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Birst 5 Releases First-of-its-kind SaaS-based BI Appliance

By Calvin Azuri
TMCnet Contributor

Birst, Inc. is one of the leading providers of software-as-a-service (SaaS (News - Alert)) and cloud business intelligence (BI). They recently announced the release of Birst 5 that brings to the industry, for the first time, a software appliance that gives enterprise-class BI competencies to customers on premise, with the speed and economy of SaaS.

Well known for its prominent SaaS BI solution, Birst aims at redefining and increasing the value of its SaaS based architecture by offering a wide range of deployment options, which is unprecedented for its singular suite of integrated capabilities. This means that Birst 5 can be deployed via the cloud, on premise (or even hybrid), and as a completely-functional, self-sufficient virtual appliance.

Since Birst Cloud makes way for customers to host the complete BI solution with them, it allows the company to make full use of Birst's guaranteed performance, their reliability as well as security. In Birst Local one has a hybrid deployment capability. This allows companies to keep all their data on the premises while they host the analytics in the cloud. Birst Appliance covers the entire Birst BI suite making it a virtual machine that can be deployed on the premise. What helps it overcome regular on-premise BI software solution challenges is its shared-nothing            architecture. This allows for effortless scalability horizontally as well as when upgrades are needed.

In a release, Scot MacGillivray, Founder and co-CEO, Cervello, said, “Birst is redefining how we think of SaaS today.  It is becoming less about the delivery method and more about the application itself and the rapid benefits it can bring. As a Birst partner, the unique SaaS or appliance consumption model is giving our customers the freedom to determine how they want to use Birst and in whatever environment they are most comfortable."

Birst 5 has been built on the strength of the Birst 4 platform. It comes with some fresh features as well as enhancements, making Birst a complete and scalable SaaS BI solution to enter the market. To give business users the ability to service themselves with BI capabilities, Birst 5 allows the use of dashboard and a schedule of reports that can be delivered by email. Birst 5 also comes with a new graphical user interface that facilitates logical data modeling making it very simple. It also allows OEM customers much wider and deeper integration abilities through enhanced Web Services API.