Embedded Business Intelligence Seminar in Japan

I thought it was time to do a quick wrap up on Yellowfin in Japan. I have just completed my latest trip there, focusing on embedded business intelligence and SAAS Reporting, and am delighted with the progress that our partner KMSI are making.

Yellowfin has now been active in the Japanese market for just over 3 years and we have worked incredibly hard with KMSI to make Yellowfin more Japanese than Japanese (to steal a phrase from blade runnier – well slightly modified). As always it is something that we just keep working on. I am proud to say that the feedback we have had is that Japanese users find it difficult to believe that Yellowfin is not a homegrown business intelligence and dashboard solution.

The theme for this trip was introducing Yellowfin as OEM partner for Independent Software providers and the concept of embedded Business Intelligence and reporting software – especially in the SAAS space. As you may know Yellowfin is a leader in this segment of the BI market, and it was time to introduce this fact to Japan. The SAAS vendor market in Japan is just starting to take off and a growing number of providers are positioning themselves in this space and bringing new products to market.

The main event was an OEM seminar held in Tokyo, and I have to thank KMSI for organizing a fantastic day. As always a job well done! The agenda took in a number of presentations, which included: my keynote speech; the key benefits of embedded BI and especially embedding Yellowfin for SAAS solutions (Our multi-tenancy support plays a big part); a technical demo that showed how easy Yellowfin was to embed and restyle; and finally customer case studies – examples of successful integrations.

The key themes for the day fell into two groups, commercial and technical.

From a commercial perspective Yellowfin truly does understand the embedded BI business model:

• Both parties must profit from the relationship. BI must generate revenue for the ISV partner – either as direct or In-direct revenue.
• Flexible pricing model – Pricing must fit the ISV price model so that their ability to sell their BI solution to their customers is made as easy as just another tick in the box.
• Customer Ownership remains with the ISV – This is not a Trojan horse deal. The real deal is that we respect business relationships that our partners have.
• Interface re-branding is important – its all about the partner right? So what is a BI solution provider’s logo doing on your application? Get rid of it and go white label with Yellowfin.

From a technical perspective the benefits of Yellowfin are:

• Total dashboard & reporting solution – Yellowfin is an end-to-end BI solution and presentation layer.
• Ease of Use – You do not want to have to spend precious time training your customers. An embedded BI tool has to be easy to use
• Ease of Integration – Integration has to be rapid so you can get to market quickly. To be quick it has to be easy.
• Security – You do not want a reporting tool undermining your security framework. Make sure your authentication and data level security is supported.
• Multi-tenancy Support – what a big one for the SAAS space. A true multi-tenancy solution like Yellowfin is a beautiful thing.

So there you have is a synopsis of the Yellowfin embedded BI and SAAS seminar in Tokyo Japan.

After all the work was done there was some time for relaxation – and I will apologize in advance for the travelogue

First, Kyoto at night, where the Giom festival was taking place. The atmosphere was amazing with 80’000+ people descending on the centre of town to enjoy festival foods and view the spectacular ceremonial floats. Thanks to the guys at KMSI I had the opportunity to actually go to the top of one of these and be surrounded by the musicians that play there.

Thereafter, the bullet train to, and a couple of days spent at, Karuizawa mountain retreat. This is one place that I am going to remember for a long time to come. I don’t think it is possible to be more relaxed.