Item: Entrinsik Informer
Rating: 5
Author: Mike Stephanson

Overall Satisfaction

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We package Informer in our hosted software solution for our clients. We started with Informer to address web-based reporting needs for our back office Universe database. Specifically, Informer Universe reporting addressed client needs for scheduling and distribution of reporting content. The evolution of Informer to include SQL databases has expanded our scope of reporting content to other Paciolan products/databases. The SQL database access and Dashboard features of Informer also will help us address content delivery from a data warehouse database.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Usability of the product for self-service reporting.
Scheduling and distribution of reporting content. This includes the ability to provide links to reporting content.
Extensibility of the Informer development platform. Open SDKs.

Cons

Recoverability of site when memory issues are encountered (usually due to large reports).
Cache management - our production sites frequently experience corrupt cache symptoms that result in unusable UI and java exceptions.
Processing utilization and time it takes to render large result sets.

Return on Investment

Informer is a Customer Satisfaction play for us. Reporting/intelligence is an expected feature of our product, Informer enables us to deliver a solution with minimal development effort.

Alternatives Considered

Was too long ago to remember other products evaluated but they would've been specific to Universe. In a previous position I did a lot of work with Business Objects and Crystal. The investment in Informer is much more cost effective than BO/Crystal and fits within our product pricing much better.

Likelihood to Renew

I give this a high rating. I like the direction Entrinsik is taking Informer especially in it's open architecture. Informer is a good foundation for our reporting development solution.

Likelihood to Recommend

Depends on the colleague's objectives. Would like to hear from Entrinsik how they would go up against a comparison to a report/intelligence product such as Business Objects/Crystal.

For Universe reports, would rate this question higher. For SQL reports, there are a lot of products on the market. I understand that there are Entrinsik roadmap plans for Big Data/Hadoop integration... providing this functionality will be a great feature.

Comments

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Informer - A Good Fit for Paciolan Hosted Product

Software Version