Izenda Brings Embedded Analytics into the Future

By November 28, 2017Embedded BI
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A blogger directed BI vendors to “Bring embedded analytics into the 21st century”, and we couldn’t agree more. So that’s what we did at Izenda with our embedded self-service analytics platform.

While they once considered it an extra, clients now expect analytics inside of their business software applications. Reports and dashboards with drill downs and visualizations have replaced a BI world powered by simple reports and spreadsheets. And, as reporting requirements get more complex, the choice between building and buying becomes clearer. Few software companies have the time or staff to develop modern analytics functionality inside their product.

Many BI vendors, however, require investment in proprietary data warehouses and/or expensive hardware, making it hard to see a return on investment in analytics. A vendor that works with existing infrastructure is better for the bottom line. Let’s examine some other requirements software teams have when it comes to analytics:

Scalability – Izenda’s platform features the industry’s first modern three-tier embedded architecture; one that is modular, extensible and scalable. It helps software companies scale their applications up and out. A separate back-end tier allows reporting against a variety of popular databases. Software companies can scale up by adding multiple web servers. “Fast and easy to embed, Izenda’s flexibility and scalability are unmatched by other BI solution providers,” said Leslie DeLatte, president of Orion Communications.

Izenda has created a lightweight, low impact, completely stateless and containerization-friendly platform. Its decoupled presentation, application and data layers deliver a platform that adapts to existing infrastructure and methodologies. “Izenda makes Helix scalable in ways that we simply were not able to do before,” said Yishai Hornbacher, Helix Reports technology leader.

ETLs – Software companies can leverage the data they have from existing data sources, without resorting to ETL processes using Izenda Fusion. It removes a step from the analytics process and frees software organizations from investing in more infrastructure. With no need to buy hardware for data warehouses, or servers, this cuts out a high cost many other vendors impose.

Modern, Open Frameworks – An extensible ReactJS front end provides unparalleled OEM integration opportunities for embedding self-service analytics. It is framework agnostic, allowing for integration with any technology stack. An exposed REST API makes automation and extension straightforward. Izenda can inherit existing security models and leverage tokens to remain stateless, even if the application is not. Pre-built components shorten integration and deployment time. The application layer uses REST API endpoints.

Ease of Use – Izenda created drag and drop UIs to make using our analytics platform as easy to use as possible. Administrators can change field names and categories to business-relevant terminology that makes it simpler for users to find the data they need to see. A person familiar with web platforms will find it intuitive to use – many start out building reports without needing training.

Analytics Performance – What information does the platform capture about how users engage with the analytics? How easily can a system admin or application owner act on them? Embedded analytics is about making a smarter workforce, and one way to do this is by tracking reporting usage. An Administrative UI gives administrators feedback on which features users and tenants leverage. And Izenda’s Copy Management functionality makes it easy to apply customizations and updates across tenants.

Drill Downs – With Izenda, your users can drill down into data sets as far as the data will take them. This is true for any of the data visualization types we support.

Customizable Front-End – Embedding Izenda’s platform makes analytics fluid in application workflows. It is fully white labeled, making it invisible to end users as a third party product. The open source front end makes customization and white labeling easy, including customizing fonts, palettes, languages, time zones and logos.

Learn how Izenda empowers your software product team to deliver analytics tailored to the needs of your application. Schedule a free demo with one of our product experts.

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