How the BIRT Project Can Bring Your Disconnected People Data Together

If you are using human capital management applications delivered over the web, chances are Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) creates the data visualizations and reports you use every day. Many cloud business applications use this open source tool to make information available to customers. These examples may be familiar.

• SuccessFactors uses BIRT to create its reporting and analytics tools.
• SumTotal has embedded Jaspersoft’s BIRT engine into its Advanced Reporting.
• Many customers use BIRT for reporting from Workday.

BIRT is one of over 300 projects of the Eclipse Foundation, a worldwide member-supported community whose members collaborate on commercially-friendly open source software. Sponsors include OpenText, Google, Novell, IBM, Oracle and many other well-known companies.

The frameworks, tools, Integrated Development Environments (IDE) and platforms supported by the foundation power many of the enterprise software companies of the world. This cooperative effort is much of the reason we have both rapid development and diminishing costs in reporting software. Members support the development of tools and ideas that would probably be prohibitively expensive if they were to go it alone.

The BIRT development tools are free to download, use, extend, and integrate with other software. Over 2.5 million developers worldwide in 157 countries use it.

BIRT Architecture

The architecture of BIRT consists of two components, both designed for software developers and non-programmer reports developers. The Reports Designer is a visual drag and drop tool for creating reports, crosstabs, charts, and dashboards. The second is the Report Engine, use to generate and deploy the results.

Advantages of BIRT Deployment in Your Enterprise

If you need to access disparate data sources, are dissatisfied with the reporting tools you have, or need to create executive dashboards for your business leaders, we recommend you consider what you can do with the flexibility and power of BIRT...

• Connect to multiple data sources of any type, from simple worksheets to Hadoop data lakes, or a web source half a world away.
• Use tools and architecture familiar to programmers and report developers, with drag and drop tools and time-saving templates developed by the community.
• Create dashboards and reports with multiple components, including charts, tables, crosstabs, text, and graphics.
• Use the Charting Engine to deploy visualizations and dashboards to any application in your organization.
• Create datasets, procedures, components, and other resources to share with others in your organization.
• Use the Preview option to get approval for your designs before you deploy them.
• Collaborate with thousands of Eclipse members to extend BIRT functionality for your unique requirements.

How to Deploy BIRT Reporting in Your Enterprise

Since BIRT is open source and used in so many ways, the deployment options are nearly infinite, but the following three options are the most common.

• Partner with a boutique technology company like Pixentia to deploy BIRT or a BIRT-based solution scaled to your needs and unique business requirements.
• Engage an enterprise analytics platform from vendors like Talend, Pentaho, or Tableau. No solution fits every situation, but each has its strengths. If you are considering this option, we recommend you check out the Gartner report on BI and analytics platforms, and work with an independent consultant to sort through the many options available.
• If you develop your analytics capability in-house, you can deploy BIRT as the presentation layer of your organization’s business intelligence ecosystem.

Open Source is the Future

In today’s free-flowing information culture, no one business vendor will dominate markets as companies have in the past. Open-source reporting is the future, simply because the possibilities are endless and information is accessible to everyone. With so many people working on making it better, there will always be options available for individual business needs, from tried-and-true basic solutions to life on the leading edge.

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