Current WebFOCUS customer? Here are 3 reasons you’ll want ibi Analytics and 1 reason you won’t…

Did you see the recent announcement of the ibi platform offerings and wonder where you fit in an ibi WebFOCUS customer? Well wonder no more! I want to share with you three reasons why you’re going to want to make the move to ibi Analytics AND one reason why you won’t… A month back, we announced the launch of the ibi platform in the form of three offerings: ibi Analytics, ibi Mainframe, and ibi Data Intelligence. ibi Analytics includes all aspects ibi WebFOCUS and ibi Data Migrator. If you are currently using ibi WebFOCUS, I’ll be going over a few reasons to convert to ibi Analytics instead.

Unlimited environments for unlimited situations

Have you ever been in one of these scenarios? You just watched the latest Virtual User Group, you saw an awesome feature, and now you want to try it out for yourself in the newest WebFOCUS release – but you don’t want to disrupt the rest of the team by upgrading the shared Dev environment to that latest release. Or maybe your IT department has just mandated a move to a new operating system, and you would really like to test it with WebFOCUS before you make the switch, without bringing down or changing any of your existing environments.

When you’re on ibi Analytics, those roadblocks don’t matter anymore! How? Well, ibi Analytics has no limit to the number of environments you can have. In either of those scenarios, you can install WebFOCUS on a new machine and proceed with your testing or with trying out new functionality. As long as the environments are included in your annual usage report, you can add one or even a hundred. Literally, have as many as you want or need.

Maximize success for all users

We care most of all about the value our customers are getting from using WebFOCUS within their businesses, and love nothing more than success stories about how applications grow in popularity among their users. In WebFOCUS, we define five different types of users based on how they are authenticated (or not!) and their levels of permissions:

• Named Users are users explicitly listed in the WebFOCUS Security Center, whether they were added manually or are auto-added as part of a connected authentication/authorization system.
• Authors are users named in WebFOCUS that have permissions set to access WebFOCUS’s authoring tools: Designer, App Studio, or InfoAssist.
• Disconnected Users are users who consume WebFOCUS content, but do so without connecting to the WebFOCUS environment, such as the recipient of a ReportCaster email, or a user accessing created content from a shared FTP location.
• Embedded Users are ones that have the content they are viewing customized to them, but without having them named within WebFOCUS, typically by passing a specific filter value through to the database requests.
• Anonymous Users are users consuming anything from WebFOCUS publicly, without WebFOCUS knowing anything about them (not named) and without their content being customized uniquely to them.

With ibi Analytics, the limits on the different types of users above are gone. Whether you want 100% of your Named Users to also be Authors, or want to increase the recipients of a data-centric quarterly newsletter from hundreds to thousands, all of that can be done in ibi Analytics.

Your cloud journey defined your way

The Container Edition of ibi WebFOCUS was launched as an add-on with release 9.0 and provided faster deployment of applications, on-demand auto-scaling of components, and automation and integration with CICD pipeline. The ibi WebFOCUS Container Edition, along with the rights to deploy WebFOCUS in a cloud environment, are included in ibi Analytics.

The best part about the containerized version of WebFOCUS is that it can mix and match with on-prem versions as well. This means you can take advantage of the auto-scaling capabilities for things like the Reporting Server and DSML Services, while deploying your application server on a shared on-prem setup. Or, put the WebFOCUS front end in a hosted cloud, for those unlimited number of users accessing it, but keep all your data access points through the Reporting Server and Data Migrator on-prem instead. The combinations are countless, and any of them are possible for ibi Analytics customers.

Is it all too good to be true?

By now, you may be asking, with these great reasons to use ibi Analytics, why on earth would you NOT want it? And there’s only one reason you wouldn’t: when you want ibi Mainframe instead! Another ibi platform offering, ibi Mainframe, includes all ibi software that runs on a mainframe system: FOCUS, Open Data Hub for Mainframe, Data Migrator, iWay, and WebFOCUS as well. If your WebFOCUS install has always been exclusively on a mainframe, ibi Mainframe may be an option for you. Added bonus: with ibi Mainframe, you’ll get to take advantage of the capabilities being brought to the mainframe through iWay as well–like API enablement and automation. Read more about everything ibi Mainframe has to offer in Santosh’s recent blog post, Liberate Your Mainframe Data.

In conclusion

Whether you go with ibi Analytics or decide ibi Mainframe is the right choice for you, one thing is certain: the WebFOCUS you’ve used for years (or even decades!) is still available to you. In fact, it’s better than ever and packed with features that are going to make your life so much better now that it’s included in ibi Analytics. Check it out, I know you are going to love it.

*Please see the ibi License Information for the formal definitions of the different user types and details on the annual usage report.