WebFOCUS. Information Builders TECHNOLOGY AUDIT BUTLER GROUP VIEW ABSTRACT KEY FINDINGS LOOK AHEAD

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1 Reference Code: TA001383BIN Publication Date: March 2008 Author: Sarah Burnett TECHNOLOGY AUDIT WebFOCUS Information Builders BUTLER GROUP VIEW ABSTRACT WebFOCUS is Information Builders flagship Business Intelligence (BI) product; a highly-respected platform, that can provide organisations across all sectors with just about every facet of the BI stack, ranging from back-end Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) services, through to advanced visualisation technology and strong integration with desktop tools. WebFOCUS can create, consume, and publish Web Services, and so this makes it an ideal platform for the development of enterprise BI applications. As a result, BI output can be seamlessly integrated with line-of-business applications, regardless of architecture. New Web 2.0 features have improved its collaboration functionality and overall, the product s capabilities combine well to deliver BI through traditional channels as well as and mobile devices. KEY FINDINGS A comprehensive and fully-integrated enterprise BI platform. Highly scalable with production references which exceed 10,000 users. WebFOCUS Magnify offers extensive search that encompasses all enterprise data and not just BI. Runs on over 35 platforms including IBM mainframe (System Z) and AS/400, and Windows, Linux, and UNIX. Offers broad data access capabilities and over 85 native database adapters. The built-in integration component provides direct access to enterprise data. Capable of delivering information in any format to any mobile device and provides disconnected analytics. Lacks advanced data mining capabilities. LOOK AHEAD Coming out soon is WebFOCUS Flex Enable, which gives developers and analysts the ability to easily deliver Rich Internet Applications (RIA) for BI. Furthermore, future releases are likely to include application templates for selected vertical markets. Butler Group. This Technology Audit is a licensed product and is not to be photocopied Page 1

2 FUNCTIONALITY Product Analysis Information Builders provides enterprise-level BI functionality from its WebFOCUS product set. The BI offering is built upon a highly-scalable, Services Oriented Architecture (SOA), which can be used to deliver actionable BI and insight to a broad-range of users and communities located on the company Intranet or beyond. An obvious strength of the WebFOCUS platform is its ability to work with a wide range of enterprise data sources, but this could be wasted were it not for the rapid application development capabilities that this solution has to offer. Designed to be pervasive rather than invasive set of technologies, the WebFOCUS product set enables organisations to deliver relevant, consistent, and believable information in a format and through channels that best suits the corporate user (including and mobile devices). Strong Web-based reporting in the form of Active Reports, HTML, DHTML, and SWF for Adobe s FLEX, navigable Portable Document Format (PDF) books, and of course fully-formatted Excel spreadsheets, allow users to work with information in a format that suits their role and information needs. Operating in a very mature market, it has become increasingly difficult for BI vendors to differentiate their wares over the last couple of years. New software categories, such as Performance Management, have provided some opportunity for differentiation; but for many first-time BI customers this does not necessarily advance their purchase decision-making process. When evaluating a prospective BI solution, most organisations will tend to start by asking the question: Can this solution natively access my databases and enterprise applications? This is always a good question to ask, as data integration can be a costly business. Information Builders still views its data access capabilities as a major differentiator, and to a large extent we would be inclined to agree (it can natively access over 300 data sources). The next question likely to be asked is: What platforms are supported? Here again Information Builders presents a strong case, as WebFOCUS runs on all major hardware platforms including Windows servers, Linux (Intel and IBM Mainframes), AS/400, UNIX, and OS/390. Finally, IT managers and data architects will want to know if they must first build a data warehouse or cube before they can start running reports something still approached with trepidation. The answer from Information Builders to this question is No, unless of course a cube or data warehouse makes practical sense. As corporate objectives shift and change to accommodate prevailing business conditions, requirements for dynamic access to enterprise data grow. To keep up with changing demands, BI vendors must ensure that solutions developed on their platforms are adaptive, dynamic, and reusable in nature. With data access and legacy integration a forte, and WebFOCUS Developer Studio well-suited to rapid application development, Information Builders is clearly capable of meeting the most demanding of requirements for enterprise BI and Web reporting software solutions. Whilst data access, integration and reporting are the core strengths of the product, in Butler Group s opinion, the range of pre-built applications that are offered by the vendor could be extended, for example, for fraud detection or sales analysis. The same is true of vertically-focused applications e.g. for the telecommunication sector, but this has not been a barrier to customers developing a wide range of customised applications based on WebFOCUS, particularly in the area of operational BI. Last year was a busy year for Information Builders; the vendor announced a number of product enhancements. These include the following: Butler Group. This Technology Audit is a licensed product and is not to be photocopied Page 2

3 Integration with ESRI s ArcGIS Server to deliver location intelligence to users in order to visualise the spatial component of their business data. This capability has been extended to Google Maps also. Figure 1: WebFOCUS Active Dashboard Source: Information Builders D A T A M O N I T O R Active Dashboards (shown in Figure 1) for WebFOCUS Active Reports, which is also capable of delivering high-end visualisation to mobile devices. With Active Dashboards users can develop, view, and interact with dashboards without requiring coding or browser plug-ins and then distribute these interactive charts and tables via . When deployed on a Web site Active Dashboard and Active Reports allow users to extend the application to an unlimited number of users as all interactions occur in the browser without requiring calls to backend systems. Furthermore, the connected mode allows users to change the data to work with large data sets. Butler Group. This Technology Audit is a licensed product and is not to be photocopied Page 3

4 WebFOCUS Performance Management Framework (PMF) Release 4 takes an operational standpoint to performance management and offers enhanced communications across the organisation, Web 2.0 functionality, and predictive analysis. Support for HP Neoview, an enterprise-class data warehousing platform that was publicly launched in April 07. WebFOCUS Magnify offers broad Enterprise Search. There is also support for Lucene the open source search engine from Apache foundation. QuickData is a plug in for Excel for ad hoc querying and reporting. A user can invoke WebFOCUS directly from Excel and design a query. They can create complex calculations and also fully format and conditionally style the data before passing it to Excel. PowerPainter a Web 2.0 thin client ad hoc tool for the business users. It allows users to create via the Web, compound, and coordinate reports. Charts and tables can be combined in a single layout. Reports can be decorated with images, text, and other styling elements that allow it to build the annual type of report. Flex Enable An application engine for developing Rich Internet Applications (RIA). It is an add on to Adobe FLEX Builder that manages the connection, data access, and all BI functions. Product Operation WebFOCUS does not require a cube or a data warehouse, as it can report from data just about anywhere (including, of course, a data warehouse or cube should it makes sense). Information Builders provides solutions capable of handling the development of complete BI applications, and is perfectly equipped to populate Web enterprise portals with rich information, dashboards, and visualisations. WebFOCUS functionality includes: Data Access WebFOCUS provides access to (thanks to its integration subsidiary iway Software) more than 300 distinct data sources. These include: all major relational and non-relational databases, packaged application data stores, plus specialised OLAP and multi-dimensional data structures and standardised exchange of information with all major industry initiatives such as EDI, XML, EDIINT (AS1/AS2/AS3), and ebxml. Operationally these may reside on a wide range of platforms including: desktops, Microsoft Windows servers, IBM mainframes, UNIX and Linux hosts, and Tandem and HP systems. Information Builders is one of the few vendors to have a fully compatible and scalable Web-based product on legacy platforms, such as mainframes, which continue to be used and favoured by some industries, such as the Financial Services sector. WebFOCUS solutions are also easily ported between platforms, facilitating right sizing or strategic platform changes within an organisation. In support of both business and technical users, WebFOCUS 7 employs different access techniques to produce high-quality data, a reusable infrastructure, and comprehensive metadata: Butler Group. This Technology Audit is a licensed product and is not to be photocopied Page 4

5 Using Data Migrator to extract, transform, and load data directly into a data warehouse or mart from any of the aforementioned data sources; thereby enabling WebFOCUS to provide heterogeneous cross-platform access to multiple data sources. Figure 2: A WebFOCUS Active Report Distributed by Source: Information Builders D A T A M O N I T O R Directly accessing operational data stores or the files that service operational systems. Transparently drilling and joining data warehouses to operational data. Using operational systems own application functions to access data. Trickle-feeding a data warehouse to populate and refresh it, using real-time transformations. Butler Group. This Technology Audit is a licensed product and is not to be photocopied Page 5

6 Create, consume, and publish Web services, thereby giving WebFOCUS the ability to be an integral part of a SOA, and combine data from internal and external sources to create a unified, insightful report. Query Query, reporting, and analysis facilities continue to form the core of any successful BI solution, and WebFOCUS delivers all three elements. The product s query facilities are well rounded and functionally rich. Its ad hoc query facilities allow end-users to customise self-service reporting screens, or create brand new reports through the use of ad hoc Wizards. The ad hoc Wizard facility is afforded by an intuitive drag-and-drop user interface that is designed with the business user in mind. The approach taken helps to walk users through each process in a logical sequence, and as a result enables them to create anything from simple queries to sophisticated reports, spreadsheets, and user-specific documents. The preparation of other uniquely formatted and more complex reports can be constructed through the WebFOCUS report painter within its intuitive, graphical, drag-and-drop environment. Presentation formats that are acceptable to the product set include: HTML; DHTML; XML; navigable PDF books; fully-formatted Excel spreadsheets, Workbooks and Pivot Tables; PowerPoint slides; text, ESRI GIS (Geographic Information System), and Rich Text Format (RTF) documents. WebFOCUS is able to transparently generate 4GL code in order to provide complex query capability, and so support levels of functionality that cannot be provided through normal SQL queries. Examples of this include: complex ranking; compound reports from a single DBMS pass; complex logic and functions required for fraud detection; and exception reporting. WebFOCUS provides excellent facilities for the production of complex financial reports. In normal operations, query results are created and stored on the WebFOCUS server for browser access. Additionally, query results can also be stored across a range of file structures, including: desktop application formats, relational DBMS, or cube structures. WebFOCUS is also capable of creating temporary files from query results; thereby enabling associated reports and queries to be run. There is a special caching facility for Active Reports that allows users to use active reports in a connected mode with large data sets in order to prefilter the data for the disconnected report. Another important aspect of query production is that of operational control and management. Here, WebFOCUS has a usage monitoring facility which tracks all pertinent information about user queries and their execution, from which resultant information can be made available to the WebFOCUS Pre-emptive Query Governor a rules-based expert system, which can be customised to allow or reject queries based on cost, CPU utilisation, business rules, or enhanced security logic. Reporting A drag-and-drop report painter facility is used within WebFOCUS to format and generate specially formatted reports and financial statements. Developer studio with the report painter provides a robust thick-client tool that can be used by developers for analysts. It has a financial modelling module that can be used to speed up developments. Business users can benefit from thin-client tools Report Assist and Power painter. Other simple and quick reports/queries are built using the system s ad hoc Wizard, which again utilises drag-and-drop facilities to walk the user through each logical step of the process. A wide range of graph and chart making facilities form part of the standard product set, including support for high-resolution Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). Butler Group. This Technology Audit is a licensed product and is not to be photocopied Page 6

7 Charts can be rapidly generated from any report or can be embedded within compound documents. Data visualisation, through the use of graphical objects or bar charts, can be directly embedded into tabular reports to deliver any selected type of data measurement. Calculations and/or formulas can be dynamically created and applied on a row, cell (matrix and financial reports), or aggregate basis. Common or regularly used calculations and formulas can be stored in the systems repository for future re-use. Visual Discovery product allows users to create advanced interactive visualisations. It essentially does multivariate analysis visually and works with very large data sets. The development of Visual Discovery dashboard is done in the HTML painter in Developer Studio. It is then deployed on the Web where users can analyse large data sets. Report automation within the WebFOCUS solution is provided through the use of the WebFOCUS report delivery engine, ReportCaster. ReportCaster provides companies with a single point of control for fully automating the scheduling, distribution, and storage of information including WebFOCUS reports and third-party content, to anyone within or outside of the organisation. WebFOCUS, reports can be automatically sent to Web browsers, addresses, fax machines, printers, and mobile devices. Figure 2 shows an example of an Active Report that was distributed by . ReportCaster has the ability to intelligently split a WebFOCUS-based report on specified sort criteria, thereby enabling a single report to meet the specific needs of many recipients. Adding to the range of reporting options, an automated publish and subscribe facility is also available. This controls the frequency (using schedules and/or alerts) of reports, their formats, and delivery methods, etc. Users are also provided with a deferred execution facility, so that when long running reports are created, they can disconnect from the query and do other work while still being able to check progress on the server. Delivery of reports to end-users is supported by a browser-based zero-client access method; no plug-ins or downloads are required. Analysis WebFOCUS provides a range of fully-integrated analysis facilities, each of which was developed inhouse as part of the system s standard architecture. As a result, any report created within the confines of WebFOCUS can be OLAP-enabled. An access button is made available to invoke the OLAP panel, and this facility has been integrated into the report view. This allows business users to keep control of their own requirements when developing sophisticated analysis functions, and when attempting to solve complex problems. Supporting this self-service approach, the system s metadata provides the ability to define OLAP dimensionality to any data structure, and extends this capability to any available reporting environment. The WebFOCUS OLAP Viewer provides support for OLAP, ROLAP, MOLAP, and HOLAP structures, and can be used against almost any available file structure. In common with most core functions, the WebFOCUS Report, Analysis, and OLAP facilities are tightly integrated. WebFOCUS is very much an end-to-end reporting solution; it makes even a single piece of information report ready. After making an observation, the user can save the results as a new report generated in their preferred format such as PDF, Excel, or even Excel PivotTables. Reports can then be viewed, printed, or taken off-line for further analysis. Information Builders provides some vertical industry-focused analytical templates. Such templates feature common KPIs, and are able to deliver common pre-built reports, all of which can be customised to suit the customer s specific needs and their individual data structures. Overall, Butler Group believes that the analysis capabilities are better suited to pervasive BI than to power users and their more advanced requirements. This is being addressed by the vendor with Visual Discovery and predictive analysis and modelling recently added through a partnership with SPSS. Butler Group. This Technology Audit is a licensed product and is not to be photocopied Page 7

8 Scalability is made possible through a combination of features: The native data adapters efficiently distribute work between the BI engine (WebFOCUS Reporting Server) and the database server. The product s distributed architecture ensures that queries are processed on or close to data to minimise network traffic. Superior data manipulation language performs complex calculations to aggregate numbers to minimise network traffic and reduce the number of database passes for each query. Supports Multi-Threaded Server Processing. WebFOCUS has built-in load-balancing, failover, and autonomic functions that ensure efficient use of CPU s and guaranteed up-time. Product Emphasis Compared against other BI products on the market, integration is clearly one of the strengths of this solution. Well documented APIs expose all features and functions of the product and the wealth of integration and middleware technology offered by its subsidiary company iway Software, is clearly a differentiator. WebFOCUS now has the ability and supporting functionality to address a wider range of application needs, including leading edge real-time business monitoring and performance management applications. DEPLOYMENT WebFOCUS can be installed and implemented by IT personnel in any company. Information Builders provides over 200 trained professional services consultants to aid whenever necessary. WebFOCUS can be deployed in two ways: either a pure application development mode where WebFOCUS can be accessed via Java API set, or Web Services equivalent, or called via a URL (in this fashion it can easily be embedded into any Web application Java,.Net, or HTML, ASP, etc., and represents around half of all deployments) or as BI deployment where the WebFOCUS stack enables organisations to create a user-driven environment instead of applications. Architecturally, the WebFOCUS solution consists of four major components that can be distributed across as many platforms: The Client component is the middle tier one which runs on or near the web server in a servlet form or on any Java Application Server. This component contains the WebFOCUS portal technology, user administration, security and thin-client tools deployment. The WebFOCUS Reporting Server is the main processing component of WebFOCUS. The Reporting Server can run on any platform including IBM mainframe (System Z) and AS/400 (System I) environments, as well as Windows, Linux (including Linux on a mainframe) and UNIX. It processes report requests, aggregates numbers and format reports and other content for delivery to the end user. WebFOCUS Data Adapter which is optimized to take advantage of the capabilities of each source. Butler Group. This Technology Audit is a licensed product and is not to be photocopied Page 8

9 ReportCaster is a separate Server which can be installed with other components or on a separate machine. It handles information delivery (push), real-time event based alerting, report distribution and scheduling. The WebFOCUS platform is built upon logical three-tier architecture. The multi-threaded, java-based, client-tier is typically installed on a Web or application server. It communicates with the WebFOCUS Server a processing engine that transforms, aggregates, and formats report content. The product runs on any or all of the platforms listed below, with the application or data adapter installed on or near the data source platform. Information Builders describes its adapters as being intelligent, as they are able to communicate in the source data s native language (extended SQL, ABAP, etc.). One should not forget that iway Software, a company specialising in business integration, Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), middleware, and infrastructure solutions, is a subsidiary of Information Builders, and as such provides WebFOCUS with a rich set of pre-built components, which enable it to access over 280 data sources, package applications, back-office systems, and standardised information exchanges across all major industry initiatives, such as EDI, XML, EDIINT (AS1/AS2/AS3), and ebxml. WebFOCUS Reporting Server is a pre-requisite for all implementations. The remaining modules Information Delivery, Portal, Performance Management, Visualisation, Location Intelligence, and end-user tools can all be added as modules. Platforms supported include: IBM (z/os, OS/390, OS/400, AIX, MVS, and VM), HP (Tru64 UNIX, VMS/VAX, OpenVMS/Alpha, NonStop Himalaya, and HP-UX), Microsoft (Windows XP, Windows NT and Server 2000/2003), Sun Solaris, Linux, Dynix (Sequent), and more. WebFOCUS offers a complete development environment which does not require third-party tools to implement, and so applications are typically created by small development teams. As with any data-centric product technology, organisations implementing any BI strategy will need a skilled DBA and individuals with specific knowledge of the data sources being accessed. Network administrators will need to be aware of the WebFOCUS server, and are usually involved in the configuration of a multi-tier environment. In general, independent research suggests that WebFOCUS requires fewer resources for implementation than similar solutions from competing vendors. Depending on the need, WebFOCUS applications are often built, tested, and deployed within three months. WebFOCUS is comprised of several components, and Information Builders suggests that companies begin deployments by building common reports and making them available by automated delivery. Thereafter, the company recommends the building of parameter-driven, structured ad-hoc reports, followed by the introduction of Visual Discovery for when additional analysis is required. Once operational, the IT department will typically monitor the use of WebFOCUS applications using the WebFOCUS resource analyser. Commonly run reports can be added to an automated distribution queue, and reports that are no longer run can be retired or replaced. Standard WebFOCUS developer courses are available, but end-user training is typically bespoke. Several levels of support are offered for WebFOCUS: Standard, Gold, and Platinum. The first 2 months are typically provided from a local branch office before being transferred to a follow-the-sun hotline which provides 24- hour hotline support. WebFOCUS is generally well suited to meet today s stringent demands for high security. Not only does it interoperate with existing security procedures and protocols, it can also add additional layers of security to the reporting environment. WebFOCUS boasts self-aware, self-healing, self-optimising autonomic servers whose workload, traffic management, and capacity planning features reduce complexity, improve system performance, and reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Butler Group. This Technology Audit is a licensed product and is not to be photocopied Page 9

10 PRODUCT STRATEGY The target market for WebFOCUS is largely horizontal, although some specific applications have been built: WebFOCUS Insurance Reporting Foundation, and WebFOCUS Performance Management Framework, for example. Although figures vary, Information Builders informs us that companies can usually expect to see a return on their investment within six months, and that widely deployed operational applications deliver the best returns a statement which clearly supports the notion of pervasive BI. In terms of route-to-market, around 70% of product sales are direct from Information Builders, with 15% through partner recommendation, and another 15% through resellers. Key partners and resellers include: Accenture, BearingPoint, Amdocs, and SCT. Technology partnerships exist with ESRI for GIS and SPSS for data mining and analytics. In addition, Information Builders has an OEM relationship with IBM with WebFOCUs embedded under the name of DB2 WebQuery for System i on IBM iseries boxes. WebFOCUS is priced from US$15K for NT-based platforms to US$150K for mainframes. An average WebFOCUS project is around the US$150,000 mark, with little or no services required about 60% of the time. When services are required, a typical deal would be in the order of US$250,000, split 50/50 between software and services. Standard support contracts are 20% of software costs, with local support centres in each country underpinned by a follow-the-sun coalition of three regional support centres in North America, Europe, and Australasia. 24-hour access to this support structure is available to customers purchasing Information Builders InfoResponse Premium offering, which is 25% of software costs. Information Builders release strategy is to provide one major release per year, followed by two maintenance releases. There are 2-3 Service Releases per year. A Point Release is released to fix bugs or the customer can choose a Feature Release which has the fixes and includes new features and enhancements. Coming soon is WebFOCUS Flex Enable, which gives developers and analysts the ability to easily deliver RIA for BI. The application engine combines the strengths of WebFOCUS and Adobe Flex Builder for development of custom interactive and animated analytic dashboards, letting users slice-and-dice business information for precise decision making. Furthermore, future releases are likely to include application templates for selected vertical markets. COMPANY PROFILE Information Builders was founded in 1976 by Gerry Cohen, who continues as CEO and President. The company began its technology life by developing WebFOCUS as the first 4th Generation Language, and quickly established its competencies in the multi-platform data access and reporting arena. Today it has grown to become one of the largest privately held, and profitable, software companies in the world, with revenues in excess of US$300 million. Headquartered in New York City, Information Builders employs around 1,400 staff worldwide, with 800 in the corporate office and the remainder evenly split between branches and subsidiaries. The company counts over 6,000 unique customers running its products out of more than 12,000 customer sites, and has an impressive customer list, including: most of the Fortune 100, Lloyd s of London, BT International, The Co-operative Bank, Arcadia Group Ltd, Sony, NASA, Verizon, all major US federal agencies, and many educational institutions. Its customers occupy nearly every possible vertical sector, and to date its products have been particularly well-used in the insurance, banking and finance, telecommunications, retail, government, and manufacturing sectors. Information Builders has, and continues to work with an extensive range of business partners. Butler Group. This Technology Audit is a licensed product and is not to be photocopied Page 10

11 SUMMARY WebFOCUS is a well architected BI platform that offers extensive data access and application development capabilities. A mature product supported by an established vendor, WebFOCUS delivers strong BI functionality alongside excellent Enterprise Reporting facilities. Available across all major platforms, WebFOCUS is able to deliver information and offer insight throughout the organisation. Equally suited for executive, analytical, and operation use, WebFOCUS makes good use of numerous delivery mechanisms and file formats, supporting on-line as well as off-line use. Deployable as a platform for BI applications or as pure BI technology stack, WebFOCUS makes data handling easier through an extensive array of data integration technologies including data, application, and technology adapters. WebFOCUS provides native access to more than 280 distinct databases and information sources including relational, legacy, ERP, and CRM, data staged in warehouses or data marts, and real-time data from operational systems on any platform. Although WebFOCUS still lacks depth in the area of advanced analytics, Butler Group still believes this BI platform to be one of the most complete on the market. Table 1: Contact Details Information Builders Corporate Headquarters Two Penn Plaza New York NY USA Tel: Fax: askinfo@ibi.com Information Builders UK Headquarters Cricketfield Road Uxbridge Middlesex, UB8 1QD UK Tel: +44 (0) Source: Information Builders D A T A M O N I T O R Headquarters Europa House, 184 Ferensway, Hull, East Yorkshire, HU1 3UT, UK Tel: +44 (0) Fax: +44 (0) Butler Direct Pty Ltd. Level 46, Citigroup Building, 2 Park Street, Sydney, NSW, 2000, Australia Tel: + 61 (02) Fax: + 61 (02) Butler Group 245 Fifth Avenue, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10016, USA Tel: Fax: For more information on Butler Group s Subscription Services please contact one of the local offices above. Important Notice This report contains data and information upto-date and correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of preparation. The data and information comes from a variety of sources outside our direct control, therefore Butler Direct Limited cannot give any guarantees relating to the content of this report. Ultimate responsibility for all interpretations of, and use of, data, information and commentary in this report remains with you. Butler Direct Limited will not be liable for any interpretations or decisions made by you. Butler Group. This Technology Audit is a licensed product and is not to be photocopied Page 11