What we mean is that attending the event alongside our close partners Microsoft and retail solutions provider ITR Software gave us the opportunity spread the word about the benefits of Business Intelligence 3.0 and further tout our cutting-edge BI offering – Necto.

Just ask our CEO, Eynav Azarya, about the BIG fun we had at the BIG Show – OK, no more puns.

“We were ecstatic to have been invited to participate in the Microsoft booth at NRF and were very pleased with the results,” he said. “With the traffic generated to our pod and the joint meetings with Microsoft, not only were we able to showcase our joint offering but we have also added a number of customers to our pipeline – with one customer already quickly moving to the proof of concept stage.”

The show also bolstered our already tight-knit affiliation with Microsoft.

“The partnership between Microsoft and Panorama has always been fruitful and NRF 2012 is another excellent example of the success we can achieve when collaborating,” Azarya added.

In an industry so marked by change during the past several years – in terms of shopping and spending habits as well as demand for certain products (Who doesn’t own a smartphone these days?) – real-time insight into these trends can’t be more beneficial. By analyzing your stored customer, sales and product data, your company will be better prepared to know exactly what consumers are looking for and how they go about purchasing goods.

And these capabilities will be bolstered even further with the next-generation functionality we’ve built into Necto. Adding in social aspects and relevancy means that end users can collaborate and drive greater value out of information, while being presented with all the data that is necessary for their responsibilities and job functions.

So give Necto a try to see what it can do to grow your business. After all, you don’t want to sell yourself short (couldn’t help the pun). Download a free version of Necto at http://www.panorama.com/trial/necto-trial-1.php.

So it’s easy for you to see why Panorama Software is excited about its latest endeavor.

We recently announced enhanced integration between the cutting edge Necto business intelligence solution with SharePoint. Necto and Sharepoint are the peanut butter and jelly duo in the collaborative & Social BI space.

The collaborative capabilities of SharePoint are combined with the social aspects of Necto, and hat you get is the sleek and user-friendly interface of Necto combined with the heavy-hitting content management power of SharePoint.

As a result, your employees will have access to more social and collaboration capabilities than ever before. Sharepoint users can now collaborate on various dashboards and reports within Necto while still working in their Sharepoint environment. Colleagues can view the results of the analysis and begin a discussion about the data and what it may mean for the company.

Best of all, Sharepoint users will receive Necto discussions within their Sharepoint MySite, allowing non-BI workers to still leverage the power and insights driven from BI. All users involved in a discussion may access it through either Necto or SharePoint, so the chance to brainstorm is never missed!

This is just another way that Panorama is working to make BI more meaningful for companies and their end users. In combining the best of both Necto and SharePoint, we believe organizations will see value added to their BI usage and enjoy the ability to take better advantage of the insights they find within their stored data

That’s why we’re particularly excited about participating in the National Retail Federation’s upcoming conference, Retail’s BIG Show. The NRF has been promoting retailers for a long time, this is the organization’s 101st annual gathering. Panorama Software is looking forward to the opportunity to showcase how our solution can help retailers of any size.

We will be presenting along with two of our partners – Microsoft and retail solutions provider ITR Software – at the event, which takes place at New York City’s Jacob K. Javits Convention Center on January 15-18.

Conference attendees should make it a point to stop by to find out how ITR Software has incorporated Panorama Necto into its SPIN offering to provide retailers with a well-rounded and highly effective analytics solution. SPIN, which is a key piece of ITR’s Buyer’s WorkMate Suite, delivers relevant, timely and detailed analytics to retailers to allow for better decision-making that can be applied to a wide range of different processes.

Using the SPIN Data Repository, all pertinent performance-related metrics are housed in a central location. That supports decisions based around size optimization, store grading and seasonal forecasts. All are important for a high-performing retailer.

It’s all made possible through Panorama Necto’s cutting-edge analytics capabilities. That’s because SPIN is built on top of Necto and takes advantage of the Panorama application’s Business Intelligence 3.0 functionality. It enhances the overall analytics experience by focusing on relevancy, as well as social and self-service capabilities.

Combine that with ITR Software’s retail industry-specific expertise, and companies have access to technology that provides the insight necessary to increase sales, while giving them a leg up on the competition.

So stop by the Microsoft booth #1337, and visit Panorama at the BIG Show and see how a retailer of any size can benefit with the help of Panorama, ITR Software and Microsoft.

• Get into real-time decision-making
• Improve operational efficiency
• Create and manage flexible work-flows
• Increase their responsiveness to customers

Moreover, Gartner, one of the most advanced and reliable research organizations, predicts one-third of all BI functionality will be accessed mainly through devices like mobiles and tablets within one to two years. This isn’t a question anymore. Vendors need to hurry to get on-board this train!

Here at Panorama we have never doubted the importance of mobile BI. When Necto was introduced to the market and Social BI started to catch up, there was no chance the platform would not be available on mobile. The only question was how we would offer our application in the most secure setting.

With development of iOS and other platforms dozens of companies have developed BI applications of all sorts in effort to get business intelligence at the fingertips of users while they are on the go. But the main challenge they all faced is the fact that their Apps are not the same as desktop BI – They create a totally different user experience. Many of the apps are even limited by the data volumes they can analyze in order to grant the stable performance on a mobile device. Don’t get me wrong here, it’s not that all Apps are bad, they are simply different. Different interface, navigation and other limitations require from users have additional knowledge which creates more frustration and leads us to a well-known road to low BI adoption numbers.

Here’s another interesting fact: despite the growth and attention from the media, still only 30% of the companies surveyed allow their business data to be accessed by smart phone users and only 19% by tablet users as was revealed by another study conducted by research company Vanson Bourne. This is understandable as companies strive to protect their data, which is compromised if a device gets lost or stolen. And as we dive deep into the world of Mobile BI excitement, we have to remember about the other side of the coin. Mobile devices are easy to learn, more fun to play with, easy to carry around and much easier to loose.

With all that in mind Panorama has developed a Mobile BI solution that enables organizations not only to place the business data at the fingertips of its employees while they are on the go, but also to eliminate 2 major pitfalls on the road to Mobile Enterprise future: Security Issues and Interface dissonance.

Necto Mobile creates the same self-service and intuitive user experience throughout all desktop and mobile platforms. Creating the same cross-platform interface ensures the increase in overall technology adoption which correlates with the main goal of Necto – always deliver powerful and innovative Business Intelligence technology in an efficient and simple manner.

Using advanced virtualization technologies we have lead everything to a common denominator and created a virtual environment where all platforms are seamlessly integrated for Necto user. He has no need to worry about data transferring as it is done automatically every second.

I remember when its convenience first made Google so famous. Google easily dominated the market by providing people with the most relevant information according to their needs and in a matter of minutes. Previously, the alternative was searching for information in huge archives such as a library.

Likewise, business intelligence has become a valuable asset for organizations as it also provides information and insight from stored data. Such capabilities are essential because highly relevant insights are needed for companies to make better strategic decisions to run their business.

Today BI platforms are no longer limited by the technology assets, like physical memory. Nowadays the possibilities are endless. From this, however, arose a new problem. Companies are struggling to separate and identify which insights are key to their business, due to the high volumes of information stored by companies. BI industry experts are saying this is the major problem, and we need to fix it.

Let me give you an example, once again involving Google (sorry Mr. Google for referring too much to you today, but you are the brightest case). The company’s success really began to take off when it perfected search engine advertising. Google was able to provide relevant ads to users conducting searches, and even better targeting for advertisers looking to reach a specific audience. Again, this is similar to BI, which measured the essential data for the company and provided day-to-day insight into what was going on.

The model worked for both Google and the BI world until the systems became overloaded with information. For Google, too many websites appeared and more users demanded quick access to more information. For BI, users thought, “OK, so we understand what BI tells us and we are keeping track of it, but what if we ask it something different?” And, that’s how the overload started.

BI software vendors adopted a concept of answering the unknown questions, which produced amazing results, but at the same time, swamped the system with endless amounts of poor quality data.

Recently, Google announced that it’s working to increase the intelligence of their relevancy engine by providing people with the ability to get fresh results.

“If I search for ‘olympics,’ I probably want information about next summer’s London Games, not the 1900 Summer Olympics,” Google fellow Amit Singhal wrote for the company’s blog. “Google Search uses a freshness algorithm, designed to give you the most up-to-date results, so even when I just type ‘olympics’ without specifying 2012, I still find what I’m looking for.” (Official Google Blog)

This is only the latest innovation from Google. It has been working in this direction for a while now, introducing many things that anticipate contextual discovery based on the user’s behavior and online habits (e.g. past searches for airplane tickets, contextual map searches, and so on).

Business Intelligence today is likewise striving for such capabilities. Everyday users have to deal with more and more information that flows around them, and we need to analyze their behavior, anticipate what they are looking for a direct them there.

Making data relevant today is more important than ever before. Imagine how great would be a BI system that automatically tells you where to look at and why instead of spending hours or even days on trying to find and filter the right data.

Contextual discovery (or Relevancy) is everywhere around us and many tech companies already trying to bring it to the Enterprise. I truly believe it will become the real next big thing for Business Intelligence in the years to come. Good thing Panorama has launched this and been practicing this for years.

This is significant step forward for Panorama Software customers, as well as business intelligence users around the world. The newest version of SQL Server, set for an early 2012 release, is the first to include an edition devoted specifically to BI.

Pricing for the SQL Server 2012 Business Intelligence Edition will be $8,592 per Server. The other versions will run $6,874 per core for the Enterprise Edition and $1,793 or $898 per Server for the Standard Edition.

By all accounts, it seems as though the Panorama customer base is pleased with the announced pricing of the new platform. Given the affordable price tag that will be attached to SQL Server 2012, more companies around the world will now have an opportunity to leverage business intelligence to make better, data-driven decisions that will steer the organization toward increased revenue and profitability.

“Our customers are very excited with the new BI capabilities in SQL Server 2012,” said Eynav Azarya, CEO of Panorama Software. “With the new packaging and licensing, in particular the new SQL Business Intelligence Edition, the total cost of ownership (TCO) is being kept low, meeting the demands of what our customers are looking for in both scope and price.”

We at Panorama couldn’t be happier about the prospects that SQL Server 2012 holds with its focus on offering BI at a price point that makes the technology available also to mid-market organizations.

We’re also pleased that our stable of customers is excited about the release, since Panorama makes a conscious effort to align its own latest product, Panorama Necto, with what Microsoft will be offering with the new database system. Years of working alongside Microsoft made us confident that the company would hit a home run with the next SQL Server 2012, and so far that’s turning out to be true.

Of course, these limitations have played a huge role, but technology is evolving fast and now there are numerous tools available that allow companies to pull insights from enormous amounts of data.

For a long time, we were trying to find how to make BI work for organizations in way, that will allow for a wide adoption. With the invention of Necto, which is the first Business Intelligence 3.0 enabled suite, we finally nailed it. The main problem wasn’t the technology, it was always a question of how to organize all information inside and outside (data flows) the BI system in a way that allows people to use it without costing businesses an arm and a leg.

Here’s the thing – data means nothing until it’s translated into information. That’s the purpose of BI and why it originally failed to deliver on its promised value. Making information – whether it’s a dashboard, visualization or KPI – digestible for all users within a company is difficult.

Making it Meaningful

It was about a year and a half ago when everybody started talking Self-Sevice. Business Intelligence was all into one important thing, which is finally making BI tools easy to use for a regular business user. Surprisingly soon enough, everybody realized that there is no way of making business users understand “Self-Service” BI without compromising core functionalities of the software.
Here’s when the social aspect came into play. For the past decade, people have utilized various social platforms for many different uses, such as finding their peers and connecting with friends and family.

What’s common among these many social networks is that all integrate seamlessly into our everyday lives. We embraced them to the point where we simply can’t live without them. That’s also why they have become a No. 1 source of information. Social networks push all relevant information to us in an efficient and simple manner, making them both beneficial and irreplaceable in our lives.

In the recent Information Management report he wrote, entitled “Business Intelligence Throws a Party,” Jim Ericson noted that “decision-making is not about one person at an interface confronting a universe of data. It’s ideas, different observations adding up to collective wisdom and an ability to pivot from one idea to another in the workplace.”

With a social component and sophisticated relevancy mechanisms, we can capture, organize and push all relevant information to the right people, at the right time and in a way in which all are familiar. In other words, the system not only translates data into information but also personalizes it according to user’s social patterns and habits. There’s nothing to learn, it integrates into the process of decision-making seamlessly, and, in the words of the late Steve Jobs, it just works.

Look at the Dropbox, for example. The simple, lean startup just raised $250 million in investments because of only one reason – it seamlessly integrates with almost all existing platforms, allowing for simple file sharing.

I’m sure now that BI as we know it is about to change forever.

While meetings are the age-old collaboration practice of just about every company, they can also effectively bring productivity to a screeching halt. They take time away from many tasks in order to focus on just one.

Such issues were addressed in a terrific podcast I recently came across entitled Read This Before Our Next Meeting. The premise of the podcast is based on the book of the same name by Al Pittampalli. In short, both address how disruptive meetings have become to daily operations.

But it doesn’t necessarily have to be this way. We believe that, through business intelligence and synchronized employees, companies will have a better means for gathering ideas, while still getting work done efficiently. It’s my belief that all of this can be accomplished with the help of business intelligence 3.0.

With next-generation business intelligence, we envision companies spending less time talking about what needs to be done and more time actually putting decisions into action. Without moving from their seat, employees can utilize business intelligence platforms to discuss and collaborate on projects without wasting precious hours in the conference room.

This is just another way Panorama feels social business intelligence will change the enterprise as we know it.

Building on such a concept, the revolutionary Panorama Necto is a unique tool that allows team members to collaborate without disturbing each other with meetings by seamlessly integrating into current workflows. This could change the corporate culture forever!

With the social capabilities of Panorama Necto, analytics users no longer have the need to step away from their desk. Everything they would have accomplished in the conference room can be handled right from their desk. That’s because users work together on a social platform to gather insight on stored enterprise data and share their ideas about what it means and how it can be used to promote better decisions and revenue.

Hopefully you read this before your next meeting and start taking first steps into the future of collaboration.

In addition to a recent world tour to promote the newest capabilities and state-of-the-art features of Necto, we’ve also gotten our worldwide business partners up to speed with the latest in business intelligence. By holding training sessions for our business partners, we’re teaching them how to leverage all that Panorama Necto has to offer in order to make better business decisions and move their companies forward.

The initial response to the sessions has been overwhelmingly positive, and we couldn’t be happier about the enthusiasm surrounding our newest offering.

To date, 16 of Panorama’s business partners have participated in a three-day training session and have become certified users of Panorama Necto. These partners are located all around the world, from our home country of Canada to South Africa, Israel, Croatia and many other locations in between.

It’s encouraging the see these companies’ reactions to all that Panorama Necto provides, as well as encouraging that so many want to be the first to utilize what we’re calling Business Intelligence 3.0.

But it doesn’t, and won’t, stop there. As long as our partners are willing and eager to learn all there is to know about Panorama Necto, we’ll continue circling the globe to teach and certify them. That being the case, Panorama Software may be racking up its share of frequent flier miles in order to satisfy all the demand for Necto certification.

During the three-day training sessions, companies will learn all they need and want to know about the BI 3.0 solution. From installing Necto, setting up a dashboard (what we’re calling Panorama Workboards) and getting others up to speed on how to perform a migration from NovaView environment to Necto, everything is covered in just three days of sessions.

For companies looking to join the ranks of certified Panorama Necto users, or those just looking to find out exactly what Business Intelligence 3.0 entails, look no further than our world tours. Given our already exhaustive travel schedule, you can bet a Panorama Necto event will be making a stop in your area in the near future.

It’s always great to host workshops with our partner community. From all that we’ve heard at the various seminars we’ve hosted recently, Panorama’s partners are both excited about the future of BI technology and eager to learn more about how it can help foster better decision-making and accelerate business growth.

On August 4, we hosted the Future of Information Management – Mobile BI and the Cloud. Focused on the hottest trends in BI right now – the spread of mobile devices and managed services is creating the desire among users to gain access to BI reports anytime and anywhere.

“I always find vision very important and interesting,” said seminar attendee Brian Searle, a consult with U.K.-based firm TRIAD Consulting.

“Also I enjoyed that it was backed by very good observations with business technology and social tech,” Searle added

That same day we also hosted BI 3.0: Revolutionary Way to Connect Data, Insights & People for Greater Collaboration and Faster Decision Making. In response to that discussion, Searle commented that Panorama Necto features “very impressive functionality to support long-term vision of BI.” That’s great to hear, considering a main goal of ours is to make business intelligence solutions more accessible to wider user bases within organizations.

Our world tour is on-going, so we hope to catch some of you at our upcoming events. Come out and learn what the future of business intelligence could mean for your company.