Data access tools company Business Objects SA has upgraded its Online Analytical Processing tool BusinessObjects 4.1 billing it as an easier to use version with improved functionality. The company is describing version 4.1 as a maintenance release to version 4.0 launched last year (CI No 2,945), and says it has incorporated customer feedback to upgrade the product. The company says version 4.0 was the first product to integrate query, reporting and OLAP capabilities into a single tool, and enhancements to 4.1 include better web publishing capabilities, streamlined administration, automatic formatting and On-Report Analysis; a function that enables users to directly analyze their reports. Business Objects says tests carried out on the new product showed an increase in performance of around 20% on Windows 95 and up to 40% on Windows 3.1. This version will see the introduction of new intelligence agents, which check pre-set business rules or conditions on a regular basis and notify the user if any changes have been made. It also sees new production reporting modules that enable users to read a report if they don’t need to be able to perform ad hoc queries. The Paris, France and San Jose, California dual headquartered company recently reported a second quarter net profit of $29,000 from $1.9m at the same time in the previous year, while revenues grew 20% to $26.3m (CI No 3,211). But marketing executive Charles Nicholls believes the results indicate the company’s commitment to investing money in the development of new products, and he points out that BusinessObjects 4.0 has proved a huge success, with some 575,000 licenses for the tool having been sold across the world in the year or so it has been available. The new version of the product will be released before the end of the month and pricing will remain the same as for version 4.0, starting at $600; production reporting modules start at $200.
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