InetSoft

InetSoft Technology Corporation is a privately owned multinational computer software company that develops free and commercial web-based business intelligence applications. The company was founded in 1996, and currently has over 120 employees between its corporate headquarters in Piscataway, New Jersey, and development offices in Beijing and Xi'an, China.

The company offers various applications that focus on operational BI, enterprise reporting, data visualization and embeddable reporting. InetSoft's solutions have been deployed at over 3,000 organizations worldwide, including 25% of Fortune 500 companies, spanning all types of industries.^[1]

History

InetSoft was co-founded in 1996 by siblings Larry and Luke Liang. Prior to founding InetSoft, Larry Liang, was involved in the early research of e-commerce and interactive Web technologies and served as a research scientist at Bell Communications Research (now Telcordia Technologies), and held various technical positions at Bell Labs, AT&T, and Lucent Technologies.^[2] Luke Liang had worked for Goldman Sachs in a variety of technology and management positions and held consulting positions with both JP Morgan, Chase and the Union Bank of Switzerland.^[2] Both hold master's degrees in Computer Science.^[2]

The company began with four employees working out of a garage in Piscataway, New Jersey, and focused on developing an open standards Java based platform that would be fully compatible with Java/XML, relational databases, internet technologies and legacy systems.^[3] The initial product released was Style Report, which focused on reporting and data analysis. Because of its Java roots and small footprint, Style Report has been used in both client-side and server-side Java applications. Over the years, InetSoft's products evolved alongside Java to become server-based Web solutions. The product line has grown to include reporting, dashboards and visual analysis.

Product development history

InetSoft's software is based on open standards technology that incorporates XML, SOAP, Java language, and JavaScript. While the primary design goal is easy integration with other open standards based software, access to third party proprietary software has been added in recent years. Additionally, the company licenses by CPU rather than by named user.^[4] The history of InetSoft product development is as follows:

• In 1998 Style Report was introduced. It was a developer tool that could be used as a report generation engine for both desktop Java applications and web applications.^[5] It provided support for tabular, flow, "banded" (like Crystal Reports), and mixed layouts. Its embedded report scripting engine was the Mozilla Rhino engine.

• In 2000 Style Report EE was introduced. It was based on the same reporting engine and provided multi-threaded report generation with caching, drill-down reports, parameter reports, and search, sort and filtering features. It also featured ad hoc query for modifying or creating reports.

• In 2004 Style Report Analytic was introduced. It was a product for operational BI that provided reports, dashboards, OLAP, a balanced scorecard, and alerts. It used patent-pending Data Block technology for accessing disparate data sources, a process known as data mashup.^[6]

• In 2007 Style Scope and Style Intelligence were introduced. Style Scope was a web-based dashboard design product that used Adobe Flex to deliver a Rich Internet application. Style Intelligence offered dashboards, reporting, and analysis.

• In 2008 InetSoft began to offer BI on-demand^[7] and a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution for Salesforce.com. The service added interactive dashboards and visual analysis features for existing Salesforce.com users.^[8]

• In 2009 Visualize Free and Style Chart free hosted services were introduced.^[9] Visualize Free provided multi-dimensional visual analysis. Style Chart provided an embeddable AJAX charting engine.

• In 2010 Style Intelligence 10.3 and Style Scope Free Edition were released. The updated Style Intelligence release increased geographic data binding capabilities and added data access for the following enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications: SAP AG, Siebel Systems, JD Edwards, and PeopleSoft. Style Scope Free Edition was a free downloadable server for dashboards and visualization.

• In 2011 Style Intelligence 11.0 was released. New features include the Style Studio which unifies the developer and administration tools for data mashups, report and dashboard design. The 11.1 release added support for Apple® iOS devices via HTML 5, as well as post aggregate computations.

• In 2012 Style Intelligence 11.3 was released. New features include: Freehand Tables in Viewsheets, Google Map Integration, Remote Report Execution in Style Studio, Individual Asset Export in Style Studio, Individual Chart Export in Viewsheet, Input-Based Shared Filters in Viewsheet, and over eighty more enhancements.^[10]

• In 2013 Style Intelligence 11.4 was released. New features include: Viewsheet Annotation, Shared Bookmarks, Discrete Measure Representation, Independent Visual Binding for Chart Measures, Dynamic Sorting for Viewsheet Chart Axes, Screen Layout Guide for Viewsheets, Data Model Validation Checking, Metadata Refresh for Individual Data Sources, Restructured Tabs in Enterprise Manager, Worksheet Organization in Enterprise Manager, Script Access to Viewsheet Component Position, Search Access to Non-Archived Reports, and Depreciation of Portlet Dashboards.^[11]

Product awards

InetSoft Style Report won Best Java Reporting Tool in 1999, 2000,^[12] 2002,^[13] 2003,^[14] 2005,^[15] 2006,^[16] and in 2007.^[17] Also in 2007, InetSoft's Style Report Analytic Edition won Best Java Business Intelligence Tool,^[18] the first year it had been nominated and the final year of the JDJ Awards program.

In 2011, InetSoft was named to Information Management's list of top "40 Vendors We're Watching in 2011" for its Style Intelligence 11.0 release and patent pending Data Block technology.^[19]

Current product lines

Commercial products

• Style Intelligence is InetSoft's main business intelligence platform. It provides a visualization-driven approach to reporting, dashboards, and visual analysis.^[20]

• Style Scope is an edition of Style Intelligence that includes the patent-pending Data Block technology that is focused on interactive visualization, plus monitoring and analytic dashboards.^[20]

• Style Report Enterprise is an edition of Style Intelligence that focuses on enterprise reporting. It delivers carefully formatted information to a wide business user community.^[20]

Free applications

• Style Scope Free Edition is a small-footprint server that delivers Web-based interactive Flash dashboards and visualizations that can be shared within an organization. It provides support for multi-source data mashups and full admin and permission controls.

• Visualize Free is a visual analysis application that allows users to explore their own data visually and interactively. It requires no software installation.

• Style Chart is a charting engine and JavaScript API for Web developers to embed charts and graphs in Web pages via AJAX.

Third party articles

• "InetSoft Rates as a Leading Provider of Business Intelligence Solutions"- Gleanster, October 26, 2012
• "InetSoft Gets Agile BI Right" - Enterprise Systems Journal, March 2, 2011
• "40 Vendors We're Watching in 2011"- Information Management, March 1, 2011
• "Flight Data Services Selects InetSoft's Business Intelligence Software" - Flight Data Services Ltd, March 1, 2011

References

External links

• Official InetSoft Website
• Official InetSoft Blog