Yellowfin Business Intelligence Release 4.0 Announced to Industry

(CDT) Tue Jul 1, 2008 10:45am -- Announced today, the next release of Yellowfin Business Intelligence, 4.0 is scheduled for the end of July. Whilst most of the activity in the BI space has been busy with merger and acquisitions, Yellowfin has continued focussing its efforts to develop web Business Intelligence software that is not only an enjoyable user experience but also delivers insight through advanced data visualisation.

One of the key motivators for Yellowfin has been addressing the BI industry’s aura of complexity. Business Intelligence does not have to be complex, and Yellowfin is making it easy. In release 4.0 Yellowfin has turned its attention to Location Intelligence. Google has certainly made map-based querying a household concept, however, the application for Geographic Information Systems (GIS) within Business Intelligence is still one that is viewed as overly complex and too specialised for the average business user. Well, according to Justin Hewitt, Yellowfin's COO, with Yellowfin 4.0 it isn’t!

With map visualisation organisations can free themselves of the usual constraints of traditional charts and table concepts and explore data based on spatial elements. Yellowfin enables a variety of mapping visualisations to be utilised, either Google Maps, Heat Maps or fully enabled GIS data type rendering.

“With Yellowfin 4.0,” explains Hewitt, “we are able to take two mature technologies and combine them, creating a unique symbiosis that generates new ways to visualise data. Most importantly though, we have opened this rich functionality up to the casual business user who can now discover what value location-based reporting can bring to business decision making. You no longer have to be a GIS expert to gain location based insights.”

Yellowfin Business Intelligence has been creating a quiet revolution with its easy to use, web dedicated, embeddable Business Intelligence software. “Release 4.0 is a major release for us and is one that we are thrilled about,” says Hewitt. “Although there are a host of new functional elements a huge emphasis is to continue to improve the existing application. Whilst there is a tendency in the industry to cram a new release with additional bloat-ware, a large part of 4.0 has been focussed on improving existing functionality by altering the user interface. To this end we have completely redesigned the view builder using the latest in AJAX techniques to provide a truly ‘wow’ factor to what is generally perceived as a mundane task.”

This continued investment in the user interface is indicative of Yellowfin’s development philosophy. “We don't believe in technology that you have to read the manual to use. Our goal has always been to refine the user interface with a highly intuitive workflow so as to guide the user through what is traditionally seen as complex processes,” explains Hewitt, “Yellowfin release 4.0 is another leap forward for us and we are excited about the benefits that it will deliver to our customers, providing them with additional capability to explore, mine and visualise their data.”

Reproduced by Permission Received on Wed Jul 02 2008 - 06:32:26 CDT