Information Builders' Software Lets Smartphones Manage BI ReportsInformation Builders' Software Lets Smartphones Manage BI Reports

Information Builders on Wednesday released new software, WebFocus Mobile Favorites, that lets professionals organize business-intelligence reports they access through their mobile devices. The company has been offering access to its WebFocus Active Reports from most any mobile device's Web browser for about a year.

Various BI vendors have begun offering access to reports via mobile devices in recent months, but customers aren't exactly flocking to the capability. Information Builders executives insist that's about to change with the new and better generation of smartphones offering bigger screens with better resolution, and better form factors and navigation capabilities.

Using Safari on the iPhone, "you can meaningfully navigate [BI reports] on these phones," said Rado Kotorov, the company's technical director of strategic product management. Kotorov says Information Builders has a handful of beta customers testing mobile access to BI, including NASA engineers accessing space-shuttle data.

Still, Kotorov acknowledges there are remaining limitations to mobile devices. "We don't recommend sending large fields and reports," he said.

Information Builders' mobile users access BI dashboards containing business data residing on Web servers through their device browsers. A traveling salesperson can view sales results, for example, via columns, pie charts and fever charts. Information Builders is targeting executives, salespeople, and other on-the-go professionals with the software. The new Favorites feature, installed by an administrator onto a Web server and accessed by the user through a Web link, lets users add or remove frequently accessed BI reports.

The standard-browser approach helps businesses get around the problem of having to develop or purchase applications customized for mobile devices, and then support that separate software, Kotorov said. Since users' favorites folders are on a Web server, they can change or use different devices, including a laptop, PC, or different mobile device, to access their frequently used information.

Information Builders' s browser approach to mobile BI is distinctive since its focus is to make BI accessible regardless of the mobile device used. Cognos began shipping Cognos 8 Go Mobile in February for accessing BI reports on the go, but it's currently limited to Blackberry devices. Microstrategy last month also began offering mobile access to BI reports, but that's also limited to BlackBerrys.

Business Objects, like Information Builders, has taken a more open approach, and in May began offering software that lets professionals access and interact with reports residing on their companies' BusinessObjects XI Release 2 deployments, from Blackberrys, Windows Mobile, and "various other" devices.