Birst is a cloud business intelligence and analytics tool with In-memory data model designed to connect the whole enterprise through a network of virtualized BI instances in a common base of analysis.
What this means is that organizations can connect to different sources, create models for specific areas and then link those models to generate an integrated view of the performance.
Running Infor Birst and not getting the reporting, dashboards, or performance you expected? Cipher helps enterprises implement, migrate, and get more out of Infor Birst BI. Our EPM consultants have delivered Birst across finance, operations, and supply chain, so your team gets answers from its data, not just another BI tool to maintain.
What Cipher Does with Infor Birst
- Implementation and configuration (finance, operations, supply chain)
- Migration onto Birst, or off a failing Birst deployment into a cleaner model
- Dashboard, report, and networked-BI model design
- Performance tuning of the in-memory model
- Training and ongoing support
Why Teams Bring Cipher In
Cipher has delivered Infor BI and analytics projects for over twenty years. We sell expertise, not licenses: assessment, build, and optimization so your team gets trusted reporting instead of another tool to maintain.
About Birst
Birst was created by Brad Peters and Paul Staelin. Both Peters and Staelin were leaders of the product team in charge of Seabel Analytics, which later became Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE). So we are talking about industry leaders with a vision that has been proven to be focused on the future of analytics.
Birst was born in the cloud, providing a full set of analytics with the flexibility, reliability and scalability of Business Intelligence in that environment.
Supporting private and public clouds, Birst can also be implemented on-premises or in hybrid architectures.
Analyst Recognition
Birst reviews by both Gartner and Forrester have already shown this solution as one of the top-ranked tools within Cloud BI and Analytics. This recognition as an innovator shows the value it can provide to organizations.
According to Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms, Birst has defined the pioneering vision of what a set of cloud BI and analytics capabilities should look like. Gartner's Critical Capabilities for BI & Analytics Platforms report is a useful complement, focusing more on application functionality.
The Forrester Wave for Enterprise BI Platforms also highlights Birst's data warehouse automation feature, which has been awarded a broad technology patent, along with its ability to integrate with other BI platforms. Customers frequently point to Birst's mobile capabilities, including HTML5 and native app delivery with off-line support.
Birst Features
- Unify complex data across sources
- Analyze complex processes and models
- Blends centralized and decentralized approaches
- Trust and reuse key metrics
- Users can use a variety of tools
- Faster time to value
- Scale on demand, economically
- Import or access live data.
Functionality offered to Business Users:
- Creating a star schema with their Automatic Data Refinement (ADR) technology
- Letting users load and merge local files with centralized data
- Perform data transformation and apply predictive analysis.
- Linking already created models which introduces the concept of Networked BI.
The Birst Difference
There are many companies out there offering cloud BI solutions. So what's different about this one?
- Born in the cloud, with all the implications that brings in terms of security and reliability. Some vendors were designed for on-premise and are struggling to move to a cloud option, simply installing their software on a cloud server that doesn't comply with many security protocols.
- Browser-based interaction: no need to install a client (desktop) application or server to build visualizations, especially when hosted on Birst's cloud, which handles performance and scalability.
- All-in-one application: some BI applications focus on data discovery, some on reporting, others complement their functionality with an ETL tool. Birst provides full functionality in each of these areas in an intuitive way.
- Networked BI: data from an existing project can be easily linked for use in a different deployment, with no need to replicate data and add maintenance overhead.
- Birst Tutorial: customers have access to multiple self-guided training materials, which combined with an intuitive interface makes it easy to get up and running.
Birst's acquisition by Infor, a global organization with a large portfolio of business software solutions, is a testament to its potential, complementing and innovating Infor's existing suite of products. The total cost of ownership and flexibility that Birst offers is unique within the analytics space.
Existing Infor customers now have access to Birst connectors that can deliver reports directly from their ERP and other products.
Birst Customers
The list of Birst customers includes names such as Citrix, Honeywell, Cisco, Clarks, and CBS Interactive, among others.
Birst Licenses and Versions
Birst offers a subscription model with their cloud environment, which provides significant benefits in terms of reliability and scalability. It can also be installed on-premise with the "appliance" option, or in a hybrid scenario where the database is hosted on-premise with the rest cloud-based.
There are two main versions: Professional and Enterprise. Professional is the simpler edition, developed to pull data from a limited number of sources and tables. Enterprise has more flexibility in the sources that can be used and provides more technical functionality for ETL and the Star Schema.
Both versions use the same reporting and dashboarding functionality. The main difference is the Pixel Perfect reports (Designer), available by default in the Enterprise version but offered as an add-on for the Professional edition.
Birst pricing has proven accessible for SMEs as well as large enterprises.
Cipher's Advantage
Cipher has a special partnership with both Infor and Birst. With our unique expertise in the BI and Analytics area, we help customers plan, acquire, and implement this powerful solution in record time, generating savings along the way.
If you would like to talk to one of our Birst certified staff members, you can set up an appointment here:
Birst Trial
If you are interested in the application and would like to try it yourself, feel free to register for a trial and interact with the application to experience all the benefits it has to offer.
Already running Infor CPM and thinking about your BI stack alongside it? See how to convert Infor CPM to Infor EPM, or talk to our Infor EPM consulting team. For Infor's other BI platform, see Infor BI consulting.