The PRWIRE Press Releases

Actuate Selected as IBM Cluster ISV Partner for Banking

2006-01-18T16:10:00Z

Actuate Corporation (NASDAQ: ACTU), the world leader in Enterprise Reporting Applications, today announced that it has been selected as an IBM Banking Cluster ISV Partner. The expanded relationship will deliver next generation online reporting and analysis for consistent multi-channel customer experience and unified customer insight to both IBM and Actuates banking customers.
Banks are currently facing several challenges within their front office operations to serve an increasingly demanding and informed customer base. Actuate and IBM aim to deliver applications that improve the customer experience by empowering personnel with actionable client information, increasing customer satisfaction and retention rates, providing value added services to the online channel, and reducing operating costs via higher online channel adoption. An equally important goal of the relationship is to maximize the value banks derive from multi channel banking by providing a unified customer view, maximizing cross-selling opportunities across channels and delivering better segmentation, so that banks can offer the right service at the right time. Actuate has been selected amongst a handful of preferred banking solution partners which IBM will take to market for front office strategic banking solution initiatives. The types of front office solutions that can be delivered to customers include:
Online channel reporting and analysis
Broker portals
Branch loan reporting and& analysis
Online account statementing
Cash management reporting
Client reporting
There is a tremendous market opportunity for enhanced reporting solutions, multi-channel and customer-insight initiatives within the banking sector, said Mark Greene VP for Financial Services at IBM. Actuates track record for addressing mission critical business issues for the top financial institutions makes it an excellent fit for IBMs Strategic Banking Partner Program.
Being chosen amongst a select list of vendors to be part of IBMs Banking Practice is a testament to Actuates strength in the banking sector, said Pete Cittadini, president and CEO of Actuate Corporation. Four of the top five US-based global banks are committed to Actuate for front office reporting applications and we expect our partnership with IBM to further strengthen our appeal within this vertical.
About Actuate Corporation
Actuate Corporation is the world leader in Enterprise Reporting Applications that ensure 100% adoption by users. Actuate's Enterprise Reporting Application Platform is the foundation on which Global 9000 organizations (companies with annual revenues greater than $1 billion) and packaged application software vendors develop intuitive, Web portal-like reporting and analytic applications that empower 100% of users with decision-making information. These applications are deployed inside and outside the firewall to improve corporate performance across a range of business functions including financial management, sales, human resource management, and customer self-service. When tested against other business intelligence products, Actuate's Enterprise Reporting Application Platform has been proven to offer industry-leading scalability and the lowest Total Cost of Ownership. Actuate has over 3,000 customers globally in a range of industries including financial services, pharmaceuticals, insurance, and distribution services, as well as the government sector.
Founded in 1993, Actuate has headquarters in South San Francisco, Calif., and has offices worldwide. Actuate is listed on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol ACTU. For more information on Actuate, visit the company's Web site at www.actuate.com.
Copyright 2006 Actuate Corporation. All rights reserved. Actuate and the Actuate logo are registered trademarks of Actuate Corporation and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and certain other countries. All other brands, names or trademarks mentioned may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Eclipse Foundation and Actuate Announce Approval of Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools Project

2004-10-11T15:20:00Z

Actuate Corporation (NASDAQ: ACTU), the world leader in Enterprise Reporting Applications, and the Eclipse Foundation, a community committed to the implementation of a universal platform for tools integration, today announced that the Eclipse Foundation has officially approved the Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) Project. Thirty days after posting the BIRT proposal on the Eclipse website, there has been a positive response from Open Source developers who have given feedback to the first Eclipse-backed BI project.
The Eclipse community and our board members are pleased to accept BIRT as a top level project, said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, Inc. The volume of positive feedback received in response to the BIRT proposal clearly demonstrates the need for a Business Intelligence and reporting tool as part of the Eclipse technology portfolio.
Now that the BIRT project has been officially approved by Eclipse, Actuate will begin the task of stewarding development of BIRT, which is expected to culminate in the industrys first open Business Intelligence and Reporting platform by early 2005. Industry analysts agree that BIRT will benefit developers and Actuate by expanding the visibility of business intelligence and reporting to a wide audience of developers. These developers require easy to use tools, such as BIRT, to decrease development costs associated with the core application functions of reporting and analysis.
Industry Analysts Embrace Actuates Decision to Support BI Open Source Development
Forrester Research
Actuate is being aggressive in an area where most of its competitors choose not to be: open-source, noted Keith Gile, senior analyst, Forrester Research. In his September 2004 report, Actuate Pioneers Open Source Business Intelligence And Reporting, he adds that BI vendors that have avoided participation in an open-source initiative need to rethink this approach, and ideally get involved, as open-source will be an issue that must be addressed sooner than later.
Gartner
On 26 August 2004 Bill Hostmann, research director, Gartner Research and Mark Driver, vice president and research director, Gartner Research co-authored an article entitled "Actuate Brings BI Technology to Open Source Group." The full text of their analysis is available at: http://www.actuate.com/download/actuate_brings_.pdf
IDC
"Actuate could realize strong pull-through revenue from its involvement in the Eclipse community," said Dan Vesset, research director, IDC. "Should demand for an open source reporting standard exist, Actuate's active participation in Eclipse is a positive strategic move that could give it first-mover advantage in this open source community."
META Group
Actuate will be building BIRT from the ground up (i.e. no Actuate iServer code will be used). However, application developers without a core BI and reporting standard will be able to use a free open source tool to embed with the applications they develop, said Kurt Schlegel, senior program director, META Group.
Ventana Research
"The Eclipse Foundation's Java IDE technology reaches thousands if not millions of Java developers. Adding BIRT to the Eclipse project portfolio means these developers now gain similar access to business intelligence technology," said Eric Rogge, vice president and research director, Ventana Research. "BIRT will benefit from Actuate's experience and competence in enterprise reporting. Actuate will benefit by expanding their visibility in a community where the need for reporting technology is growing."
Actuate to Steward BIRT Development Roadmap
Actuate is honored to have the opportunity to collaborate with the Eclipse community to build a strong Open Source foundation for Business Intelligence and reporting, said Mark Coggins, senior vice president of engineering at Actuate Corporation. Our goal is to provide cooperative leadership in the quest to bring developers an easy-to-use tool that will help decrease Business Intelligence and reporting development costs and increase innovation in this area. Now that BIRT is approved, the next order of business is to post a set of project milestones for the technology.
The BIRT Project will leverage the Eclipse platform to provide infrastructure and tools for designing, deploying, generating and viewing reports. BIRT will be an easy-to-use platform to quickly and effectively create and deploy reports without the high development cost associated with having the developer hand-code the reports components.
To Find Out More
To become involved in the development of BIRT please visit www.eclipse.org/proposals/eclipse-birt/index.html. More information is available at: www.actuate.com/corporate/corporateresources.asp?ArticleId=7256.
About Eclipse
The Eclipse Foundation is a not-for-profit, member-supported corporation that hosts community based open-source projects. Eclipse creates royalty-free technology and a universal platform for development tools integration, modeling, testing and functionally-rich application construction. Eclipse based offerings give developers freedom of choice in a multi-language, multi-platform, multi-vendor supported environment. Eclipse delivers a dynamic plug-in based framework that makes it easier to create and integrate technology, saving time and money. By collaborating and sharing core integration technology, technology providers can concentrate and focus on areas of expertise and differentiation. The Eclipse Platform is written in the Java language and comes with extensive plug-in construction toolkits and examples. It has already been deployed on a range of development workstations including Linux, QNX, Mac OS X and Windows-based systems. Full details of the Eclipse Foundation and white papers documenting the design of the Eclipse Platform are available at www.eclipse.org.
About Actuate Corporation
Actuate Corporation is the world leader in Enterprise Reporting Applications that ensure 100% adoption by users. Actuates Enterprise Reporting Application Platform is the foundation on which Global 9000 organizations (companies with annual revenues greater than $1 billion) and packaged application software vendors develop intuitive, Web portal-like reporting and analytic applications that empower 100% of users with decision-making information. These applications are deployed inside and outside the firewall to improve corporate performance across a range of business functions including financial management, sales, human resource management, and customer self-service. When tested against other business intelligence products, Actuates Enterprise Reporting Application Platform has been proven to offer industry-leading scalability and the lowest Total Cost of Ownership. Actuate has 2,900 customers globally in a range of industries including financial services, pharmaceuticals, insurance, and distribution services, as well as the government sector.
Founded in 1993, Actuate has headquarters in South San Francisco, Calif., and has offices worldwide. Actuate is listed on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol ACTU. For more information on Actuate, visit the company's web site at www.actuate.com.
Copyright 2004 Actuate Corporation. All rights reserved. Actuate and the Actuate logo are registered trademarks of Actuate Corporation and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and certain other countries. All other brands, names or trademarks mentioned may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Brand or product names are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective holders. Java and all Java-based trademarks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

Livestock Improvement Corporation improves enterprise reporting with Actuate and Solnet Solutions

2004-09-22T20:54:00Z

Livestock Improvement Corporation (LIC), New Zealands leading herd improvement organisation has selected Actuate 7 to develop and update its complete enterprise reporting requirements, from animal management to Business Management reporting.
In a competitive bid, Actuate partnered with its new partner Solnet Solutions to secure the LIC win.
LIC sets the world standard in dairy herd improvement through a unique national database which offers unparalleled traceability, world class genetic improvement systems and laboratory automation solutions. These systems help New Zealand enjoy the lowest cost milk production in the world.
LIC needed an enterprise reporting development platform that would allow it to integrate its various custom-built applications and its disparate locations to deliver reports in the detailed format required by its many different customers. This includes delivering more than 500 reports each night to its 12,000 farmers, as well as supporting the 170+ business reports used by LIC field and business staff.
Already the deployment of Actuate 7 has proven its worth, allowing the development of a Progeny Report in just 15 hours, where previously it would have taken 80 hours, an improvement of 500 percent for one report.
Kerry Hubert, Applications Resource Manager for LIC said: Our business is built on the information we gather and the reports we provide to the industry - accuracy is key. We therefore needed a unified platform for developing enterprise reporting applications across our business. While its still very early days in our deployment of Actuate 7 were already seeing vast productivity gains, while maintaining the very high reporting standards which are so crucial to our business.
Solnet Solutions is the latest organisation to join Actuates new partner program in Australia and New Zealand. The partner program allows Actuate to focus its sales strategy on the channel rather than direct sales. Grant Christian, Director, Australia and New Zealand Channels said the decision to partner with Solnet Solutions in New Zealand was an easy one.
Solnet Solutions is a leader in the New Zealand market. They have domain and market expertise and are completely certified on the Actuate platform. They have already demonstrated their skills in winning new business and we look forward to working with them more closely in the future, said Mr Christian.
The new partnership sees Solnet Solutions manage both Actuates and its own customer relationships in New Zealand. Mark Botherway, Managing Director, Solnet Solutions said the partnership allowed Solnet Solutions to move into the provision of services to New Zealand enterprises.
The engagement with LIC included business analysis to determine exact requirements and once installed, training to use the tool. Working with Actuate enables us to make available to our clients the leading enterprise reporting application available on the market today. SolNet Solutions can provide all of the services surrounding the implementation and on-going support, said Mr Botherway.
Ends
About Actuate Corporation
Actuate Corporation is the world leader in Enterprise Reporting Applications. Actuates Enterprise Reporting Application Platform is the foundation on which Global 9000 organizations (companies with annual revenues greater than $1 billion) and packaged application software vendors develop intuitive, Web portal-like reporting and analytic applications that empower 100% of users with decision-making information.. When tested against other BI products, Actuates Enterprise Reporting Application Platform has been proven to offer industry-leading scalability and the lowest Total Cost of Ownership. Actuate has 2,800 customers globally in a range of industries including financial services, pharmaceuticals, insurance, and distribution services, as well as the government sector.
Founded in 1993, Actuate has headquarters in South San Francisco, Calif., and has offices worldwide. For more information on Actuate, visit the company's Web site at www.actuate.com.
About LIC
Livestock Improvement sets the standards for the world in dairy herd improvement through a unique national database which offers unparalleled traceability, world class genetic improvement systems and laboratory automation solutions. Livestock Improvement is one of the reasons New Zealand dairy farmers enjoy the lowest cost milk production in the world, a result of the highest technology transfer rate (research to farm practice) in the world, national farm management and breeding strategies and the highest rate of genetic gain (for the New Zealand environment) of any dairy industry in the world. www.lic.co.nz

Companies Can Leverage Linux to Economically Deploy Enterprise Reporting Applications to Tens of Thousands of Users

2004-08-03T16:50:00Z

Actuate Corporation (NASDAQ: ACTU), the world leader in Enterprise Reporting Applications, today announced that Actuate's Enterprise Reporting Application platform now fully supports the Linux operating system. Linux, which is based on source code that is available to everyone, provides the functionality, adaptability and robustness that have positioned it as the main alternative for proprietary operating systems. More than a decade after its initial release, Linux is increasingly being adopted worldwide as a server platform. Companies can now leverage the low cost of Linux as a high performance, secure, and reliable foundation to build and deploy strategic Enterprise Reporting Applications that meet the information needs of a broad set of users -- both inside and outside the corporate firewall.
"Linux is increasingly being seen as a viable, economical alternative to proprietary operating systems," said Mark Smith, CEO and senior vice president of research at Ventana Research. "As companies continue to deploy a variety of enterprise reporting applications to a wider and wider group of users, both inside and outside the firewall, Linux's importance as a secure, low cost operating system will continue to grow."
IT departments can more easily adhere to budget constraints, while meeting strict application performance security criteria by using Actuate's Enterprise Reporting Application platform in conjunction with Linux servers. Organizations can empower 100% of a target user community with mission critical reporting applications at lower cost by deploying Actuate's platform on Linux. In addition, companies can leverage the constantly evolving security benefits that the Linux community collectively works to improve within the Linux operating system.
Actuate's comprehensive support for Linux includes:
- Actuate e.Report: Generates web-based reports from a Linux server
- Actuate e.Spreadsheet: Generates Linux server-based Excel spreadsheets
- Actuate Analytics: Generates personalized data cubes from a Linux server
- Actuate Query: Allows end-user ad-hoc queries on a Linux server
- Active Portal: Presents a single entry point to all Actuate content on Linux
- Actuate Page-Level Security: Allows personalized role-based access to reports and queries
"Everyone within an organization can benefit from tailor-made enterprise reporting applications that require no training," said Nobby Akiha, vice president of marketing at Actuate. "By supporting the Linux operating system, we are giving companies the building blocks to economically deploy secure reporting applications to all enterprise constituents and ensure 100% user adoption of these strategic, decision-making applications."
Availability
Actuate offers comprehensive support for Linux as part of Actuate 8.
About Actuate Corporation
Actuate Corporation is the world leader in Enterprise Reporting Applications that ensure 100% adoption by users. Actuate's Enterprise Reporting Application Platform is the foundation on which Global 9000 organizations (companies with annual revenues greater than $1 billion) and packaged application software vendors develop intuitive, Web portal-like reporting and analytic applications that empower 100% of users with decision-making information. These applications are deployed inside and outside the firewall to improve corporate performance across a range of business functions including financial management, sales, human resource management, and customer self-service. When tested against other business intelligence products, Actuate's Enterprise Reporting Application Platform has been proven to offer industry-leading scalability and the lowest Total Cost of Ownership. Actuate has 2,800 customers globally in a range of industries including financial services, pharmaceuticals, insurance, and distribution services, as well as the government sector.
Founded in 1993, Actuate has headquarters in South San Francisco, Calif., and has offices worldwide. Actuate is listed on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol ACTU. For more information on Actuate, visit the company's Web site at www.actuate.com.
Copyright 2004 Actuate Corporation. All rights reserved. Actuate and the Actuate logo are registered trademarks of Actuate Corporation and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and certain other countries. All other brands, names or trademarks mentioned may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Industry?s first real-time enterprise reporting application platform with integrated EII

2004-06-29T14:39:00Z

Actuate Corporation (NASDAQ: ACTU), the world leader in Enterprise Reporting Applications, has released Actuate 8, the BI industry's first real-time Enterprise Reporting Application Platform with Enterprise Information Integration (EII) technology - enabling real-time reporting applications.
Actuate 8 uses EII technology to provide a breakthrough in Enterprise Reporting - the real-time integration of disparate data sources, including ERP and CRM applications, data warehouses, legacy systems as well as XML and ODBC-based data sources, which is then blended simultaneously and presented on-demand to a broad set of users in their preferred format - dashboards, spreadsheets, web reports, personalized cubes, email or PDFs. Actuate 8 allows information within a data warehouse to be supplemented with real-time operational information in order to obtain up-to-the minute insights and comply more easily with federal regulations, such as Sarbanes-Oxley.
In addition, Actuate provides organisations with the industry's only server-managed spreadsheet solution, which has been enhanced in Actuate 8 to include PivotTables, Data Filters and other Excel functionality, thereby meeting business users' need for the ease of use of Excel while maintaining "one version of the truth."
Pricing and Availability
Actuate 8 will be generally available in July. Pricing for Actuate 8 starts at US$500 per named user.
Why EII?
"Unfortunately, line-of-business units are starved for timely and relevant access to information across the enterprise. While existing approaches including reporting, email, spreadsheets, data warehouse and data integration play a critical role, they do not address the gap required to improve operational performance. Ventana Research sees EII as a critical piece of every organization's need for on-demand access to disparate information to improve operational performance." Source: Mark Smith, Ventana Research, "EII for Improving Operational Performance" - 5/27/04.
Customers Comments
"Actuate has helped us to create a single face for Lincoln Financial Distributors by providing consistent sales reporting data for our management team, internal and external sales force and financial intermediaries," said Miko Pickett, assistant vice president at Lincoln Financial Distributors, a key customer of Actuate. "The new functionality within Actuate 8 will help us further this goal by providing more timely, upgraded and streamlined sales reporting, which is a key tool in the development of our business metrics around productivity and profitability. Actuate's EII Option would give us the freedom to run more reports and extend our data warehouse, so that users may receive accurate information more promptly. In addition, the pivot tables within e.Spreadsheet will enable us to deliver electronic spreadsheets via the Web using every business person's tool of choice for analysis, Excel."
"We have been impressed with the potential for the new functionality within Actuate 8," said Chris Amos, delivery manager at BT Exact, British Telecom's network and information technologies business. "We expect to use the common metadata layer offered by the product to increase the number of options available to users analyzing information without imposing a significant maintenance burden. We're also hoping that the inclusion of pivot tables in the server-managed spreadsheets will save us the re-keying and maintenance overhead associated the methods we currently use to publish material from Excel reports online, helping us give BT's people the information they need more quickly."
Actuate 8 Key Features
- EII
- Unified Metadata Layer
- e.Spreadsheet Designer Enhancements
- Adoption Monitoring
About Actuate Corporation
Actuate Corporation is the world leader in Enterprise Reporting Applications. Actuate's Enterprise Reporting Application Platform is the foundation on which Global 9000 organizations (companies with annual revenues greater than $1 billion) and packaged application software vendors develop intuitive, Web portal-like reporting and analytic applications that empower 100% of users with decision-making information.. When tested against other BI products, Actuate?' Enterprise Reporting Application Platform has been proven to offer industry-leading scalability and the lowest Total Cost of Ownership. Actuate has 2,800 customers globally in a range of industries including financial services, pharmaceuticals, insurance, and distribution services, as well as the government sector.
Founded in 1993, Actuate has headquarters in South San Francisco, Calif., and has offices worldwide. For more information on Actuate, visit the company's Web site at www.actuate.com.
Copyright 2004 Actuate Corporation. All rights reserved. Actuate and the Actuate logo are registered trademarks of Actuate Corporation and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and certain other countries. All other brands, names or trademarks mentioned may be trademarks of their respective owners.