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1. Comparison of CXAIR to Traditional
Business Intelligence Technologies
How CXAIR stacks up against in-memory and
OLAP technologies
Whitepaper
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2. CXAIR provides a fundamentally different approach to information
retrieval and management reporting.
Consequently, comparing CXAIR to traditional Business Intelligence
products such as Business Objects, Cognos or Micro Strategy
cannot be done by a blow by blow feature comparison.
For example:
CXAIR does not provide pixel perfect printed reports that
are scheduled and distributed to senior managers and
information analysts.
CXAIR does not download universes of data to the client
when a report is run, that can then be used to drill up and
down through the data. Neither does it perform
pre-aggregations and store those aggregations in a
database for subsequent querying.
CXAIR does not provide complex report designers and SQL
editors that enable developers to create report definitions
that can then be published out to the user community.
200+
implementations of
CXAIR globally across
a variety of industries
Next Generation Upgrade
Technology
Comparison
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3. Users can get answers to their own questions whenever they want
without having to prepare report templates, or having to wait to
receive batch reports, or for nightly data loads to be completed to
provide them with up-to-date data.
CXAIR was written because existing Business Intelligence tools are
too complex to manage and use for non-IT professionals.
CXAIR’s self-service analytics lets users get answers to their
questions real-time, as result lists, charts, tables, Crosstabs,
spreadsheets, Venn diagrams, dashboards etc., faster and with less
cost and effort than any comparable technology.
600m
records held in the
largest singular
CXAIR index so far
CXAIR doesn’t do these things
because it doesn’t need to.
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4. CXAIR
CXAIR is the fastest, most intuitive, cost effective business
analytics solution available anywhere in the world today.
Rather than conform to the legacy concepts of relational and
OLAP technologies, CXAIR harnesses the power of search engine
technology to deliver a new generation of analytic and enquiry
tools.
Put CXAIR alongside any other Business Intelligence tool and look
how they compare.
CXAIR simplifies the whole concept of Business Intelligence. BI
should not be difficult, BI should not be restricted to the analysts –
BI should be available to everyone.
BI should not be a science, it should be simple, fast and cheap to
deploy.
Search-Powered Business Analytics
250K
user logins on
CXAIR per annum
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5. By looking at the weaknesses of traditional BI and focusing on the
strengths of today’s incredible technology advances, Connexica
has thrown away the old blue print and replaced it with a new
standard:
Make information available to everyone in a form that
allows them to be more productive and more responsive
to their customer and business needs.
Remove the need to rely on the IT department to answer
ad hoc enquiries. Make sure people can get answers to
their questions directly, easily and quickly.
Ensure that the company is not tied to an expensive IT
infrastructure which scales linearly with their IT spend.
Do not inhibit business growth by increasing IT budgetary
demands.
47%
Self-service business
intelligence reduces
IT requests by 47%
Source:
Logi Analytics: State of
Self-Service BI Report 2015
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6. 22%
Average adoption
rate of BI products is
at 22%
source: BI Scorecard
Features VS
Business Value
Every BI tool vendor in the market today goes head to head on
features and functionality.
Vendor tools that contain the most features can, in the context of
a paper comparison exercise, appear to provide better value.
However, the reality is the more features a technology has, the
more complex it is to use and deploy.
The most important thing to consider is whether or not the
technology can fit in with the culture of the business and provide a
real return on investment.
Connexica believes that the most reliable way of assessing a
technology is to see how it would fit in your organisation and
whether or not it would solve real world business problems by
saving time, money and resources.
Empowering Users, Reducing Cost
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7. 95%
of IT organisations
plan to invest in
self-service BI in the
next two years, up
from 84% in 2014.
Source:
Logi Analytics: State of
Self-Service BI Report 2015
Is the system easy to install and deploy across the
organisation?
Can people get the information they require themselves?
Can mobile workers access information when they are away
from the office?
Can this information be shared with other people that need to
see the same information?
Can information contained in multiple systems be available
through a single interface?
Do people only have access to information they have a
legitimate right to see?
Can people get answers to their questions immediately?
Can people with limited IT skills use the system effectively?
Can we segment our corporate information in a manner that
benefits the business?
Is the information used by the organisation up to date?
Are the costs of installing and maintaining the system low?
Can the system be deployed quickly to generate an immediate
return in investment?
Is the system saving or generating the business money?
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8. 60%
of business and
technology decision
makers report time
concerns creating or
updating dashboards
CXAIR has been designed to satisfy the need for organisations to
have rapid, joined up access to their information assets through a
medium that is both easy to use, but most importantly, able to
provide accurate answers on demand.
CXAIR provides users with real-time, sub-second responses to
questions that need answers, now.
source: Forrester
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9. Performance
It is difficult to compare the performance of CXAIR with other
Business Intelligence tools as there is a fundamental difference in
the way that CXAIR queries and returns data.
Fundamentally, CXAIR is extremely fast.
Unlike traditional reporting tools where complex reports end up as
scheduled reports that run during off-peak times, CXAIR is able to
return vast amounts of data in milliseconds.
In many cases during performance tests for CXAIR, tests returned
millions of hits in less than 1 millisecond - simply unachievable
using traditional Business Intelligence tools. Traditional tools rely
on relational or OLAP databases for query performance time
before adding on the additional overhead of data rendering and
report delivery.
With CXAIR, data is mirrored in an index that is optimised to return
extremely large result sets. Relational databases are optimised for
inserts and updates and struggle to return large amounts of data
Unrivalled Scalability
1ms
CXAIR returns results
within 1 millisecond
over millions of rows
of data
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10. 6.1
average number of
days to build reports
using traditional
BI tools
source: Aberdeen Group
quickly and without consuming considerable CPU and IO time.
In this comparison, CXAIR is compared to test results from an
independent source, VERITEST who performed a series of tests on
Business Objects XI using the highly optimised “Adaptive Data
Sharing” configuration.
The tests were looking at the number of reports that could be
returned from a 4 CPU server with between 0 and 120 active (not
concurrent) users over a 30 minute period. Each report was
returning 43,000 records which were considered to be
representative of a listing style production report.
The tests showed that in a highly optimised configuration, BO was
able to process 725 reports per minute for 120 online users.
Comparative tests using CXAIR on an index containing over
170,000 documents / rows showed that CXAIR was able to
complete over 1000 queries per second or 60,000 queries per
minute.
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11. 69%
of speed-driven
organisations
achieved a positive
impact on business
outcomes
source: IBM
CXAIR is able to support average query times of a maximum of
1.25 seconds for in excess of 500 concurrent users. In the context
of Business Objects this is the equivalent of 1000 reports per
second in an environment with in excess of 5000 active users of
which 500 are running concurrent query requests.
As mentioned previously, you cannot compare directly the
performance of the 2 products as Business Objects is obtaining the
data for rendering into a report where as CXAIR is providing the
results of the query directly to the end user.
However, the results do show how much faster and scalable CXAIR
is to a Business Intelligence tool such as Business Objects.
CXAIR achieves this incredible throughput due to its utilisation of
search engine technology, lack of reliance on the underlying
database technology and the methodology adopted in the design
of the user interface and query interfaces.
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12. 50%+
Over 50% of business
users will have access
to self-service BI tools
by 2017
source: BetterBuys
Conclusion
CXAIR is a paradigm shift from traditional Business Intelligence
tools.
By concentrating on self-service, speed and ease of use, Connexica
has developed a suite of tools that deliver Business Intelligence in
a new way.
By analysing how people work and making information, pertinent
to their job role, more available, organisations are able to deliver
Business Intelligence to the entire organisation not just 5% of the
organisation.
CXAIR is faster than other BI tools. Implementing CXAIR will speed
up the decision making process and help ensure that decisions are
based on sound, consistent, up-to-date information.
CXAIR returns a lower TCO than other market leading BI vendors
and an improved and demonstrable return on investment by
reducing the burden on the IT department.
The Power of Search
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