Panorama Business Intelligence

Not that we’re clairvoyant or geniuses, but we did pick up on the monstruous hype about the iPhone pretty early on.  That’s why we’re giving one away to some lucky customer who downloads our first-of-its-kind BI virtual appliance and finds the answer to a basic question in the sample data.  Check it out:  http://challenge.panorama.com/forms/default.aspx

Like most of my friends and colleagues who consider themselves to be information workers, I spend a huge percentage of each day in Outlook, checking and responding to email messages, managing tasks, scheduling meetings, etc.  In fact, I think it is safe to say that I spend the majority of my work time in Outlook, for better or worse.

So wouldn’t it be great if I could monitor my KPIs and stay focused on what’s most relevant to me in this application that I use more than any other in my daily work?

Better yet, while I’m dreaming, lets think broader than Outlook.  Imagine a tool that lets you view your data your way. You choose the information that’s relevant to you and your job – KPIs, data cells, charts – and use a drag-and-drop utility to display your choices within a Microsoft^® Office application.

Now THAT would be cool!  Somebody should build that. 

In today’s world of information there is no single source of information.

Various vendors compete for being the data source.

In the real world situation it can happen that organization is utilizing more then one system (For example SAP and Microsoft).

The end user doesn’t really care what the source of the data is, he just wants to have it available and with the most ease of use.

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It’s been 2 years since we introduced the ability to create live views inside PowerPoint. Basically this feature enables users to create comprehensive PowerPoint presentations that contain views (charts, crosstabs, grids, reports, gages) that have live data that refreshes every time data gets updated. 

To be honest, this feature was built based on one of our largest customer’s request and is being used extensively in our demos and POCs. 

The PowerPoint functionality is a fee addition to our NovaView users and therefore it was tough to really track usage of this feature (and still is). 

What do you think? Great demo or useful feature?

Database Trends and Applications recently published an article about a recent survey by Unisphere Research of 552 BI users. 
“The survey indicated that the discovery of relevant data sources and access to those data sources were key pieces of BI functionality. More than one-third of the respondents indicated that they find it difficult or very difficult to locate the data they need for analytic applications. More than a quarter said that once target data was located, it was difficult to access that data.  [E]ase of finding relevant data was the single most important functionality for a BI tool, even more important than an intuitive user interface.”
This article and survey really grabbed my attention because they completely validate Panorama’s approach to meeting customers’ needs.  Panorama NovaView provides direct connectivity to the data, thereby making the right data instantly available to end users and information workers.  Other products require backend work to ensure semantics are set in order to make the data available. 
Not only that, but another area on which we focus is usability, which has proven to be one of our key competitive differentiators.
http://www.dbta.com/casestudies/Noetix_4-07.pdf
 

More than a decade ago, a small team of people set out to develop technology that seems to be the holy grail of modern day information management – data access and data relevancy. Panorama answered the challenges its customers faced by developing an online analytical processing (OLAP) solution and a language that could take raw data and turn it into relevant information. Microsoft took this OLAP and MDX technology we created and turned it into a foundation on which an entire ecosystem of BI solutions was built upon. This was the first wave of BI.

Today I believe we are in the verge of creating the next wave in BI. And in this new wave we move the focus away from systems and IT to people and process. At Panorama we call it Proactive Business Intelligence. Below is a recent memo I sent to all of the employees at Panorama that explains our vision for Proactive BI and the innovations we are making to lead this emerging market.

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Panorama has just launched a new program to help partners grow their business by marketing the first-of-its-kind NovaView Virtual Appliance to customers who are looking for a solution to overcome business intelligence and integration barriers.

The Program is focused on supporting partners in their efforts to deliver the Panorama NovaView Virtual Appliance, a pre-built, pre-configured, ready-to-run BI solution packaged with the operating system inside a virtual machine. The Program enables resellers and systems integrators to accelerate sales cycles, increase sales opportunities, and drive their own business objectives by taking advantage of Panorama’s global education, technical, marketing and sales resources.

This global partner program further strengthens and extends Panorama’s already strong international reach.

Contact Jordan Friedman (jfriedman@panorama.com) for more information.