Birst Unveils Networked BI to Transform Enterprise Analytics

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Sep 1, 2015) - Birst, the global leader in Cloud BI and Analytics, today announced "Networked BI," which completely redefines the way BI is delivered and consumed. This new technology enables global governance with local execution and further realizes Birst's vision of trusted and agile collaboration between centralized and decentralized teams.

Traditionally, organizations have depended on centralized IT to physically replicate data and metadata infrastructures to enable analytics for decentralized groups. This approach is time consuming, expensive and, ultimately, a barrier to end-user self-service. Instead, "Networked BI" virtualizes the entire BI ecosystem, transforming every aspect of an organization's approach to analytics, from application development lifecycles to end-user generated data mashups and content.

Built on top of Birst's modern, multi-tenant cloud architecture, "Networked BI" creates a network of interwoven BI instances that share a common analytical fabric. This enables organizations to expand the use of BI across multiple regions, departments and customers in a more agile way, and empowers these decentralized groups to augment the global analytical fabric with their own local data. The result is enterprise-grade scalability at unprecedented speed and end-user freedom with self-service data preparation capabilities and transparent governance. By bringing analytics to the virtual world with "Networked BI," Birst eliminates data silos once and for all and dramatically accelerates the delivery of BI across the enterprise.

Gartner, Inc., a leading IT research and advisory firm, estimates that "through 2016, less than 10 percent of self-service BI initiatives will be governed sufficiently to prevent inconsistencies that adversely affect business." (See Jan. 27, 2015, Gartner news release, "Gartner Says Power Shift in Business Intelligence and Analytics Will Fuel Disruption.")

Many BI products on the market have focused primarily on end-user ease of use, while neglecting governance capabilities necessary for enterprise-wide analytics. Birst's "Networked BI" approach is the solution for IT and business leaders looking to empower users to work freely with data while delivering trust, governance and agility at scale.

Using Birst "Networked BI," some of the largest, most successful and geographically-dispersed enterprises are leveraging virtual BI instances to proliferate the use of analytics throughout the entire organization at a pace not possible with traditional approaches, significantly increasing agility and reducing costs.