Actuate Readies Update Of Enterprise Reporting SoftwareActuate Readies Update Of Enterprise Reporting Software

Actuate Corp. will ship a new release of its enterprise reporting software next week incorporating the information-integration technology it acquired through its buyout of Nimble Technology Inc. last year. That, combined with new metadata management features, gives Actuate 8 advanced real-time reporting capabilities.

While vendors such as IBM and BEA Systems Inc. sell separate information-integration software, Actuate has built its information-integration technology directly into its reporting product. That lets users pull data from multiple disparate sources, such as data warehouses and enterprise resource planning and customer-relationship management applications, in real time to develop reports.

Actuate 8 also contains a new unified metadata-layer capability that makes it easier to create the queries that retrieve data for reports and to reuse data components in multiple reports. The product's e.Spreadsheet Designer tools, used to develop Excel spreadsheet reports, now can generate pivot tables, data filters, and three-dimensional charts.

Velsicol Chemical Corp. has been testing the new Actuate software to develop reports based on operational and financial data from its SAP applications. IS manager Mike Berry says the metadata layer makes it easier for employees to create their own queries that pull information from multiple sources.

Velsicol has tried other reporting tools that, unlike Actuate, couldn't access some of the bigger SAP application tables, Berry says, while SAP Business Warehouse, SAP's own reporting software, provides only summarized data. "Actuate 8 works very well. It saves us a lot of time," he says.

Actuate 8 will be available as a limited production release on June 30 and will be generally available in July. Pricing starts at $500 per user.