Open Source BIRT brings enterprise class business intelligence and reporting to the "personal" iPhone platform
No one can argue the with the huge success of the iPhone as a personal communication and computing tool. However, some have been quick to point out that the sleek, ubiquitous smartphone is just a personal gadget and not really part of the enterprise computing equation. The open source BIRT project seeks to change that by bringing enterprise class business intelligence and reporting to an iPhone near you.
For a long time Apple went out of their way to say that the iPhone was not intended as an enterprise tool. But of course people have been using them to access email and other enterprise tasks for a long time now. Now Actuate one of the companies behind the BIRT project has released a free iPhone app for BIRT.
BIRT is a hugely popular BI and reporting tool, with over 6.5 million downloads. It is widely admired for the breath of reports that it provides, allowing users to really understand the metrics of their business. Now iPhone users can access that data on the fly via their iPhones and connecting to the iServer that Acuate sells. This is clearly not a personal computing kind of task and brings even more enterprise class functionality to the iPhone platform.
The one thing missing from the free iPhone app is some of the dynamic reports that BIRT is known for. Many of those on the fly reports use Flash. Apple’s refusal to support flash on the iPhone is once again proving a hindrance. This lack of support for Flash is one of the bigger challenges remaining for the iPhone.
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