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Jaspersoft 4.5 release extends big data capabilities

Jaspersoft has updated its analytics tools to include support for analysing data from big data sources in-memory
Written by Ben Woods, Contributor

Business intelligence specialist Jaspersoft has updated its core analytics platform to include features such as a drag-and-drop report designer for non-technical users, and better support for big data sources.

The new version, announced on Wednesday, also includes 'self-service analytics', designed for different types of big data including Hadoop, NoSQL and analytic databases.

"The solution provides significant performance improvements and even more flexibility in reporting capabilities. It also supports our vision to make BI [business intelligence] more pervasive, bringing better decision-making capability to users across the organisation," Karl Van den Bergh, vice president of product and alliances at Jaspersoft Corporation, said in a statement.

"Jaspersoft 4.5 enables analysts to connect natively to big data stores, including those that do not have an SQL interface, performing ad hoc analysis and data exploration, without introducing latency," the company added.

Alys Woodward, programme manager for European business analytics, enterprise collaboration and social solutions at IDC, told ZDNet UK that the release is in line with the industry trend of providing enhanced analytics capabilities for big data sources.

"The benefit of integrating Hadoop-based data with existing BI platforms is that it allows users to look at Hadoop-based data together with existing organisational data," Woodward said. "Many organisations have spent a lot of time, money and effort on building up their BI systems to put them somewhere on the path towards obtaining a 'single version of the truth', by setting up data governance policies, thus managing corporate taxonomies and definitions of terms and KPIs."

The new release also includes enhanced Excel output and extended REST APIs, which provide better performance and usability for integration with web and native applications, Jaspersoft added.

Despite the benefits afforded by the ability to connect to multiple big data sources, Woodward cautions that companies need to be careful of the way in which they make use of the tools.

"Organisations need to balance the opportunity to do new analysis and gain new insights across massive datasets that big data presents, while making sure they don't create a big, flaky data silo," she said.


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