Yellowfin 6.1 delivers a better kind of self-service Business Intelligence
Global Business Intelligence (BI) vendor, Yellowfin, has made Yellowfin 6.1, its latest BI release, publicly available in a series of launch Webinars across Tuesday 12 and Wednesday 13 June.
Access the official Yellowfin 6.1 Release Notes, presentation slides and on-demand Webinar HERE >
Yellowfin CEO, Glen Rabie, said that the release, made available to existing partners on Thursday 31 May, reflected Yellowfin’s continued commitment to meet and exceed customer expectations of, and demand for, consumer-oriented BI.
“The BI industry is in the midst of dramatic change,” said Rabie. “Now more than ever before, BI deployments are focused on equipping business users with the operational information they need to perform – BI is no longer just a tool for data analysts. Yellowfin’s first place ranking in this year’s Dresner Advisory Service [DAS] Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study is evidence of our enhanced capacity to deliver on that focus.”
Yellowfin received the equal highest overall ranking in DAS’ 2012 Wisdom of BI Market Study, and the highest outright score in the study’s “Emerging Business Intelligence Vendors” sub group. The global study compared and ranked 17 of the world’s foremost BI vendors on a five-point scale, across 33 different criteria, based on seven categories, including: Sales experience, value, quality and usefulness of product, quality of technical support, quality and value of consulting services, integrity and whether existing clients would recommend the vendor and its product to others.
Download a copy of DAS’ Wisdom of Crowds BI study >
Major features, enhancements and improvements of Yellowfin 6.1
The releases major additions and enhancements include:
- A new native application for the iPhone – to compliment Yellowfin’s new iPad application – that delivers a unique consumer-oriented mobile reporting and analytics experience:
- Enhanced mapping capabilities via the ability to apply geometry data to Google maps.
- Multilingual displays – users logging in from different countries will have the ability to read reports in different languages.
- Restyled User Interfaces (UIs) for collaboration to facilitate faster, simplified information sharing and content collaboration.
- Support for a greater range of databases to satisfy organizations’ growing Big Data needs. New databases supported include D3, Connection Cloud, Lucid, Greenplum, Hadoop, SAP Hana, Vertica and SAS dataset connection.
“Yellowfin 6.1 acknowledges non-technical BI consumers as the new predominant audience for BI,” said Rabie. “All the major enhancements in Yellowfin 6.1 – it’s new native application for the iPhone, support for geometry data on Google maps, enhanced collaborative User Interfaces, additional database support and multilingual displays – are all about enabling more people, from more business backgrounds, to access, share and understand more data in order to make the best decisions possible,” said Rabie.
For detail on all UI, analysis and miscellaneous additions or improvements, as well as a comprehensive overview of all 6.1 product enhancements, download the official Yellowfin 6.1 Release Notes >
More on DAS’ Wisdom of Crowds BI Market Study: Shift towards consumer-oriented BI
The 2012 Wisdom of Crowds BI Market study revealed an interesting general trend away from traditional BI vendors, and towards consumer-oriented BI vendors and self-service BI technology.
Significantly, the study ranked “end user ‘self-service’” alongside dashboards as the most important BI competency, with 42 percent of respondents stating that both capabilities were “critical” to their strategic BI initiatives.
“In many organizations, end users have taken the ‘wheel’ and are now driving Business Intelligence,” wrote report author, former Gartner Research Fellow, and President, Founder and Chief Research Officer of DAS, Howard Dresner. “It’s nothing short of a Business Intelligence Renaissance!”
The study divided vendors into sub groups:
- “Titans” – the largest and long-established BI players (IBM Cognos, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP Business Objects)
- “Large Established Pure-Play” – BI vendors predominately focused on BI software and services with business background of 15 or more years (Actuate, Information Builders, MicroStrategy and SAS institute)
- “High Growth” – BI vendors that have achieved critical mass in the market and are growing at an extremely high rate (Qliktech, Tableau and Tibco Spotfire)
- “Emerging” – BI vendors that are typically younger than other categories and offer unique and often innovative business models, technologies and/or services (Acrplan, Dimensional Insight, Jedox, Pentaho, Jaspersoft and Yellowfin)
None of the Titan vendors were amongst the “Top 10” vendors for any of the study’s seven comparative categories. Further, three out of the four worst overall rankings came from this study sub-group. Conversely, four out of the five best overall rankings came from the Emerging vendor sub-group.
The eight least recommended BI vendors all came from the more traditional BI players within the Titan and Large Established vendor sub groups.
And, in terms of “quality and usefulness of product”, seven out of nine of the new-generation vendors from the High Growth and Emerging vendor sub groups achieved product ratings of four or better out of five. Conversely, only one out of eight vendors across the Titan and Large Established vendor sub groups achieved a product rating above four.
For the last two years, Gartner’s BI Magic Quadrant survey has found that ease-of-use rated above product functionality as the number one purchase criteria for organizations selecting a BI solution.
-END-
What is Business Intelligence software?
Business Intelligence (BI) 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 (BI) software vendor passionate about making BI easy. Yellowfin is headquartered and developed in Melbourne, Australia, offering a highly intuitive 100 percent Web-based reporting and analytics solution. Founded in 2003 in response to the complexity and costs associated with implementing and using traditional BI tools, Yellowfin is a leader in mobile, collaborative and embeddable BI as well as Location Intelligence and data visualization.
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), LinkedIn (Yellowfin Business Intelligence) or email pr@yellowfin.bi to subscribe to Yellowfin’s free e-newsletter. www.yellowfinbi.com