Science & Technology
Science and Technology
Science and Technology
Mon, January 12, 2009 Actuate 10 e.Spreadsheet Generally Available
SAN MATEO, Calif.--([ BUSINESS WIRE ])--Actuate Corporation (NASDAQ:ACTU), the leader in delivering Rich Internet Applications Without Limits™, today announced the general availability of the latest version of its award winning e.Spreadsheet product line, Actuate 10 e.Spreadsheet. Actuate e.Spreadsheet is the industry's most complete platform for designing, generating and distributing information as intuitive, rich, interactive spreadsheets, with all the formatting, formulas, pivot tables and charts that users expect. Actuate 10 introduces a host of new e.Spreadsheet features allowing organizations to address an even broader set of content creation and delivery requirements for industry standard spreadsheets, while at the same time slashing information application development times.
Spreadsheets are used by majority of business users to analyze information. e.Spreadsheet is the only solution available that automatically delivers data via analysis-ready, truly-data driven industry standard spreadsheets to any size user audience, while giving IT complete control over the distribution of mission-critical data. Actuate 10 e.Spreadsheet dramatically cuts development time and addresses the needs of end-users who require data in a highly interactive spreadsheet format. In addition Actuate e.Spreadsheet 10 enables the same information to be easily and automatically delivered as PDF content to other users if needed. The release also allows e.Spreadsheet customers who have embraced Microsoft Excel 2007 to benefit from the latest version's enhancements.
"Actuate e.Spreadsheet enables us to automate and standardize the process of delivering data as analysis-ready Excel spreadsheets, thus dramatically increasing efficiency while ensuring the accuracy and consistency of our produced spreadsheet reports," said Molly Payne, Performance Management Analyst, Presbyterian Healthcare Services. "We highly anticipate version 10, because it will allow us to further decrease the associated development times and address, at no additional cost, requirements which call for PDF or native Excel 2007 output."
"People create a lot of reports in spreadsheets, but this can be a real drag on productivity. It's even more important in today's economic environment to make using them more efficient," said Robert D. Kugel, CFA, SVP & Research Director - CFO and Business Research at Ventana Research. "We recommend companies look at Actuate 10 e.Spreadsheet. Version 10 has added a lot more data visualization options and ease-of-use features. e.Spreadsheet also gives corporations greater control over spreadsheet-based content which can be important for maintaining data consistency and compliance."
"e.Spreadsheet's popularity has really exploded this past year, from the customer experience stories highlighted at our annual user conference to more than fifteen hundred downloads of the free e.Spreadsheet Designer from [ www.birt-exchange.com ], e.Spreadsheet Designer has really come of age," said Jeff Morris, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Actuate. "As Actuate 10 ships we expect e.Spreadsheet Designer's popularity to increase even faster due to its expanded formats and productivity enhancements."
The Actuate 10 release contains a host of new e.Spreadsheet features allowing organizations to address an even broader set of reporting requirements such as PDF and native Microsoft Excel 2007 output. The release also introduces significant productivity enhancements that reduce development times by making it much easier to define charts, and work with queries. Key features in Actuate 10 e.Spreadsheet include:
- PDF Output: With the click of a button users can specify PDF as the output format when executing or viewing e.Spreadsheet content. As a result e.Spreadsheet can now address, at no additional cost, the needs not only of end-users who require the data in industry standard spreadsheets, but also of those who prefer to receive it as PDF reports. An additional driver for this feature is to comply with regulatory requirements which state that all business critical reports must be archived in non-editable formats and kept for auditing purposes.
- Native Microsoft Excel 2007 Output: Users can now select native Microsoft Excel 2007 as their file format of choice, along with previous versions of Excel, when viewing or executing e.Spreadsheet reports.
- Charting Enhancements: The e.Spreadsheet Designer now provides an intuitive Excel-like, point-and-click chart wizard that walks the report author through all the steps necessary to add a chart to a report, from selecting the chart type and formatting options to specifying how the chart maps to the data in the report. The wizard provides a guided experience that eliminates complexity while providing powerful new data mapping, formatting and chart bursting options.
- Query Editor Enhancements: A number of developer productivity features have been added to the e.Spreadsheet Designer Query Editor such as impact analysis capabilities to highlight the database tables and columns that are used in a query, but are no longer valid. The report author can now easily asses how the queries in a report are impacted by a database schema change, so that the necessary updates can be applied. Another new capability is allowing report authors to use search expressions to easily locate the schemas, tables, columns and stored procedures to use when building a query. The feature improves productivity, especially when using databases with lots of objects since report authors no longer have to scroll to locate the required database objects.
More about e.Spreadsheet, as well as a detailed feature list can be found by visiting [ www.actuate.com/info/actuate10essTSNF.asp ].
Pricing and Availability
The new version of e.Spreadsheet is part of the Actuate 10 release and is available now by contacting [ sales@actuate.com ]. To meet growing interest in the product set, a free download of e.Spreadsheet Designer is now available at: [ www.birt-exchange.com/downloads/spreadsheet-automation/ ]. Pricing for deployment begins at $250 per user or $1995 per CPU core.
About Actuate Corporation
Actuate Corporation is dedicated to increasing the richness, interactivity and effectiveness of enterprise data, for everyone, everywhere. Actuate delivers the next generation RIA-ready information platform for both customer and employee-facing applications. The Actuate platform boasts unmatched scalability, high-performance, reliability and security. Its proven RIA capabilities and highly collaborative development architecture are backed by the world's largest open source information application developer community, grounded in BIRT, the Eclipse Foundation's only top level Business Intelligence and reporting project.
Global 9000 organizations use Actuate to roll out RIA-enabled customer loyalty and Performance Management applications that improve customer satisfaction and employee productivity. The company has over 4,200 customers globally in a diverse range of business areas including financial services and the public sector, many of which have a long history of deploying Actuate-based solutions for dozens, or even hundreds of their mission-critical applications. Founded in 1993, Actuate has headquarters in San Mateo, California, with offices worldwide. Actuate is listed on NASDAQ under the symbol ACTU. For more information on Actuate, visit the company's web site at [ www.actuate.com ].
Copyright © 2009 Actuate Corporation. All rights reserved. Actuate and the Actuate logo are registered trademarks of Actuate Corporation and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and certain other countries. All other brands, names or trademarks mentioned may be trademarks of their respective owners.
