Mobilizing BI: MicroStrategy offers report-validation tool for BlackBerry Smartphones

MicroStrategy has expanded its business intelligence platform with a brace of software modules that enhance report mobility and quality.

By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff October 8, 2007

A new MicroStrategy Mobile module delivers desktop-base business intelligence (BI) reports to Research in Motion Blackberry Smartphones. MicroStrategy says users don’t need to reformat the reports to access reports on their Smartphone devices. Users also can set report preferences and access data off-line.Security and connectivity are enabled by the Blackberry Enterprise Server, which optimizes available bandwidth based on signal quality and usage.According to Sanju Bansal, COO of MicroStrategy, the company made a conscious effort “to make the user interface as intuitive as possible so that no training is required.”In particular we’ve paid attention to efficient memory management, data compression, security and network bandwidth optimization to ensure they work well for mission-critical applications,” adds Bansal.While the business cases for mobile BI are few and rare beyond field sales and operations, that hasn’t stopped BI vendors from wireless-enabling their platforms.In a parallel announcement, MicroStrategy released a new data validation called Integrity Manager that automatically tests the integrity of reports after changes to BI data.The software works by detecting and comparing inconsistencies in reports that are impacted by changes to underlying BI data sources. Because these sources are typically administered separately by database administrators, BI developers, or ETL designers, the validation process often is resource-intensive and time-consuming.MicroStrategy says Integrity Manager automates that process with regression testing for system changes that goes beyond simple impact analysis.MicroStrategy claims to be the first BI vendor to provide such a capability.The Mobility and Integrity Manager modules were originally developed as part of the September release of MicroStrategy’s BI platform.