Arcplan Announces Fall Launch of Its Business Intelligence Suite Focusing on Efficient Mobile Use

Online, July 9, 2013 (Newswire.com) - Amidst the backdrop of ubiquitous smartphone and tablet usage worldwide, the proliferation of BYOD (bring your own device) policies in workplaces, and the growing popularity of mobile BI among C-level executives and middle managers alike, international business intelligence provider arcplan has announced that the next release of its BI platform will launch on September 26, 2013. The solution - codenamed Xenon - focuses particularly on mobile BI, guaranteeing mobile flexibility for users and developers. With a responsive design concept and built on a new HTML5 client, arcplan remains ahead of the curve in bringing customers "what's next" in BI.

Central to arcplan Xenon is that applications will automatically adapt to the end user's device, whether a desktop computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone. This is possible by embedding responsive design into the platform, which enables developers to specify how tables, graphics, filters and other elements are displayed on various screen sizes and resolutions. This technology presents an enormous advantage to users, as having to tediously zoom, scroll, and reduce the size of screen contents becomes a thing of the past. With the Xenon release, arcplan customers will be able to build responsive scorecards, dashboards, reports, budgeting and planning applications, and more.

Development made easy thanks to HTML5
arcplan's guiding principle has become "Design Once, Run Anywhere" or DORA. Xenon provides key advantages for BI developers, including huge time savings and reduced maintenance for applications that need to be deployed on many devices. With intelligent implementation of Xenon's responsive design approach, applications can be made extremely user-friendly with little effort. Dashboards elements can be quickly repositioned and adapted for the required screen sizes using arcplan's drag-and-drop development environment, the arcplan Application Designer. The entire arcplan framework has been migrated from Java and .NET to HTML5, which provides the necessary basic conditions to implement dynamic, interactive page layouts that adjust automatically to various screen sizes. In addition, HTML5 has been designed to be less complex and more universal than other web languages; contents can be displayed on different display sizes or in different languages with comparatively little effort.

Development and maintenance costs reduced by 60-80%
Responsive design with arcplan provides a decisive advantage when it comes to development and maintenance costs. arcplan analysis and planning applications need only be created one time, as opposed to other platforms which require separate apps to be built for each device type. Because arcplan mobile BI apps are accessed through a web browser, there are no extra costs involved for manufacturer-specific apps (for iPads or iPhones for example). Nor do developers have to create "mobile copies" of the applications, which initially means more work in development and quality assurance, and later complicates maintenance. From now on, arcplan developers will simply create "views" for their dashboards, and when changes are made centrally, all mobile variants will also adjust simultaneously.

"A responsive application avoids development costs for individual mobile devices. When expanding their applications to smartphones and tablets for example, companies can save up to 80% of costs, as the expenditure incurred for maintenance and testing is reduced enormously," explained Hans-Peter Wolff, Senior Vice President Engineering and CTO at arcplan. "For customers who developed and distributed their applications with our previous technology, we have of course also made sure that they can quickly deploy their apps with the new Xenon technology."

Other new features in Xenon include simplified administration and additional functionality. Customers will be able to install and administer all licensed arcplan components such as arcplan Enterprise, arcplan Engage, and arcplan Edge in one package. With Xenon, collaborative functions such as a central search of arcplan applications and a central entry page will also be made available to all customers.

arcplan Xenon at the company's 20th anniversary conference
arcplan Xenon goes into the beta phase on August 1, and the new release will come onto the market on September 26, 2013. At arc|twenty, arcplan's 20th anniversary customer and partner conference, taking place in Dusseldorf, Germany on October 1 and 2, arcplan Xenon will be presented for the first time to a wide audience. Visitors can also expect presentations on current industry trends in self-service BI, mobile BI, and controlling from international analysts and companies such as BARC, Deichmann, Roche and KPMG. Discounted early bird registration is available until July 15.