64-Bit Processing, the Wave of the Future

By Monica McDonald and Jacklyn Fennessey

With time comes progress and with progress come bigger, better and faster computing capabilities. The next evolution in computing is 64-bit processing, offering increased performance and scalability for enterprise applications. Determined to maintain its leadership position in enterprise business intelligence (BI) and real-time operational reporting, Information Builders recently announced full support for 64-bit processing modes, making WebFOCUS the only business intelligence solution that supports 64-bit generation on all major platforms and all major 64-bit DBMSs.

WebFOCUS is already the most scalable enterprise BI and real-time operational reporting solution (with known deployments of more than 2 million users) and the support for 64-bit processing takes this to the next level. Now customers can run WebFOCUS on a complete 64-bit infrastructure for maximum performance and reduced processing time.

This will afford Information Builders a competitive advantage over other business intelligence companies.

"Sixty-four bit operating systems are the wave of the future," said Gerald Cohen, President and CEO of Information Builders. "They promise higher performance. For a company like Information Builders, which is known for unparalleled scalability and large deployments, these new systems will give us even more options for helping our customers."

Organizations running on a 64-bit computer architecture can leverage WebFOCUS for the best performance of their information systems. 64-bit computing increases speed of computation and calculations while leveraging memory. For example, systems running WebFOCUS on the Microsoft Windows 64-bit environment experience impressive performance gains; processing time is reduced threefold.

Michael Thomas, Vice President of Global Solutions Partners at Unisys Corporation, said, "Unisys is the leader in the high-end Windows server market, and last year 52 percent of our business intelligence customers purchased Intel Itanium-2-based ES7000 servers to meet their increasingly demanding reporting and analysis requirements. Big data volumes, access to more data sources and the need for real-time information are creating growing demand for the processing power of the ES7000. The new 64-bit capabilities of WebFOCUS combined with the 64-bit ES7000 server family uniquely address these demands and will provide significant performance gains – all at a lower cost of ownership than competing Unix and mainframe solutions."

WebFOCUS offers support for all major 64-bit DBMSs, including Oracle, DB2, Informix, Sybase, Ingres, and Red Brick. Additionally, WebFOCUS supports 64-bit generation on all major platforms, with all major DBMSs such as AIX, Sun, HP, Windows Itanium and Tru64. Information Builders has always supported 32-on-64-bit processing and now expands this with full support for the 64-bit environment.