Actuate

Background

While BIRT is an open source product, they have added its own development and value add proposition. They are actually one of the co-founders of the platform. With it being open source, it has a strong reputation as being developer friendly and usable across multiple development environments. It is also flexible with regards to data sources, and has a deep developer base. Its all web-based and administered via a centralized server. All of the products are on the unified architecture. They’ve been in business since 1993, so they’ve been through quite a few iterations of the software and their server and overall architecture is quite robust and scalable. Its particularly appealing to the IT or highly technical BI crowd. You can download a free version of the BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tool) and use it as a report viewer. There is a definite learning curve, and they have built their business around tools to manage the open source BIRT backend. They also have some OEM software solutions for use with some selected partners.

Products

Within their product line are several different products that roll up for a complete suite:

BIRT iServer: The administrative function and centralized distribution point. This also offers some centralized report distribution and management.

BIRT Designer Pro: Developer UI for report development

BIRT Studio: Ad-Hoc reporting

Birt Viewer: Report viewer UI

BIRT Interactive Viewer: UI along user interactions

BIRT 360 – Dashboards

Mobile Options: Smartphone viewing capability

BIRT Data Analyzer: In-memory analytics, similar to OLAP

They have a fairly large client list, and is very strong within the financial services and banking community. Government is also a strong sector for them.

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