Crystal Reports now a full part of the Business Objects family
Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 3/1/2005 12:00:00 AM
Business Objectshas integrated the reporting capabilities it gained in its 2003 acquisition of Crystal Decisions into the overall Business Objects product line, and users seem pleased with the results.
Crystal reporting functionality is part of a new version of the Business Objects business intelligence (BI) suite—called BusinessObjects XI ("extreme insight")—released in January. The reporting package, which can be purchased separately, is dubbed Crystal Reports XI.
"The new functionality in Crystal Reports XI enhances overall performance of the Business Objects BI platform," says Hans-Peter Simon, head of ERP and database management at Staedtler Mars GmbH, a Nuremburg, Germany-based manufacturer of writing instruments and ink-jet cartridges.
"Installation of Crystal Reports XI has gone very smoothly, and we're impressed with the level of integration between the technologies," adds Simon. Our greatest benefit is the ability to integrate relational reporting and multidimensional reporting with analytics—all within one BI environment."
After acquiring the widely used Crystal Reports package, Business Objects quickly built links that enable the package to serve as a front-end reporting tool for Business Objects data analysis programs. But James Thomas, director of product marketing, says BusinessObjects XI offers deeper integration between the reporting and analysis tools.
Specifically, BusinessObjects XI allows leveraging business intelligence across an enterprise by embedding intelligence in Microsoft Office applications, enabling Office documents to be managed in the BI platform. Also, a BI Encyclopedia delivers metadata in business context, such as which questions a report answers, and how to find other reports with related information.
Integration between Business Objects XI and Crystal Reports XI means customers upgrading to either program also receive the other one.
