Open source business intelligence firm JasperSoft has announced a new Business Intelligence offering, jointly developed with Noetix, for Oracle (News - Alert) ERP users.

According to industry observer Madan Sheina the Jasper4Oracle E-Business Suite software blends JasperSoft's core BI Suite software with a set of Noetix reporting objects called NoetixViews designed to generate metadata about ERP data sources.

The software creates query subjects and items of Oracle E-Business Suite data and predefines their relationships to identify joins between dashboard-driven NoetixViews. The views are then used by JasperSoft's BI for end-user analysis and reporting.

"These simplified views transform data complexity into easily recognizable business views of data, allowing non-technical business users with intuitive and affordable Web-based, ad hoc BI for simplified self-service reporting," said Jose Morales, vice president of business development for San Francisco-based JasperSoft.

This is Noetix's third integration with a BI vendor; and its second this year. In March it developed a dashboard "Generator" for Cognos (News - Alert) BI that populates the Cognos Framework Manager model with NoetixViews that also map directly to Oracle's E-Business Suite. In 2006 it also struck a deal to integrate views inside Business Objects' Xcelsius software.

JasperSoft's open-source BI tools are integrated by developers for use with other applications and even hosted CRM (customer relationship management) services such as Salesforce.com (News - Alert) and SugarCRM. Customers set up their customized charts and graphs that give information about their business through a Web portal or another application.

In September JasperSoft announced that it signed a worldwide alliance agreement with Unisys Corporation enabling Unisys to deliver JasperSoft-certified consulting services to organizations looking for professional reporting and data analysis functionality.

Unisys intends to focus on providing services to existing clients while targeting select new enterprise opportunities in financial services, commercial and public sector markets.

Unisys will add JasperSoft open source BI to a portfolio of open source products including IT infrastructure and enterprise content management. Both JasperSoft and Unisys are founding members of the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA), an organization committed to delivering enterprise-ready products optimized for interoperability.

Anthony Gold, vice president and general manager, Open Source Business, Unisys, said this agreement with JasperSoft will "help us add a strong business intelligence product to the Unisys portfolio of open source consulting and modernization services."

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David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.