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Jaspersoft Dashboard

Open source provider Jaspersoft released version 4.0 of its business intelligence (BI) software on Tuesday, which includes customizable architecture for Web applications and look-and-feel enhancements tooled from a consumer perspective.

Jaspersoft 4 is an update to the company's complete BI suite and features a new UI framework that makes the architecture a 100% W3C standards-based Web application stack. The suite can stand alone or live inside another application. Added "themes" allow for the look-and-feel to be tailored to specific users and devices. The full suite includes reporting, dashboards, analysis, data integration, and platform tools.

Though not strictly an SMB vendor -- customers that do more than $1 billion in annual sales account for 30 to 35% of Jaspersoft's revenue -- its open source model often attracts smaller firms with slim budgets for analytics, as an alternative to pricier platforms like those offered by SAP, IBM, and Oracle.

In fact, Jaspersoft's pitch to smaller businesses and their everyday attention to total cost of ownership -- like the plugs of other open source BI vendors -- should have a familiar ring: Save money compared with the larger proprietary providers, deploy quickly, and gain flexibility on a platform that plays nice with your existing infrastructure.

Jaspersoft CEO Brian Gentile said the small and midmarket segment is poised to drive growth in the BI and data management industry, and that his company has worked to position itself and its products to capture its fair share.

"You hear a lot from [SMBs] about consumer-like use and interaction with tools, so that a better and easier experience is delivered," Gentile said. "You hear a lot more about costs being a driver. I think open source business intelligence delivering a significantly lower cost experience is probably one of the major reasons that the mid- and small market is now becoming more and more sophisticated with BI."