GOING REAL-TIME WILL DELIVER REVENUE BOOST, SURVEY REVEALS

Companies expect to see increases in revenues as a direct result of their real-time business intelligence capabilities, according a recent survey conducted by Appfluent Technology, the business intelligence infrastructure company.

APPFLUENT TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH NOTE

GOING REAL-TIME WILL DELIVER REVENUE BOOST, SURVEY REVEALS

Companies expect to see increases in revenues as a direct result of their real-time business intelligence capabilities, according a recent survey conducted by Appfluent Technology, the business intelligence infrastructure company.

Appfluent Technology conducted the survey in March 2003 via an online questionnaire completed by 275 technology professionals, including almost half in IT management or C-level technology positions. More than 90 percent of respondents were from large or very large organizations (more than 1,000 employees). The surveys main findings include:
·   42 percent of respondents said they expect revenues would increase if end-users had access to timely data.
·   More than 70 percent of respondents indicated end-users would make more intelligent decisions if given access to timely data. Of those, one in five indicated that sales is the activity that would most benefit from intelligent decision-making with increased revenues being a direct result.
·   Half of respondents said their organizations would have better control over resources should end users have access to timely data.
·   Production, finance and sales were the business units most often accessing fresh data.
·   Production was cited as the unit that would most benefit, with improved effectiveness, tighter cost control and better use of resources, when users are given access to real-time data.

This research confirms that, in today's business environment, companies must be agile if they are to succeed. And, that means they need timely information from critical business systems," explained Frank Gelbart, president and CEO, Appfluent Technology. More and more users are demanding real-time information but many organizations are finding that it is expensive and complex to deploy and manage the necessary supporting infrastructure."

Many companies enable real-time reporting by deploying BI applications directly against their production systems -- the same systems that support critical transactional applications. Half of respondents run reports directly off transactional systems more than 30 percent of the time. Only five percent never run reports off production systems. When reports are run directly from production systems, it can cause costly performance deterioration. As both reporting applications and enterprise applications contend for processing resources, each system becomes unacceptably slow.

Other companies consider implementing an operational data store (ODS) or report server as an infrastructure solution for real-time business intelligence. But, the survey revealed that many companies decide against this type of infrastructure -- 64 percent cite the cost and complexity of an ODS as prohibitive.

The Appfluent Accelerator is an intelligent, self-managing, dedicated reporting server. Its integrated software dynamically offloads BI-application queries from production databases while optimizing overall system performance. Unlike traditional approaches to reporting infrastructure, the Appfluent Accelerator is a cost-effective, low-overhead alternative that requires virtually no ongoing administration and management.
    
Appfluent Technology conducts monthly surveys to keep a finger on the pulse of enterprise application trends and issues. To see summaries of past research visit www.appfluent.com

Contact Sherrilynne Starkie, PR Director, 703 284 0835, sstarkie@appfluent.com for more info.
March 17, 2003