Actuate for SaaS: BIRT Deployment Options Scale to Meet any Requirement

Cloud ready, cloud friendly BIRT iServer and Actuate’s SaaS BI platform, BIRT onDemand, provide OEMs with multiple options for seamless integration and deployment of customer-facing applications. If an organization provides software via a SaaS delivery model, or plans to do so, Actuate products offer an ideal architecture and platform.

The current release of ActuateOne® offers new deployment options for organizations seeking to provide customers with multiple choices. For software companies delivering SaaS or PaaS applications, Actuate's scalable, flexible and embeddable reporting and BI platform is a perfect fit. BIRT onDemand, Actuate’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, provides startups and smaller organizations with a low-barrier-of-entry option for deploying BI applications in the most expedient, cost-effective way possible, while BIRT iServer, Actuate’s premiere server, offers unlimited scalability and functionality to any deployment.

The latest release of iServer, Actuate’s scalable server for deploying, managing and securing BIRT content, analytics and dashboards, includes elastic clustering and flexible licensing for cloud deployment. In keeping with the core tenets of ActuateOne® (see press release titled “Announcing ActuateOne®”), iServer’s architecture is based upon one design, one server and one user experience to improve developer productivity and optimize the end user experience, even within virtualized and cloud environments.

Actuate's heritage has always been to meet the needs of the largest-scale, most demanding applications in terms of throughput while still providing a zero-training, intuitive end-user experience. As a result, even prior to the emergence of SaaS, the iServer platform was architected with all of the key components required for SaaS success, including multi-tenancy, fine-grained security and unrivaled performance. The nearly 20 years of R&D that have gone into the iServer and BIRT technologies translate to immediate value to your organization and its end users, in terms of product quality/reliability, time-to-market for deployment, and valuable end user functionality for your customers. iServer is architected to ensure that BIRT deployments scale linearly and are not locked into a particular end user experience, hardware configuration or data structure. This technology supports the deployment of custom Business Intelligence and information applications in on-premises, SaaS and PaaS scenarios across public, private and hybrid cloud environments.

BIRT onDemand for SaaS features:


BIRT onDemand
Based on iServer technology, BIRT onDemand provides users with an instant-on server connection, application access, and an online viewing/reporting environment that can be used to create, view and modify BIRT content. This service can be accessed from any web browser (including Safari©) and most mobile devices, provides an instant, inexpensive solution, and offers organizations a way to deploy iServer and instantly work with and distribute BIRT content. BIRT OnDemand has been built to integrate with other SaaS solutions and comes with an extensive API, allowing complete “White Labeling” of the BIRT OnDemand user front end to integrate with SaaS applications. BIRT OnDemand also includes a single sign-on authentication API, providing a seamless experience for end users.

iServer features:


Elastic clustering for cloud deployment
Elastic clustering makes it possible to dynamically and automatically reassign, add or remove a fully capable, stateless image of BIRT iServer within a cluster without interrupting operations. The stateless iServer image allows administrators to externally configure settings, ensuring that upon initiation the iServer instance takes on a pre-designated role within a cluster. This capability has the added benefit of optimized resource consumption for that role. As a result, iServer roles can be dynamically adjusted to respond to capacity and application requirements.

Cloud friendly licensing
ActuateOne® includes a work unit licensing model intended to offer flexibility for multi-core, server farm and cloud environments. It enables organizations to effectively plan for the BIRT capacity required, with granular licensing options based upon partial CPU usage. Work unit licensing ensures that customers can enjoy “pay as you grow” agility, knowing that Actuate maintains a vested interest in the success of application development.

Cloud-ready data distribution
Accessing traditional BI data sources such as a data warehouse from within a large-scale cloud application injects complexities including latency, unmanaged load and security vulnerability into the system. ActuateOne® overcomes these concerns by making it simple to design and deploy analytic data sources and allowing easy, secure migration of aggregated, multidimensional data structures to support applications in any virtualized environment using BIRT Data Objects.

Multi-tenant deployment flexibility
iServer supports multi-tenant deployments, presenting several options to customers for complete flexibility in allocating machine usage as required. Provided tools allow customers to reconfigure their environment at any time to support any type of virtualized environment. iServer allows complete flexibility in how multi-tenancy is managed, configured, secured and preserved. These administrative and management capabilities ensure that deployment is easy for SaaS, PaaS, and on-premises, multi-tenant or multi-department systems.

The following customers have deployed Actuate BIRT products in a SaaS environment:
 Access DC RSA (VERID)
 Alinean Sakonnet Technology LLC
 Association of Manufacturing Technologies Sircon
 Digital Steps Soundbite
 Elcom Synchro Sistemas De Informacao Ltda - Brazil
 Invision Inc Taleo
 KLJ Targus Information Corporation
 Mespas Verisign
 Mzinga (KnowledgePlanet) Zeke LTDA - Chile
 OptTek Zycus, Inc.

Want to learn more?

For more information about our partners or partnership programs, please contact an Actuate expert at 1-800-914-2259 (US or Canada) or contact us by email. You can also contact one of our offices worldwide.