. “This means that those values can then be applied to all subsequent reports, whereas before, the values had to be converted separately for each report. Filters can also be converted based on time zones to suit user locality.”
The introduction of precautionary view features allows users to clearly see all fields that are set to secure. Users are also prevented from being able to accidentally delete fields that are in use.
The usability of the release is further enhanced with the inclusion of new out-of-the-box usage reports. These reports enable organizations and administrators to track the frequency with which individual reports are accessed, to determine both popular, and redundant report types.
At the report level, improvements to the report builder and sub query UI make it easier to create queries and sub-queries.
“Reports are also easier to manage and build, with the ability to tag individual reports and search for them by their tag,” said Damen. “A new search box allows report fields to be easily searched for in the report builder page.”
The UI has also been restyled, for a modern, sleek appearance that improves navigability, and reflects Yellowfin’s maturity as a world-class BI solution.
Improved scalability: Easily adapt to your changing reporting needs
The enhanced scalability of Yellowfin 5.2 makes it easier to adapt to the shifting and expanding needs of enterprise reporting.
“The scalability of a BI solution is critical because if there’s one certainty, it’s that a company’s reporting needs will constantly change as they grow, and the strategic direction or data collected changes,” said Joynt. “Yellowfin 5.2 addresses the need for product robustness and easy scalability by making clustering easier, introducing the ability to share session tokens across instances, and by optimizing Yellowfin’s start-up process to minimize dashboard loading time.
“Security is also paramount to scalability and widespread BI deployments, so we’ve improved Yellowfin’s external user authentication process. New features automatically log users out from mobile devices after 20 minutes of inactivity. Additionally, authorized users can also now apply security settings to specific user groups.”
Yellowfin 5.2 also includes a significant OLAP overhaul, with the introduction of OLAP4j and support for PALO, BW as well as enhanced connectivity for SQL Server 2005+.
Yellowfin 5.2 is available from Friday 10 June. Simply visit the Yellowfin website – www.yellowfinbi.com - and ask for Yellowfin’s proven roadmap to assist you to successfully implement Yellowfin 5.2 into your organization.
-ENDS-
What is Business Intelligence software?
Business Intelligence refers to a broad range of computer software applications and tools used to report, analyze and present data in a range of formats, to help businesses identify trends and opportunities, and support fundamental decision-making.
About Yellowfin
Yellowfin is a global Business Intelligence software vendor headquartered and developed in Melbourne, Australia. Yellowfin is a highly intuitive 100 percent Web-based reporting and analytics solution.
For further media information, interviews, images or product demonstration, please contact:
Lachlan James, Communications Manager on +61 03 9090 0454, 0431 835 658 or lachlan.james@yellowfin.bi
For regular updates and news follow Yellowfin on Twitter (@YellowfinBI) or subscribe to our free e-newsletter. www.yellowfinbi.com