Business Objects, which is the subject of a $6.8bn takeover bid by SAP, said its Polestar software melds the simplicity and speed of search with the analytic capabilities of BI to expand the range of decision support information beyond its traditional boundaries of structured databases and BI report content.
Polestar draws on the self-serve principles of Internet search engines that have simplified access to content on the World Wide Web. It now pulls this access model into corporate data world allowing users to explore business information using familiar keyword search tools.
For example, users can type in keywords to find relevant BI information scattered across Polestar-indexed databases, files systems and other corporate data sources, without users having to worry about where it is located or what structure it is in.
Results are presented according to relevance. They are also contextually-aware detail. For example, a company that wants to analyze product sales over various regions could type in the name of the product type and append it with region in Polestar’s search-bar. The system could then bring up a chart that details product sales across regions, but also display sales by say year or switch a view from sales to inventory, or dig deeper into specific product attributes like size and color.
Polestar is built to work on Business Objects XI BI platform, and benefits from the same administration, security and user management tools. The search results are also based on Business Objects’ semantic metadata layer consisting of classes of business objects that map to dimensions and measures sourced from databases.
Juliette Sultan, vice president of Business Objects’ information discovery and delivery business, said that Polestar is part of a strategy to provide users with more self-serve BI capabilities.
Polestar represents the latest exciting milestone in our ongoing mission to radically enhance our customers’ experience of BI, signaling a new frontier of intelligent information for everyone, Sultan said.
She said that Business Objects had more products up its sleeve to enable this vision, highlighting a couple of projects code-named Constellation and Galaxy.
Polestar is expected to be generally released in December. The software was unveiled at Business Objects’ annual Insight user conference which is running in Orlando, Florida this week.
Business Objects joins BI vendors like Cognos and Information Builders who have already added search capabilities into their BI platforms.
