DSPanel Extends Its Mobile Business Intelligence to the iPad

Mobile business intelligence vendor DSPanel has just added an iPad application to their already extensive range of BI products. As part of the company’s Performance Canvas mobile analytics products, the new functionality enables users access to their analytics, including data visualization through the Safari browser.

Available for download this month, the new application enables users access to their data as well as the ability to choose their data source and drag that data directly on the rows and columns within the visualization screen. It also enables users to create, modify and share real-time visual queries and dashboards at any time.

DSPanel and Business Intelligence

While DSPanel has a number of different products including a mobile BI server and a Portal Edition that provides SharePoint dashboards, the mobile Business Intelligence package is designed for web, mobile and embedded use. Features include:

• Mashboards: Enables users access data from inside and outside the organization.
• Visualizations: Using Canvas technology you can display your information in a variety of different ways on multiple platforms. Comes with performance mashboards and dashboards.
• Planning: Canvas Planning add-on imports data from Excel for future decision making.
• Embedding Technology: Enables embedding into enterprise systems already in use.

DSPanel's iPad Business Intelligence

Mobile Business Intelligence

DSPanel says it was the first company to provide BI to mobile communications. That would be hard to substantiate given the number of companies that have gone the iPad route since its launch.

In a recent blog post in Computerworld, Alys Woodward of the IDC Insights Community has already been able to identify three different approaches to mobile BI even though the field is still relatively new. They include:

• Casual: When Oracle launched OBIEE 11g in August it included a demo that took place on both the desktop and iPad and demonstrated updates passing from the desktop to the iPad. SAP did the same with SAPPHIRE in May. Both showed mobile BI as part of a BI platform rather than a solution in its own right.
• Obsessive: MicroStrategy at its EMEA event at Cannes in July said that it believed the iPad is the way forward for their whole organization.
• Customer-led: TIBCO Spotfire released Web Player 3.2.1 for the iPad and iPhone based on customer demand. It’s likely that others will follow suit. CEO Michael Saylor announced his intention to turn the whole company over to the iPad.

How and where the new DSPanel fits into all or any of these scenarios depends on how users take to it. You can download it here. Let us know what you think.