InformationWeek

December 8, 1997

Crystal Info Adds OLAP

Upgrade features push technology

eagate Software Inc. announced last week the availability of Crystal Info 6.0, the latest version of its business intelligence software. Formerly code-named BlackWidow, Seagate Crystal Info 6 adds online analytical processing (OLAP) to its end-user reporting capabilities. It also features push technology as an additional way for users to receive information via the Web.

The new version of Crystal Info incorporates OLAP functions from Seagate Holos, which the company acquired with the purchase of Holistic Systems in 1996. It then uses Crystal Reports to take advantage of Seagate's reporting infrastructure. Seagate's Info Cube Designer lets users chose specific information from relational databases they wish to collect into OLAP cubes. Crystal Info's Reports Designer lets users create and distribute reports based on that information.

Seagate's Channel Push Technology is designed for users to locate reports, objects, or OLAP cubes via the Web, so they can be aware of immediate changes to information. Through Info WebAccess, users can view reports or OLAP cubes from a browser by using Java, ActiveX, or HTML.

"Our goal is to reach all types of clients," says Andrew Handford, product manager for Seagate Crystal Info 6. "That's why we've added full Java support for client, report viewer, and worksheet."

Balancing The Load
An early tester of the software, Bankers Trust Co. in New York, is running Seagate Crystal Info 6 in a Microsoft Windows NT environment, including NT Web agents and clusters. "The software does an excellent job in load balancing when it comes to moving requests to different servers as well the ability to set up immediate retry requests if a particular database is down," says Robert Ross, assistant treasurer of the bank's global investment management division.

That back-end stability was a major objective in building Cry stal Info 6, say Seagate officials. "Version 6 is built on a clustered back-end server for better scalability," says Handford.

Bankers Trust soon will roll out the software in a static-based reporting environment for conducting batch reports, says Ross. Eventually, Crystal Info will be used in a dynamic-based reporting environment for real-time report evaluation.

A client license for Seagate Crystal Info 6 is $299 per user, with the OLAP add-in priced at $399 per user and the Report/Query add-in priced at $199 per user. It will be available for $749 per user as a bundle with both add-ins and client.

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