what tangible benefit does Crystal Enterprise have over Crystal Info

[crystaljen]

hi all,
at present we are thinking of migrating to Crystal Enterprise currently we are using Crystal Info 7.
I need to know the tangible benefits i'll get out of it
for my migration writeup (but i don't get much idea what to write). currently our reports are posted to Web for general access.

thanking u all for anticipating

 

[RoughingIT]

Well first off, CE is not a continuation or "upgrade" from Info. It's a better way of web-based report distribution.
Compared to Info, the client-server issue falls away. It's now simply a matter of a browser talking to a web server.
Sounds like you are currently moving instances to a webserver manually. That's something CE does take care of automatically.
(participating?)

 

[Nuffsaid]

Hi,

I agree with RoughingIT, Enterprise is not an upgrade of Info.

Info has a lot of functionality that is "not yet" present within Enterprise.

Info (in my opinion), was designed for a LAN deployment and Seagate tried to push it to the web. I can only speak for myself, but Info over the web is cumbersome and slow.

CD's answer.... Enterprise, a truly web based application.

Anyways, we use them both and exploit each for their strenghts.

Just my thoughts.....

Nuffsaid.

 

[SteveRemington]

While I'm not sure exactly what features of Info 7 that you currently are using, I would suggest that if you do migrate, which I recommend (see below for reasons why), you should wait for CE 8.5. CE 8.5 is due for general release in the next 1-2 months. CE 8.5 now has almost of all of the useful functionality that was included in Info included. My opinion is that CE 8.5 is what CE 8.0 should have been.

With regards to whether you should migrate from Info 7.0 to CE 8.5 the short and answer is yes. CE 8.5 is a much better tool for managing and distributing reports via the web. Unlike Info which had web capability glued on the side (and some would say not with very strong glue) while CE was built from the ground up with web delivery in mind. In fact web delivery is the ONLY option. There is no client applicaton a la Info in CE.

One thing to be aware of is the potential cost of the migration. If you are using Info 7.0 by virtue of the promotional free 50 user version (the "Black Dog" CD) and have not purchased any ongoing maintenance contracts you will have to purchase CE licences from scratch. You will have to contact your local Crystal Decisions office or enterprise partner to get a quote for the cost of licences.

Your investment in the development of reports will not be lost as they can be directly migrated to the CE environment. In fact there is an Info to CE migration tool included with CE that allows you to migrate your entire Info folder / report structure to CE.

I hope this gives you a bit more information to support your submission.

 

[crystaljen]

hi all,
thanks for all your thoughts and contributions.

in fact our last discussion with CD country manager is that if we buy now they will be delivering 8.5v. understand from them that v9 will be out end of year. so long as the release is within 12 month of purchase, the upgrade will be at no charge. lets just see what added features/functionality will be packed in....hopefully having all the bugs fixed without digging in all the patches.

once again thanks