SAN MATEO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–

Actuate Corporation
(BIRT), The people behind BIRT^®
and the leader
in open source Business
Intelligence (BI), today announced that several of its customers
including Sacramento
Municipal Utility District and St.
Thomas Elgin General Hospital are experiencing millions in
returns on their BIRT
Performance Analytics deployments.

Organizations are increasingly looking at ways to drive higher
business performance – at the individual department level and across
the organization. However, the inability to effectively monitor and
measure operations, establish a line of sight between the overall
company strategy and supporting operations, plus the lack of mechanisms
that help drive improvements in underperforming areas are often cited as
the biggest impediments to achieving better business performance.

BIRT Performance Analytics – part of the ActuateOne®
suite of integrated BI products – represents the next stage in the
evolution of Business Intelligence and Performance Measurement,
delivering business-user-driven discovery, analysis and performance
improvement at all levels of an organization on a single platform. BIRT
Performance Analytics helps to optimize current processes, while
providing visibility into areas where new processes are required. This
is achieved by vastly improving the quality and relevance of performance
information delivered to all users, while enhancing accountability,
transparency, reliability and timeliness. Once deployed, it becomes
the catalyst to move from issue identification to informed decision
making, organizational alignment and continued performance gains.

BIRT Performance Analytics enables organizations to:

• Effectively monitor operations using intuitive dashboards;
• Perform contextual analysis to identify root causes of issues;
• Launch initiatives to improve performance and track their progress;
• Capture and repeat best practices;
• Align the entire organization by providing a line of sight from
  strategy to operations; and
• Experience tremendous gains in organizational performance.

Two recent customers, Sacramento
Municipal Utility District and St.
Thomas Elgin General Hospital have demonstrated tremendous ROI
using BIRT Performance Analytics.

Sacramento Municipal Utility District Attains ROI of Over $2 Million
across Locations

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) is a
community-owned California electric utility serving 592,000 customers
and a total population of approximately 1.4 million. It is the
sixth-largest public utility in the country, with a 900-square-mile
service territory that encompasses Sacramento County and small adjoining
portions of Placer County and Yolo County. SMUD began implementing their
current Performance Management initiative in 2008, and have since become
a leader in the field.

Through its implementation of Actuate’s Performance Analytics suite,
SMUD has experienced significant financial benefits and a high return on
its Performance Measurement and improvement efforts, including its
software investment. For example, the use of measurement in the
distribution area of the company achieved cost savings through
efficiency and optimization initiatives of $2.5 to $3 million in just
one year, while increasing the value delivered per budget dollar
consumed.

Efficiencies are achieved using Performance Scorecards and Performance
Dashboards, allowing for the rapid development and calculation of
metrics and operational data which help users to work smarter on an
ongoing basis (e.g. helping supervisors and employees take a prioritized
approach to work selection and better equipping crews in their work).
This continuous improvement effort is translating into millions of
dollars in real financial savings across the business units at SMUD and
a heightened business acumen linking financial performance with
operational performance through use of BIRT Performance Scorecards and
Analytics capabilities.

In the year following SMUD’s BIRT Performance Analytics implementation
savings increased $1,890,000, or 2.6 percent, from the previous year.
Additionally, due to effective management, operating costs decreased
by four percent. As SMUD’s Performance Monitoring efforts continue
to mature, it is anticipated that their efforts will continue to
translate data into “metrics that matter” used by supervisors and
managers at all levels to help drive the organization forward. Full
details about the success at SMUD are available by downloading the SMUD
case study at http://www.birtperformanceanalytics.com/se/info/prq311bpswpsmud/.

St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital – Award Winning ROI

St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital (STEGH) is a 166-bed facility
that services the town of St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada, and its
surrounding regions. The fully accredited hospital provides
comprehensive 24-hour coverage in medicine, surgery, OB, pediatrics,
anesthesia, emergency and family medicine.

STEGH have been named winners of the prestigious BeyeNETWORK “Vision
Award for Business Impact” in the Performance Management category.
As a result of their award
winning Actuate implementation, STEGH implemented more than 50
projects, totaling $2.5 million in savings. Additionally, a
quality-control council was created to meet weekly and monitor progress,
using BIRT Performance Analytics for major projects and Senior
Management Team reporting.

By focusing on effective Performance monitoring and measurement using
Actuate’s technology, STEGH achieved a $3.1 million in savings and
additional revenue. Overall revenues for STEGH increased
$1,890,000, or 2.6 percent, from the previous year. As a result, STEGH
began its fiscal year with a balanced budget. By managing its
operating costs effectively, the hospital will be able to meet the
health needs of the community.

About Actuate BIRT Performance Analytics

BIRT Performance Analytics delivers business user driven discovery,
analysis, and performance improvement at all levels in an
organization on a single platform. Deployed on-premise and from private,
hybrid and public clouds, Actuate BIRT Performance Analytics software
provides interactive dashboards, in-memory analytics, and scorecards
for measurement and management of all aspects of performance, delivering
rapid time to value from business discovery to decision. BIRT
Performance Analytics offers unprecedented flexibility, lower cost of
ownership and faster time to value delivering actionable performance
insight to everyone in the organization. For more information, visit www.birtperformanceanalytics.com.

Actuate – The people behind BIRT

Actuate founded and co-leads the Eclipse BIRT open source project.
ActuateOne^® is a unified suite of products for rapidly
developing and deploying BIRT-based Business
Intelligence and Performance Analytics applications. Applications
built with ActuateOne provide one user experience regardless of task or
skill level; are supported by one server for any deployment including
cloud and are built with one BIRT design that can access and integrate
any data source – including high volume print streams. ActuateOne adds
rich data
visualizations, including interactivity, dashboards,
analytics,
Performance Analytics capabilities and deployment options to web and
mobile BIRT applications, helping organizations drive revenue through
higher customer satisfaction and improved operational performance.

Actuate has over 5,000 customers globally in a diverse range of business
areas including financial services and the public sector. Founded in
1993, Actuate is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with offices
worldwide. Actuate is listed on NASDAQ under the symbol BIRT. For more
information, visit the company’s web site at www.actuate.com
or visit the BIRT community at www.birt-exchange.com.

Copyright © 2012 Actuate Corporation. All rights reserved. Actuate,
ActuateOne and the Actuate logo are registered trademarks of Actuate
Corporation and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and certain other
countries. All other brands, names or trademarks mentioned may be
trademarks of their respective owners.

Article source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/actuate-birt-performance-analytics-customers-110000373.html

ORLANDO, Fla.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–

Dimensional Insight, a leading provider of business intelligence
solutions, today announced that two of its customers, Mecosta
County Medical Center and Hopkins
County Memorial Hospital, will have senior executives present
information on their experiences using Dimensional Insight’s business
intelligence technology, the Diver Solution, to improve patient care,
boost productivity, and increase reimbursements within their
organizations at the MUSE International Conference this week.

Dimensional Insight’s Healthcare Director, Paul Comras, will also speak
at the conference on how hospitals can use business intelligence
technology to meet their quality, financial, and regulatory goals. In
addition, Dimensional Insight (DI) will be showcasing its business
intelligence and healthcare applications, including its recently
certified meaningful use compliance solution. Specific dates and times
of the three presentations are
posted on DI’s website.

Dimensional Insight’s Diver
Solution helps hundreds of hospitals access and analyze data in
their EMR systems to improve performance, quality-of-care, and revenue
capture. Clinical, quality, operations, and financial departments rely
on timely access and visibility into data to drive improvements in their
organizations.

The
2012 MUSE International Conference is a community of MEDITECH
health information system users and related professionals who
interact to learn and share their knowledge and experience. The 2012
MUSE International Conference is being held May 29 through June 1, 2012
at the Disney Coronado Springs Resort in Orlando, Florida.

About Dimensional Insight

Dimensional Insight is a leading provider of business intelligence (BI)
solutions. The company offers a comprehensive set of BI capabilities
ranging from data integration and modeling to sophisticated reporting,
analytics, information portals and dashboards. Founded in 1989,
Dimensional Insight (DI) has more than 2,600 customers worldwide.
Dimensional Insight’s Diver Solution has been ranked as the top
performing business intelligence/reporting solution for the past three
consecutive years by
KLAS Research, an independent healthcare IT research firm. The
company was also recognized as a leading “Emerging Business Intelligence
Vendor” in Howard
Dresner’s “Wisdom of Crowds” 2011 BI market study. For
more information, please visit www.dimins.com.

Article source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/dimensional-insight-customers-speak-business-110000535.html

LUXEMBOURG–(BUSINESS WIRE)–

MACH,
the leading provider of cloud-based managed communication services,
today announced that France Telecom-Orange has selected its Subscriber
Performance Manager business intelligence solution to help grow the
roaming revenues of its group members. Through the granular reporting of
subscriber behaviour enabled by MACH’s Subscriber Performance Manager,
affiliates of France Telecom-Orange will be able to offer subscribers
highly innovative and flexible retail roaming tariffs, encouraging use
of these profitable services and thereby driving up revenue.

Operators across the globe face the challenge of growing their roaming
businesses. MACH figures have indicated that 40 per cent of customers
turn data roaming off when travelling abroad, demonstrating that fears
of bill shock are still constraining service uptake. Through MACH’s
Subscriber Performance Manager, France Telecom-Orange affiliates will be
able to identify where they can most effectively grow retail roaming
usage and direct tailored tariffs to help stimulate growth amongst key
customer segments.

Dirk Van Bavel, Consumer Propositions Director, France Telecom-Orange,
commented: “We used to look at aggregated data and use averaged
figures to develop our roaming strategy – but a roaming strategy built
on average information about subscriber behaviour will only ever be an
average strategy. Now with MACH’s business intelligence solution, we
have the granular data necessary to develop highly targeted strategies
for growing our roaming revenues. MACH’s solution provides us with the
granular level of information we need to drill down into behaviour and
build highly tailored roaming propositions. These will drive a number of
campaigns that we expect will provide further differentiation for the
Group and its affiliates.”

Yves Martin, Vice President, Group Roaming and Interconnect, France
Telecom-Orange, added: “By stimulating our retail roaming offering,
we anticipate a knock on effect on our wholesale roaming business,
putting us in a strong position to negotiate IOTs that will allow us to
further improve the roaming proposition we provide at a retail level.
Our use of MACH’s Subscriber Performance Manager will potentially allow
us to offer more targeted roaming offerings, as well as more
cost-effective ones.”

Rasmus Holst, Senior Vice President, Markets, MACH, commented: “France
Telecom-Orange is leading the market in its approach to retail roaming.
Through the use of business intelligence it is ensuring that roaming
works for all parties involved: affiliates, partners and most
importantly the customer. MACH has long experience of delivering roaming
solutions to operators at a group level and we anticipate that this will
prove extremely valuable to France Telecom-Orange as it seeks to grow
its roaming business.”

MACH’s Subscriber Performance Manager is the only existing solution on
the market that allows group operators to analyse, report and action
subscriber intelligence immediately, ensuring that affiliates get the
business intelligence they need, when they need it. Belonging to the M
Vision portfolio, Subscriber Performance Manager forms part of
MACH’s Applied
Business Intelligence suite, which integrates a range of core
business intelligence capabilities into a single platform for all
roaming and wholesale processes. The M Vision portfolio, comprising
MACH’s Portal and Applied Business Intelligence suite, allows operators
to manage their roaming businesses in a coherent and unified manner.

-ENDS-

About France Telecom-Orange

France Telecom-Orange is one of the world’s leading telecommunications
operators with 172,000 employees worldwide, including 105,000 employees
in France, and sales of 45.3 billion euros in 2011. Present in 35
countries, the Group had a customer base of 226 million customers at 31
December 2011, including 147 million customers under the Orange brand,
the Group’s single brand for internet, television and mobile services in
the majority of countries where the company operates. At 31 December
2011, the Group had 167 million mobile customers and 14 million
broadband internet (ADSL, fibre) customers worldwide.

About MACH

MACH connects and monetizes the telecom world with its comprehensive and
growing portfolio of cloud-based communication services, called MACH
Embrace. It provides its 650 operator customers with solutions to
monetize mobile data, simplify interoperability between networks,
optimize wholesale processes and protect revenues. MACH is the largest
provider of data and financial clearing solutions for wireless roaming
and operates the globe’s largest and fastest growing open connectivity
roaming hub, Link2One. It inserts the operator in the content and
application value chain and serves the reseller and wholesaler community
with its A2P messaging solutions. Headquartered in Luxembourg, MACH has
offices in 12 countries. Its customers include Orange, Telefonica,
T-Mobile, Telus, Verizon Wireless and Microsoft, as well as enterprise
messaging customers like KLM. For more information, visit www.mach.com.

MACH
Eileen Preston
Global PR Manager
Eipr@mach.com
+44 7860 456193

Article source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/mach-helps-major-operator-group-093000055.html

        MACH
        Eileen Preston
        Global PR Manager
        Eipr@mach.com
        +44 7860 456193

Article source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/mach-helps-major-operator-group-grow-roaming-revenues-through-applied-business-intelligence-2012-05-29

        Dimensional Insight, Inc.
        Stacy Humphrey, 781-229-9111
        stacy@dimins.com

Article source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dimensional-insight-customers-to-speak-on-business-intelligence-in-healthcare-at-2012-muse-international-conference-2012-05-29

International Business Intelligence (BI) software vendor, Yellowfin, has had its Mobile BI application for iPhone and iPad named as one of Australia’s 100 most innovative products in Anthill Magazine’s ‘SMART 100’ index.

(PRWEB) May 29, 2012

The SMART 100, one of largest awards of its kind in Australia, is a list of Australia’s 100 most pioneering business technologies and potentially disruptive commercial innovations.

“Yellowfin’s inclusion in Anthill Magazine’s SMART 100 Index is testament to our ability to deliver a new breed of consumer-oriented BI,” said Yellowfin CEO, Glen Rabie. “This fantastic result renews Yellowfin’s mandate to keep making Business Intelligence easy and deliver outstanding ROI for reporting and analytics initiatives by enabling widespread user adoption via highly intuitive end-user applications.”

Nominate Yellowfin’s Mobile BI application for the iPhone and iPad for the SMART 100 Peoples’ Choice award here: http://anthillonline.com/yellowfin-for-the-iphone-and-ipad-smart-100/

The Peoples’ Choice Index provides an opportunity for Anthill readers to vote on SMART 100 applications. Site visitors can take one or more of the following actions to vote:

•Tweet it: Top left of each page (3 points)

•Trigger a Reaction: Facebook ‘Like’ or Google+ share, etc (2 points)

•Leave a comment: Anonymous comments excluded (1 point)

Peoples’ Choice judging is open from 25 May to 1 June 2012. Peoples’ Choice winners are announced 5 June 2012.

Yellowfin for the iPad was released in November 2011. Yellowfin for the iPhone was released in April 2012.

About Yellowfin’s Mobile BI applications for the iPhone and iPad

Yellowfin for the iPhone and iPad integrates Yellowfin’s renowned ease-of-use and collaborative capabilities to deliver a Mobile BI application based on the intuitive, interactive and collaborative principles underpinning the world’s foremost social media platforms and applications.

Rabie said that Yellowfin’s consumer-oriented approach to Mobile BI challenged the industry’s perception of mobile analytics, and that the well-documented trend towards user-friendly enterprise products for analytics – the consumerization of BI and enterprise IT at large – proved a major driving force behind Yellowfin’s application development. He also claimed that many enterprise applications and software products lack appeal, and have an enormous amount to learn from their leisure-time equivalents.

“We’ve designed this application with consumers, rather than data analysts in mind – we’ve thought about how people like to use applications for popular social platforms, such as Facebook or Twitter, browse the Web and consume content,” said Rabie. “Rather than concentrating on building a Business Intelligence application; first and foremost, we’ve built a fantastic user experience. Why shouldn’t people find mobile analytics as intuitive and gratifying as StumblingUpon great insight, or Digging their favorite blog?”

Rabie said that Yellowfin had come a long way since its first iPhone application, which “didn’t provide users with a particularly engaging experience”, but suggested that many vendors hadn’t learnt the same lessons.

“I can’t understand why so many BI vendors still seem intent on condemning their users to such an underwhelming experience,” said Rabie. “People like sharing ideas and information via Google+ or Pinterest because it’s easy, fun and social. So naturally we’ve combined those same collaborative capabilities and user-oriented navigability to deliver a product that people will genuinely enjoy using.”

The new iPhone and iPad application reaffirms Yellowfin’s position as a preeminent provider of Mobile BI, rounding out an impressive 18 months for the vendor, in which Dresner Advisory Services (DAS) identified it as a leading solution in two separate studies analyzing and comparing the world’s foremost Mobile BI providers. Yellowfin was also recognized in Gartner’s latest annual Who’s Who of Mobile BI report.

Rabie said that Yellowfin was responding to the consumerization of BI and the need for greater Return On Investment (ROI) for BI projects. The consumerization of BI – the introduction of user-friendly functionality and capabilities to support widespread BI adoption – has been noted by many analysts as the answer to improved BI ROI.

“Widespread user adoption – empowering as many relevant decision-makers as possible with reporting and analytics – is the best method for turning the insight generated by BI into action,” said Rabie. “That’s exactly what Yellowfin’s new iPhone and iPad apps deliver.”

About Anthill’s SMART 100

The SMART 100 Index was developed by Anthill Magazine in 2008 to identify and rank Australia’s 100 most innovative products.

“In true Anthillian style, the SMART 100 is an ever-evolving, ever-improving experiment,” said Anthill founder and Editor-In-Chief James Tuckerman. “The SMART 100 identifies and ranks new Australian innovations by applying a combination of crowdsourcing, collaboration and common-sense.”

Fifty ‘maven’ judges are then chosen to evaluate SMART 100 submissions. A maven is a trusted expert in a particular field. Each maven judge is invited to review 20 profile pages and rank each according to a predefined set of criteria. Each submission is evaluated 20 or more times.

Maven winners are announced 29 May 2012.

“Unlike your average awards program, we don’t lock a panel of expert adjudicators in a small room – we employ the judgement of ‘mavens’ and readers,” said Tuckerman. “Neither do we demand a thorough analysis of each applicant’s PL statement. We don’t even request an historical snapshot of ‘runs on the board’ or commercial achievements.

“This is because innovation is future focussed. It is about identifying and solving problems in ways that will change the way we live, do business and think.”

What is Business Intelligence software?

Business Intelligence (BI) refers to a broad range of computer software applications and tools used to report, analyze and present data in a range of formats, to help businesses identify trends and opportunities, and support fundamental decision-making.

About Yellowfin

Yellowfin is a global Business Intelligence (BI) software vendor passionate about making BI easy. Yellowfin is headquartered and developed in Melbourne, Australia, offering a highly intuitive 100 percent Web-based reporting and analytics solution. Founded in 2003 in response to the complexity and costs associated with implementing and using traditional BI tools, Yellowfin is a leader in mobile, collaborative and embeddable BI as well as Location Intelligence and data visualization.

For further media information, interviews, images or product demonstration, please contact:

Lachlan James, Communications Manager on +61 03 9090 0454, 0431 835 658 or lachlan(dot)james(at)yellowfin(dot)bi

For regular updates and news, follow Yellowfin on Twitter (@YellowfinBI), LinkedIn (Yellowfin Business Intelligence) or email pr(at)yellowfin(dot)bi to subscribe to Yellowfin’s free e-newsletter. http://www.yellowfinbi.com

About Anthill Magazine

Anthill was initially launched as a print magazine, in September 2003, by its current Editor-In-Chief James Tuckerman, who at the age of 26 quit his day job, departing a promising career in corporate PR, to pursue his own entrepreneurial journey.

Since then, it has evolved into one of Australia’s leading online communities for Australian business owners, ranked among the Top 50 Business Finance websites in Australia by Nielsen Online Ratings. It is dedicated to innovation, entrepreneurship and the commercial development of Australian ideas.

For further information on the SMART 100, please contact:

James Tuckerman, Anthill founder and Editor-In-Chief, on 0422 009 230

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prwebMobile-BI-Yellowfin/Anthill-SMART-100/prweb9551481.htm

Article source: http://www.seattlepi.com/business/press-releases/article/Yellowfin-s-Mobile-BI-Application-Named-in-3591978.php

This morning when I tried to connect to my local SSAS 2012 (RTM) Tabular instance in the Object Explorer in SQL Server Management Studio I got the following error message:

TITLE: Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio
——————————

Error connecting to ‘localhosttabular’.

——————————
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Unable to establish server mode. (ObjectExplorer)

This was an error I’d seen before several times (as had Alberto – see here – and a few other people), and had previously associated it with memory issues and/or corrupted databases. However in this case I was confused because I was still able to query the SSAS Tabular instance in question from Excel and deploy to it from SQL Server Data Tools, so I was pretty sure there wasn’t anything wrong with the instance.

After a bit of looking around I found what the problem was. A few days ago I had been using SQL Server Management Studio to write queries against a workspace database and I had set the name of the database in the ‘Connect to database’ dropdown on the Connection Properties of the Connect to Server dialog, as shown below:

Now the SSDT project associated with this workspace database had its Workspace Retention property set to ‘Unload from Memory’, so when I closed the project the workspace database disappeared from the server. However in SQL Management Studio the Connection Properties dialog was still trying to connect to the database even though it was no longer there, and instead of giving a sensible error message it was giving me the “Unable to establish server mode” error. Fixing the problem was simple: I just went to the Connect to database dropdown and selected “default” instead of the name of the workspace database.

I would imagine that a lot of people will run into this issue, not only when they have been connecting to workspace databases but also if they connect to regular databases that are subsequently deleted. Hopefully this blog post will save them a lot of time spent wondering what’s gone wrong!

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/wordpress/Cpjz/~3/BeNE5ZXQEOE/

Just stepping out the door on on my way to the DevTeach / SQL Teach conference in Vancouver, BC, Canada.  The conference begins tomorrow at the conference center and the Hilton Vancouver Metrotown in Burnaby.  I’m looking forward to meeting up with other MVPs and associates from SolidQ.

I’ll be delivering two sessions about Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence, on Data Visualization Choices and Dashboard Design using Reporting Services.  Return to this post after May 30 to download copies of my slide decks and demonstrations.

Article source: https://sqlserverbiblog.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/on-my-way-to-devteach-in-vancouver/