LogiXML Launches LogiOnDemand

Published: 19 June 2008

LogiOnDemand allows users to build free dynamic graphics from spreadsheet data and share their widgenies on blogs, social networks and websites.

LogiXML, Inc., the fast-growing provider of next generation business intelligence (BI) solutions, recently announced the launch of LogiOnDemand, a new division dedicated to providing innovative BI solutions in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model for enterprise, SMB and individual end users.

Widgenie, the first product from the new unit, is the industry’s only on-demand, interactive data visualization tool that allows users to build free dynamic graphics from spreadsheet data and share their widgenies on blogs, social networks and websites.

“LogiXML has established a strong reputation for providing the most innovative BI solutions in the industry that allow our customers to turn raw numbers into actionable data,” said Arman Eshraghi, CEO and Founder of LogiXML. “LogiOnDemand represents an extension of our core values of continuous improvement and technology innovation. We are committed to the SaaS model and to providing the most dynamic BI tools on the market.”

Long the holy grail of business intelligence the ability to access data hosted within your firewall via a value added hosted business intelligence sevice, moves a step closer with this announcement.

The key to success in implementing a successful solution spanning multiple infrastructures and organisations is data governance and meticulous planning.

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LogiXML provides web-based Ad hoc reporting for business users who want to create and run their own reports on demand, without waiting for IT to build reports for them. Its managed corporate reporting enables technical report developers to build web-based corporate reports and deliver them to various users and groups across the organisation.

Web-based OLAP analysis meets the requirements of users who want to compare and analyse their OLAP data. Specialized Data Integration helps users optimise data environment, pull and serve data from various sources and improve reporting and analysis performance.

The company claims to offer affordable business intelligence products to organisations worldwide. Its products are built on technologies that enable easy implementation, integration and upgrade.

Arman Eshraghi, founder and CEO of LogiXML, said: “With more than 22,200 software developers in 98 countries actively creating web-based reports with Logi products, LogiXML is confident that we have a solid foundation to expand our international business substantially in the near future and we are making an investment in that success with the establishment of the new international office.”

Eshraghi said that the company will now be able to serve its network of UK partners directly.

Logi Info delivers a new text cloud element for web 2.0-style visualization of data. The relative font sizes and colors of words or phrases within the text cloud is an indication of their weighting, frequency or other numeric value.

The words or phrases may also be links, allowing further drill down into detail data.

From Wikipedia

“A tag cloud or word cloud (or weighted list in visual design) is a visual depiction of user-generated tags, or simply the word content of a site, used typically to describe the content of web sites. Tags are usually single words and are typically listed alphabetically, and the importance of a tag is shown with font size or color. Thus both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. The tags are usually hyperlinks that lead to a collection of items that are associated with a tag.”

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Outside of specialist tools or alternatively pure graphics packages, the software world is being quite slow to facilitate the widespread adoption of the heatmap as an analytical tool. This is probably best illustrated by the inclusion of just the most basic Heatmap functionality in Microsoft Office 2007, which, while a good start and ahead of the pack in terms of delivering heat maps more widely, will need a few more iterations before this can help provide effective analytics.

LogiXML embed heatmaps in all of their reporting tools, Logi Info, Logi OLAP and Logi Ad Hoc, using Logi Ad Hoc, following installation of the software and establishing a data connection, the business user can start to develop and share Heatmap analyses, with colleagues, within minutes.

Using Logi’s flexible dashboard technology these Heatmaps can be combined into a dashboard style presentation without any programming or other technical input

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To illustrate this by example, these Heatmaps are used on various financial and stock market Web sites. Nasdaq.com and SmartMoney.com both use heat maps to show stock price and various market sector performance at-a-glance.

Visitors to these sites can mouse over or drill down to get further details about a stock’s current performance.

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However in trying to answer the questions “what is a heatmap?”, I found definitive information hard to find.

I eventually came across an article by Stephen Few which not suprisingly gives a clear and concise definition and illustrates this with some real life examples.

Multivariate Analysis Using Heatmaps

This is the third article in a series that began in July with the article entitled, “An Introduction to Visual Multivariate Analysis.”
Prior articles in this series have examined how table lens and parallel coordinates displays can be used to explore and analyze multivariate information. In this article, I describe the use of multivariate heatmap matrices.
In general, the term heatmap refers to any display that uses color to represent quantitative data. We are all familiar with heatmaps in the form of weather maps, which use color to encode values such as temperature or rainfall. Heatmaps also come in forms other than geographical maps. When heatmaps are used to encode multivariate data – several variables that measure different aspects of some set of entities (for example, customers, countries, or products) – they are usually structured as a matrix of columns and rows. Figure 1 is a multivariate heatmap matrix, which displays a separate employee per row (the entities) and a separate measure per column (the variables). In this case, the heatmap’s purpose is to help us determine what factors most influence employee job satisfaction, which appears in the leftmost column labeled Working Conditions. Employees were asked to rate their working conditions as Very Poor (the lightest color), Poor, Acceptable, Good, or Very Good (the darkest color). Each of the other variables (Salary, etc.) has been encoded as a continuous range of grayscale colors, ranging from the lightest for the lowest value through the darkest for the highest value. By examining a single row, you can see a particular employee’s complete multivariate profile. By scanning a column, you can see the complete set of values for a particular variable across all employees, such as the average number of hours they work per week (the third column).

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OLAP offered speed of response and business friendly information, when compared to ‘query by example’ offerings which were little more than simplified SQL the ability to analyse business performance and drill further into the detail to determine the root cause of good or bad performance at the macro level could add immediate value to any business.

The massive value add of OLAP technology encouraged a proprietary approach to the storage and access of data which inhibited the spread of OLAP based solutions, as a result these became the preserve of specialists rather than becoming fully embedded in the business.

The development and promotion of the OLE DB for OLAP standard represented the first step of many required to open up OLAP to allow it to become simply another source of data to be consumed by the myriad of available tools. However adoption was not widespread and many end user tools remain firmly based on the ODBC standards.

The convergence of Business Intelligence data and XML, which is expressed in the XML for Analysis standard (XML/A), makes the prospect of seamlessly integrating OLAP data into standard business reporting a viable prospect.

Conventionally integrating the information held in OLAP cubes, even those which conform to the existing standards, requires specialised tools or advanced skills (MDX, COM etc.). XML/A offers a way to quickly and easily integrate OLAP data from any of these providers into your existing reporting environment:

- Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (MSAS)
- SAP BW Infocubes
- Hyperion’s Essbase

The key benefit of OLAP analysis to a business is the ability to quickly analyse information over time and according to a set of pre-defined business dimensions. This delivers focused value added information directly to business users.

Evolving standards may soon make the original promise of OLAP a reality for all.

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“1) In information technology, a dashboard is a user interface that, somewhat resembling an automobile’s dashboard, organizes and presents information in a way that is easy to read. However, a computer dashboard is more likely to be interactive than an automobile dashboard (unless it is also computer-based). To some extent, most graphical user interfaces resemble a dashboard. However, some product developers consciously employ this metaphor (and sometimes the term) so that the user instantly recognizes the similarity.
2) Some products that aim to integrate information from multiple components into a unified display refer to themselves as dashboards. For example, a product might obtain information from the local operating system in a computer, from one or more applications that may be running, and from one or more remote sites on the Web and present it as though it all came from the same source. Hewlett Packard developed the first such product, which began as a tool for customizing Windows desktops. Called Dashboard, the HP product was subsequently acquired by Borland and then a company called Starfish. Microsoft’s Digital Dashboard tool incorporates Web-based elements (such as news, stock quotes, and so on) and corporate elements (such as e-mail, applications, and so on) into Outlook. Dashboards may be customized in a multitude of ways and named accordingly, generally, for example as a general corporate or enterprise dashboard, or more specifically, as a CIO or CEO dashboard.”

Successful Digital Dashboards are interactive and personalised. The most compelling digital dashboard solutions are built with Logi Info.

1. Vertical Applications
2. Niche Value/Best of Breed Applications
3. Technology Platforms

The Vertical Applications market is evenly split between Oracle and SAP, both companies have acquired a multiplicity of BI tools and technologies and are focused on extending the value of the core applications offering.

Examples of niche/best of breed applications would be the newly emerging Qlikview or the Logi9 BI platform from LogiXML in the Reporting and Analytics space or Teradata/Netezza/Vertica in the high performance data warehouse space. Some of these products are new some have been around for a while and serve a particular niche well.

The third category Technology Platforms is dominated by IBM and Microsoft, both of these companies provide a complete ‘Information Server’ platform which can be used to source, package and deliver information to a multiplicity of different users.

Evolving in parallel to these 3 market categories is the open source BI movement, however despite offering a wide range of functionality at a compelling cost in terms of software acquisition. The costs which will be incurred over the full lifecycle of the solution are still far from understood.

However there appears to be a general reluctance among users of these platforms to deliver the end to end solution entirely from one vendor. The acquisition of the de-facto standard in enterprise reporting, Cognos 8, by IBM will definitely put this to the test.

Microsoft actively promotes both it’s own desktop/intranet focused tools and provides the platform for many niche players. An emerging alternative to the combination of IBM and Cognos in the coming year, will be the combination of the Microsoft ‘Information Server’ platform with the unified Business Intelligence offering from LogiXML, Logi9.

The successful entrance of Logi into this market was acknowledged by Gartner in the 2008 BI Quadrant.

Watch this space ………………….

Logi9 delivers the ability to connect and integrate data from business applications within the firewall, which you own and manage, with the Software as a service application on which businesses increasingly rely. Sales (CRM) and many Human Resource (HR) applications are often effectively delivered in this way. There are many advantages in doing this, not least a reduction in capital costs, support requirements and an increase in functionality and reliability.

The best known example of this trend is the use of Salesforce.com, to manage what is a core business process to every organisation, the sales process and customer relationship. However, businesses relying on ‘Software as a Service’ to manage a core business function, will understand that with the advantages, comes a cost in terms of retaining and integrating this data.

Logi9 offers your business the capability to understand performance, even when the vital information is locked up, far beyond the firewall.