Birst of Business Intelligence Freedom Emerges

But at the TWDI World Conference today,  Birst, which provides its namesake business intelligence application as a service, announced that it has overcome most of the limitations long associated with delivering BI as a service.

Birst 4 adds advanced ETL services that make it easier to load large amounts of data into the system and the ability to integrate with other data sources running at the customer’s site or any other cloud computing service. In addition to integrating with a local data source, Birst 4 can also leverage local processing and database capabilities to process queries.

The new version of the Birst platform gives IT organizations a more evolutionary approach to moving business intelligence applications into the cloud. Rather than requiring a wholesale transfer of data, Birst gives customers the option of blending cloud computing services with local processing capabilities. In addition, this approach makes it easier for multiple organizations to share a common business intelligence application in the cloud without having to sacrifice their existing business intelligence application investments.

Birst 4 works with existing applications by streaming compressed data back to the application in the cloud after it has been processed locally. This cuts down on bandwidth requirements because queries are not being shipped over the network, said company officials.

The result, they say, is the ability to create custom dashboards and data warehousing applications on the fly using the Birst cloud service, without having to reinvent the existing enterprise software environment.