Regular business folk who have trouble operating today's high-powered data visualization tools are the targets for a new offering unveiled today by Birst....
Birst Visualizer is the company's first foray into the world of data visualization tools, which have already solidified themselves spots in the big data tool belts of many of the world's largest companies. But instead of going straight up against giants like Tableau, QlikView, or TIBCO Spotfire, Birst wisely chose to attack the problem from a different angle, which is the guided approach.Users begin interacting with new software using a simple Google-like query interface. A sales manager can start typing "sales for Califor..." and before she's even done typing, Birst Analyzer will automatically rummage through the database, pull up the most recent sales data for California, and pop it into a bar chart.
It's a novel approach, and one that could possibly garner the fast-growing San Francisco company another big burst of sales of its own.There are about 25 different visualizations in the first release of software, ranging from basic bar and line charts to maps and trellises to colored bubbles. The software picks the visualization that it thinks best matches the query....