Birst

Birst Inc., a provider of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud business intelligence (BI), announced Tuesday release of Birst 5 which introduces its software appliance that delivers enterprise-class BI capabilities to customers on premise, with the agility and economics of SaaS.

Traditionally known for its SaaS BI solution, Birst is redefining and extending the value of its SaaS architecture by delivering its single suite of integrated capabilities through a choice of deployment options. Birst 5 can be implemented in the cloud, on premise (or hybrid), or as a fully-functional, self-contained virtual appliance.

Birst Cloud allows customers to host the entire BI solution with Birst and leverage Birst's guaranteed performance, reliability, and security. Birst Local offers a hybrid deployment capability allowing organizations to keep their data on premise, while hosting the analytics in the cloud. Birst Appliance encapsulates the entire Birst BI suite as a virtual machine for deployment on premise. The shared-nothing architecture enables the appliance to overcome the challenges of traditional on-premise BI software solutions, enabling painless horizontal scalability and upgrades in place.

"Birst is redefining how we think of SaaS today," said Scot MacGillivray, founder and co-CEO, Cervello. "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 builds on the strength of the Birst 4 platform with new features and enhancements, making Birst a complete and scalable SaaS BI solution. To further empower business users with self-service BI capabilities, Birst 5 features the ability for dashboard users and report developers to schedule reports for delivery by email. Power users are now able to save, reuse, and share sophisticated Excel-like calculations while performing ad hoc analysis and creating new reports.

For BI developers, Birst 5 offers a new graphical user interface that makes logical data modeling a breeze. Birst 5 also provides OEM customers with broader and deeper integration capabilities through an enhanced Web Services API.

"We built Birst for the Cloud, taking no shortcuts and building a highly scalable, secure, easy-to-use and deploy solution. The result is enterprise-class BI that is less than a third of the cost of traditional solutions and requires a third of the resources needed to run them," said Brad Peters, CEO and co-founder of Birst. "By delivering Birst as an appliance, we are giving our customers the ultimate in flexibility to realize these benefits in the way they are most comfortable -- in the cloud, on-premise, or somewhere in between."

Birst 5 and the Birst Appliance are generally available now.