With the release of the new Actuate 7, Actuate has shifted the positioning of its suite from an information delivery platform to an information application platform providing ad-hoc analysis to business users. This positional shift is aimed at announcing a new direction and focus the company is taking.

Actuate 7 includes two new products, Actuate Query and Actuate Information objects while bringing in new enhancements to the e.Spreadsheet product. These new products fill a key need of Actuate customers by enabling end users to define their own queries without IT intervention. The design of these enhancements is consistent with Actuate's previous attention to IT control and reporting flexibility.

Actuate's Query tool is aimed at simplifying queries by eliminating relational considerations thereby maximizing adoption and usage by end users who only have minimal data management skills, aptitude, and training. 

Actuate's Information Objects provide the structure for the queries accessed by the Query tool and is basically an extension of Actuate's encapsulation of a SQL query statement.

The business user community typically totals about 25 percent of the enterprise population and, have been forced to wait days or weeks for IT to create specific reports or queries. Actuate 7 is specifically geared to address the unique information needs of business executives and managers. Actuate 7 is aimed at providing a much desired environment of' 'controlled empowerment' and the Actuate e.Spreadsheet Designer along with Actuate Query is designed to empower business users to answer their own questions through a familiar interface with little or no training. At the same time Information Objects allow IT to keep control over the application development process without having to manage an environment of disconnected, stand-alone end-user applications.

E.Spreadsheet enhancements include three new development interfaces for defining spreadsheet reports the Range Editor, the Query Editor, and the Query Wizard. This new and unique capability dramatically shortens the time required to marshal data in spreadsheets for interactive analysis including forecasting, budgeting, planning, variance analysis, and reconciliation thus minimizing errors and delays due to divergent versions of spreadsheet analysis. 

With this new position Actuate hopes to strengthen Actuate's hold on its customer base and help capture new customers dissatisfied with competitor offerings, while the enhancements to Actuate 7 is aimed at addressing the key need in ensuring that analyses done throughout an organization start with the commonly shared data set and serve a broader range of users, including users who need ad-hoc data access.