InfoZoom

humanIT software GmbH is a software vendor founded in 1997 as a spin-off from the Fraunhofer Institute in Bonn, Germany. It is now an independent subsidary of proALPHA Group, a provider of ERP technology. humanIT serves 19 countries from its Bonn office and has over 1,000 customers with more than 100,000 users across 20 industries.

The product portfolio comprises three closely-integrated products: InfoZoom Desktop (the desktop version), InfoZoom Anywhere (a web client/server-based solution) and InfoZoom Data Quality Control (IZDQ). There is also a close integration between proALPHA ERP and InfoZoom, so that data quality changes can be written back directly to the ERP system.

The aim of humanIT is to make information in databases quickly transparent and analyzable for business users. InfoZoom supports business users in ad hoc analyses, data monitoring, data profiling, data preparation and visualization. The use of InfoZoom follows a special philosophy. The goal is to make information comprehensible at a glance (i.e., to display the contents of a database on one screen). To do this, InfoZoom reads the data into its in-memory-based solution and combines the contents (characteristics) of attributes in a row in a technically meaningful way.

The user immediately receives an overview of the value ranges and frequencies and can form an impression of the correctness of the data. Incorrect values can be quickly identified and adjusted directly in the tool by simply editing the values on a single row or on a group of rows. The overview of aggregated values is freely navigable and can be filtered. The user can easily move around in the data space and examine the values and their relationships. Business users can visualize data using built-in diagrams, reports or the integrated OEM product List&Label which offers advanced formatting options. Moreover, InfoZoom Anywhere can be used to create dashboards and publish them to different users via the web or mobile devices.

User & Use Cases

InfoZoom is clearly not a typical BI product. It is strongly focused on ad hoc analysis as shown by the fact that 91 percent of customers use it for ad hoc query and 56 percent for data analysis. InfoZoom offers a peerless way of visualizing and navigating data: InfoScape. Navigation in the data is known as zooming and enables users to analyze different attributes and their interrelationships. We also call this type of analysis ‘set-based analysis’. A few vendors (including Qlik) offer similar capabilities. It is therefore interesting to see that QlikView is the product InfoZoom competes against most frequently.

Since InfoZoom supports a rather niche area of business users performing data analysis, the product is typically used by a small percentage of employees in customer organizations.

In general, InfoZoom does not target specific departments, company sizes or industries. However, the majority of users responding to this survey came from mid-sized companies.

Product usage

Current vs. planned use

N=42

Evaluated products

5 products most often evaluated in competition with InfoZoom

N=43

Percentage of Tool Users

Percentage of employees using InfoZoom

N=43

Number of Product Users

Number of users using InfoZoom

N=45

Self-Service Tasks

Tasks carried out with InfoZoom by business users

N=45

Company Size

Company size (number of employees)

N=45

Summary of InfoZoom highlights

InfoZoom offers a very unique way to visualize and analyze data. InfoScape – as it is called – is used by business users to zoom in and out of data. By zooming, the user detects interrelationships between different attributes as well as possible anomalies and quality issues in data. It is therefore unsurprising to see InfoZoom being voted the best product in this year’s survey in terms of its contribution to the improvement of data quality. humanIT received an impressive 20 top ranks and 34 leading positions in its three peer groups.

Ad Hoc Query