Quest Software has introduced Toad Business Intelligence Suite, a packaged suite of tools to link traditional and non-traditional data sources, bridging the gap between BI environments and distributed big data sources. In addition, Toad BI Suite also aims to span the divide between technical and non-technical users by offering tailored interfaces designed to meet their individual data provisioning and analytic needs.
According to Quest, the suite enables technical business analysts to have access to the tools needed to provision and deliver complex data in a meaningful form, while business analysts can consume and deliver this data via visualizations or existing BI systems. With the new Toad BI Suite, Quest says it replaces manual, multi-step dataflow processes with an automated solution that facilitates self-service data integration with agile access to departmental data, traditional RDBMS data from Oracle, Microsoft, SQL Server, Sybase, and IBM DB2, corporate business intelligence, cloud databases such as Salesforce, and big data sources like Hadoop.
Toad Business Intelligence Suite is a collection of three separate tools.
Toad Data Point is a tool for the analytic data provisioner that provides connectivity to traditional data sources, such as RDBMs and columnar data warehouses, along with non-traditional data sources including Salesforce.com, Business Objects, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE), and cloud data sources. Described by John Whittaker, senior manager, product marketing at Quest, as the “747 cockpit of toolsets,” Data Point enables analysts to automate routine tasks, as well as transform and cleanse result sets through an intuitive interface.
Toad Decision Point is a tool for business analytic experts that alleviates IT burdens by enabling data consumers to combine, explore, analyze and understand data in simple interactive views to speed data analysis and reporting without impacting corporate governance compliance. According to Whittaker, Decision Point is “very straight-forward, easy to utilize” with a “simple and elegant interface that hides complexity.”
And finally, Toad Intelligence Central, the hub of the new suite, is a virtual data layer that snaps into existing IT and BI architectures, allowing users to share data and collaborate on logical views of data through the suite’s two desktop tools, Data Point and Decision Point. In addition, notes Whittaker, the information can perpetuate for as long as the data provisioner chooses, with the option to build a snapshot that is perpetual and refreshed at a set rate or just living for a short time. It is all configurable by provisioners, says Whittaker, “and easily visualized by the Toad Decision Point users.”
In total, Whittaker says, the suite aims to deliver benefit to the business by driving informed action, but also helping IT to maintain governance and keep systems under control. “We are able to meet both needs with this solution. We bridge that gap.”
More information is available from Quest Software, Inc.