I have covered JackBe several times and watched their evolution from a mashup provider to using their technology to support a new wave of business intelligence (see JackBe Presto Takes Self-Service Business Intelligence Mobile and JackBe’s Presto provides Real-Time Intelligence with a Focus on the Business User). I recently spoke with Elizabeth Edwards, CMO, and John Crupi, CTO on what they are seeing now as they continue down the path of providing Real-Time Operational Intelligence.
John said that customers continue to want to have real-time dashboards that collect operational intelligence from multiple sources and bring it together for increased efficiency and effectiveness. Data center monitoring is one area where they are seeing real growth in their offering. You can see a sample data center monitoring screen below.
Data centers have become more core to organizations and maximizing efficiency is key to getting the investment returns that the shift to the cloud offers. In the past, data center mangers never had a holistic view of what was happening as the data was often all over the place. Here is another data center sample.
Another growth area is remote monitoring. This can be monitoring turbines, large engines, smart grids, data center storage, and even Twitter feeds. They used the term; M2M or machine-to-machine monitoring. The goal in their efforts is to provide more self-service for business users. JackBe Presto allows a tech savvy business person to create and set up dashboards that aggregate data from multiple sources. The goal is to allow the business side to do 80% of the work and leave the 20% of real tough stuff to the IT guys. Below is another ruse case – cyber risk threat monitoring.
They see their offering as part of the third wave of BI. The first was traditional data warehouses followed by a focus on data analytics. Now there is growing interest in real-time and big data. I asked John about big data as it is one of the buzz words de jure. He said that customers think of it as going beyond traditional data warehousing to look at the massive amounts of unstructured data. JackBe sees it as another data source they can aggregate. Most big data tools operate in batch mode but soon these sources can be connected to real-time data feeds to see new discoveries. The aim is to add a layer on top of existing tools, applications and information sources to bring the data together in interactive dashboards and deliver it where the user needs it – in SharePoint, portals or mobile devices, not replace these tools. JackBe adds the real-time operational component to existing organizational BI portfolios.
There will be a new release in the Fall with more self-services capabilities, more KPI builders, more attractive dashboard layouts, and increased ability to handle social data. The barriers between operational data and KPIs need to be reduced and that will be part of the next release. They have three big areas of focus: SharePoint, portals, and mobile. I look forward to seeing their next release.
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