JasperSoft officials say the next upgrade of the company's open-source business intelligence suite, due out November 1, will "improve the ability for users to create their own customized reports."

JasperSoft has "found that the end users of a BI system often need a developer's help to create more complex reports," said Paul Doscher, JasperSoft's CEO. "That takes time away from the developer that could be used to work on other IT projects… the last thing the developer wants to do is develop reports."

With the new release, Business Intelligence Suite 2.1, JasperSoft has expanded the ability for someone in the accounting department to customize their own BI Web portal to generate new kinds of information, Doscher said. Previously, end-users could build simple reports, but "we want to make this more sophisticated."

 

For example, an accounts payable clerk can drag and drop elements within the BI Web portal to produce a report showing which customer has the most receivables. Previously, that job would have required the clerk to dictate to the developer what kind of report is needed, and the developer would build it, Doscher said.

JasperSoft has also expanded the range of calculations the software can perform, he said.

JasperSoft's open-source BI tools are integrated by developers for use with other applications and even hosted CRM (customer relationship management) services such as Salesforce.com (News - Alert) and SugarCRM. Customers set up their customized charts and graphs that give information about their business through a Web portal or another application.

 

In September JasperSoft announced that it signed a worldwide alliance agreement with Unisys Corporation enabling Unisys to deliver JasperSoft-certified consulting services to organizations looking for professional reporting and data analysis functionality.

 

Unisys intends to focus on providing services to existing clients while targeting select new enterprise opportunities in financial services, commercial and public sector markets.

 

Unisys will add JasperSoft open source BI to a portfolio of open source products including IT infrastructure and enterprise content management. Both JasperSoft and Unisys are founding members of the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA), an organization committed to delivering enterprise-ready products optimized for interoperability.

 

Anthony Gold, vice president and general manager, Open Source Business, Unisys, said this agreement with JasperSoft will "help us add a strong business intelligence product to the Unisys portfolio of open source consulting and modernization services."

 

JasperSoft counts more than two million downloads worldwide and more than 7,000 commercial customers in 96 countries for their open source business intelligence software, comprised of an interactive reporting server, graphical and ad hoc report design interfaces, OLAP analysis, an ETL data integration engine, and a Java reporting library.

 

Early this year JasperSoft launched Jasper4Salesforce, an on-demand version of the company's open source reporting and business intelligence.