Business Objects Sharpens Mid-Market Focus
By Madan Sheina
February 1, 2005
Excerpted from ComputerWire
Business Objects SA strengthened its business intelligence proposition for the mid-market sector this week by releasing Crystal Reports Server XI.
Crystal Reports Server XI is a brand new packaged offering aimed squarely at small and medium sized enterprises that want to create, deliver and manage Web reports quickly and cheaply.
The move comes two weeks after the launch of the enterprise-targeted BusinessObjects XI (Extreme Insight) platform, which integrates the acquired Crystal Reports product line.
Officials at San Jose, California-based Business Objects say that Crystal Reports Server XI takes advantage of several functional improvements in the latest generation of its Crystal enterprise reporting system – dubbed Crystal Reports XI. Most of these enhancements center on report design and lifecycle management, data access and integration access and application development features.
But its the focus on the mid-market that Business Objects is stressing in this release – highlighting special pricing and flexible licensing options for concurrent usage.
Crystal Reports Server XI is priced for SMEs – at $7,500 per package. The basic package comes with five concurrent access licenses, a single Crystal Reports authoring license and one year of maintenance and technical support thrown in.
“Crystal Report Server XI demonstrates our laser focus on the mid-market at both a product and partner level,” James Thomas, director of product marketing at Business Objects told ComputerWire.
“We’re targeting the needs at SMEs that need a complete reporting solution…one that’s packaged in such a way that makes it affordable and deployable cost-effectively.”
As its branding implies Crystal Reports XI is tightly integrated with the BusinessObjects XI platform.
“Crystal Reports remains the key report creation tool for the BusinessObjects XI suite. But we’re also positioning its as a standalone product that will continue to be sold through our three-tier distribution channel,” Thomas said.
So what’s the difference between the two? “Scalability” according to Thomas.
“Crystal Reports Server XI can only scale up to 20 concurrent users and is sold on a single server,” he said. “Clearly if you need to go above this or require multi-server fault tolerance this isn’t the right product. You’d be better off going with our full Crystal Reports XI enterprise platform offering.”
Functionally at least, Crystal Reports XI is a one of the biggest incremental releases of the product since it came under Business Objects’ wing in 2003.
“Most of the new features implemented in Crystal Reports XI are meant to drive up productivity for report designers and developers,” Thomas said.
“We’ve introduced a host of features that make it easier for report designers to create better looking and more trusted reports. Plus we’re also promoting better re-use of report components for efficient development.”
For starters the interface of Crystal Reports XI has also been overhauled with a new Windows XP-like look and feel. “It has a much cleaner look and feel,” Thomas said.
Report developers in particular will welcome the simplified HTML report design tools and wizards, enhanced data drivers, intelligent prompting for report customization, RTF formatting, and new administration tools (including report publishing wizards and scheduling tools).
A novel feature is the “dependency checker” which validates report components and logic before it is run.
“It lets users check for things like if image locations are in the right place, if the data sources are readily available, and whether the formulas run correctly before a report is run,” Thomas explained.
“This increases trust in the report,” Thomas added.
Another new feature is the “intelligent charting” option which automatically evaluates a selection of report data and recommends the best charting options available.
Report developers can also build and distribute dynamic and cascading report templates based on parameterized drop-down picklists that guide users through standard report customization or navigation tasks.”
A key benefit is the ability to reuse these picklists across multiple reports,” Thomas pointed out.
Additionally, new RTF formats also allow users to easily modify reports, rather than having to go to IT for help.
For report administrators Crystal Reports XI also bundles in a new “virtual” report management workbench to schedule and define access controls for wide-scale report distribution.
Thomas said, “Report designers have been asking us for a central workbench-like environment to manage multiple reports in different stages of development.”
Crystal Reports XI also provides enhanced integration support for Java application development environments.
Crystal Reports has always been a developer-focused reporting tool that include report printing, viewing and exporting and other functions as embeddable components within application development tools.
Thomas said that Crystal Reports XI version builds on these strengths providing greater parity between .NET and Java environments. “Our goal is to let developers use the same object model regardless of whether they are working in .NET or Java environments. We’ve now done that with XI.”
As part of the launch, Business Objects said that Crystal Reports Server XI is the first in a series of mid-market offerings planned this year.
“We’re now positioned better than any other company to deliver BI to the mid-market,” boasted CEO Bernard Liautaud in a press statement.
Liautaud pointed to an unrivalled partner and reseller channel that extends across 3,000 OEMs, VARs and distributors worldwide and the sheer size of the Crystal Reports installed base.
“We already have the broadest partner network as well as the most well-known product brand [Crystal Reports].”
Of course any increased focus on the mid-market will put Business Objects into closer competition with Microsoft Corp. Last year the Redmond giant launched its own enterprise reporting technology called Reporting Services which it “freely” bundles as part of its SQL Server relational database system.
Thomas however isn’t phased by the prospect of battling Microsoft on its home turf.
“Microsoft is big player in the mid-market no doubt. But this is a market where most companies still continue to build custom reports from scratch. There’s still a huge demand for reporting tools.”
“Our specific packaging around Crystal Reports Server XI and the historic strengths of the Crystal partner channel will ensure that we remain a dominant player in the mid-market space.”
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