Bookmark and Share Share   

Introducing the Presto® Real-Time Intelligence Platform

So what is a real-time intelligence platform? The simplest definition is a platform that:

'simplifies all life stages, both design and consumption, to provide timely, comprehensive and relevant business intelligence while maintaining appropriate governance for business resources.'

To live up to this goal, real-time intelligence requires:

Quicker Answers:

  • Quick and easy access to any information source, not just a 'one-size-fits-all' model, to leverage all the resources of the organization and keep pace with the changing 'information landscape'.

    New information sources are created or discovered at an ever-increasing pace, just as new information requirements are. Delays to add information to historical data sources, or worse yet, to modify historic data models prevent timely analysis and action.

  • Remove or reduce bottlenecks, such as access to limited IT resources.

    Simplifying the process of developing and delivering information allows power users, the business domain experts, to handle more of the work in producing useful information and easily delivering their results. It also makes better use of IT resources to concentrate on the most complex issues.

  • Provide immediate and simple access to the resulting information, anywhere users need it.

    Information needs to be delivered 'everywhere' users go and must be easily, but appropriately shared. Increasingly this means access on mobile devices as well as more traditional desktop environments.

    It also means that information must be accessible in a variety of destinations, such as web sites, portals, collaboration systems such as Microsoft SharePoint, wikis or in an internal AppDepot

Smarter Answers that leverage:

  • The domain expertise of power users directly to provide more relevant insights. Information designed 'at the source of the problem' also tends to avoid translation errors common when design or delivery involves cross-domain expertise.

  • A self-service model, with simple graphical tools, to let power users easily create relevant information and deliver this in rich, visual forms, that are easily delivered to all pertinent destinations. Plus easy collaboration to enable discovery and leverage work throughout the organization.

  • Apps as the information delivery package across the breadth of destinations, both desktop and mobile.

    Apps must support a wide variety of visual formats, such as tables, maps and charts or diagrams. They must also support different scopes of information and interaction, from simple lists to rich, highly interactive dashboards.

  • A flexible, but powerful mechanism to combine, transform or analyze information to easily produce insights.

    Mashups provide this analysis and transformation capability that handles requirements from very simple to very complex. They also provide simple extensions points for business-specific needs.

  • A wider scope of information sources to ensure information is relevant and comprehensive, including both live information and historical data.

    It must be simple to work with information from virtually any source, internal or external, regardless of the technical requirements to access the information. And it must support secure access to information sources.

Security and Robust Support for:

  • More complex problems and extensions.

    Not every information need can be met by business users, no matter how simple it seems. Developers need robust solutions that can handle a rich set of problems and provide easy extension mechanisms to support business user needs. Solutions must be simple enough to allow developers to meet business time frames while still supporting the development process.

  • Secure access.

    Governance must be applied to both new and old forms of information. User access to enterprise information simply cannot be a free-for-all. As users or developers create new information sources, access controls must also evolve seamlessly.

What Makes Presto a Platform?

To provide the features needed for real-time intelligence, Presto contains:

  • A server, runtime environment and repository.

  • An Enterprise AppDepot to use within your enterprise or organization that allows users to easily find and work with Apps from desktop browsers.

  • A portal App for mobile devices to allow users to easily find and work with Presto Apps that are mobile-compatible.

  • A collaborative Hub environment that integrates the tools to make information sources mashable and to create and share mashups and Apps.

  • Visual tools for mashups and Apps for quick and easy development by power users (domain experts) and by developers.

  • A wide variety of built-in views, the visual form for information, for both desktop and mobile environments.

  • An IDE to support more robust mashup development and debugging requirements.

  • Standards-based integration and extension points for flexibility to support a wide variety of information sources, App destinations, custom business logic, and security environments.

  • A domain-specific language (DSL) for mashups to support both simple mashup definition and the breadth of features mashups need.

  • An App Specification to support simple development that builds on current industry trends for Apps and widgets.

  • Add-on components to support specific information sources or App destinations and leverage other technologies such as Microsoft SharePoint or portals.

  • Simple, industry-standard connectivity or SDKs to support a wide variety of clients and environments.

The core components and add-ons for the Presto platform are shown in the following diagram:



Key Concepts: A 'Black Box' View of Presto

Presto directly hosts Apps and mashups and acts as a virtual host for mashable information sources. These are the artifacts that users work with in Presto



Users register Mashables to enable easy and secure access to information sources. Users then use mashable information sources or other mashups to create Mashups that combine or transform this information in useful ways. Users create Apps by connecting views, the visual user interface elements, with mashable or mashup results. Workspace Apps can also combine several individual Apps into a composition such as a dashboard that is itself an App.

Users can work with desktop Apps in the AppDepot or with mobile Apps in Presto Mobile. Apps can also be published to a wide variety of other destinations where users can work with them as shown in the following diagram:



And all of these artifacts are governed by the security and access policies you design for Presto so that users may use only those mashables, mashups and Apps to which they have been granted permissions.

Mashables

Mashables are information or data sources that have been registered in Presto to prepare them for use in mashups or Apps. Typical mashable information sources include databases, applications or documents. They may be internal or external. They can be run by many different protocols. They return information, their results, in many different forms.

Mashable sources may be applications in your organization that have a web feed or web service interface. They are frequently based on well-known standards such as the SOAP, REST, RSS or Atom protocols. They can also be web feeds or web services available publicly through the Internet or from partner organizations.

Access to some mashable information sources requires Presto Add-Ons. Some Presto Add-Ons also provide users with access to results from Presto mashables or mashups.

Mashables can also be created virtually from non-traditional sources including databases, Excel worksheets, CSV or XML files, SharePoint lists and searches, or by web clipping data from web sites. As a virtual host, Presto simplifies and normalizes these information sources for easy access. Users access and run mashables using a single, simple interface without having to manage or understand all the complexities of communication and different protocols. Presto returns mashable results in two standard formats.

Mashups

There are many definitions for mashups - all of them slightly different! In Presto, mashups simplify, combine or transform content from one or more information sources to produce just the information you need. Mashups produce results (the data) but not the widgets, views or other user interfaces to work with that data.

Mashups get information from mashables. Mashups can also get information from other mashups, allowing you to reuse and leverage mashups throughout your organization. Mashups can also simply wrap applications to make them accessible in Presto. Both mashables and mashups use seamless access policies for governance over all information sources.

You define a mashup in a mashup script, an XML file written in EMML, the mashup domain language for Presto.

Apps

Apps combine a web user interface with the results from mashables or mashups creating easy access to the results. The user interface for an App can be meant for desktop browsers, mobile phones, mobile tablets or any combination of these devices, allowing Apps to easily work wherever users need them.

Apps can also combine other Apps in a composition, such as dashboards. They can include behavior, easily creating micro applications from mashables or mashups. Apps are not required to use mashables or mashups. They can also simply wrap Apps, widgets or web pages from other sources.

Users can share links to Apps with other users. Apps can easily be added to HTML pages or wikis. They can also be wrapped in portlets for use in Java-based portals, or published as native web parts in Microsoft SharePoint.

Some App destinations require Presto Add-Ons.

You can create basic Apps using predefined views in Presto combined with mashable or mashup results. You can create many different basic Apps using different views based on the same results. Or include several different views of the same results in one basic App.

The built-in Presto views provide common formats such as grids, web feed formatting, simple charts and maps. Many built-in views are compatible with both desktop and mobile devices, responding to both mouse and touch-based actions. Some built-in views, however, are limited to desktop environments and are not shown in mobile devices.

In some cases, the built-in views are not sufficient to meet your needs for an App.You can also create custom Apps with the App Specification and APIs to handle more complex user interface needs, fit your required look and feel or define more sophisticated behavior.

Both basic and custom Apps can be combined in workspace Apps to work together as a micro-application or as a simple, focused grouping. Assembling and combining Apps can provide organizations with new insights. Arranging and grouping simpler Apps in meaningful new ways and sharing these Apps across your organization supports timely and critical decision making.

Workspace Apps are not currently compatible with mobile devices. They can only be accessed in desktop environments.

When Apps are published to destinations outside of Presto, such as portals or web sites, Presto enforces the access permissions you have defined for the App and any mashables, mashups or other Apps that it uses. When accessed in external destinations, you can chose to loosen access rules to allow guest users, who are not authenticated, to work with Apps.

Next: Presto Core Components