Helical IT Solutions is excited to announce the launch of Helical Insight version 5.2.1, the latest enhancement to its Open Source Business Intelligence (BI) platform.
This new version offers a robust, cost-efficient BI solution that aims to revolutionise the analytics industry globally. Helical Insight continues to set itself apart as a flexible alternative to mainstream BI tools like PowerBI, Tableau, and Quicksight, offering greater functionality and adaptability.
Helical Insight’s core mission is to democratise analytics. By providing flexible deployment options alongside a straightforward, flat-rate pricing model, the platform enables businesses to expand their analytics capabilities without the escalating costs typically associated with traditional licensing schemes. Its intuitive, browser-based interface empowers both internal teams and external clients to effortlessly participate in self-service analytics.
A standout feature of Helical Insight is its extensive range of enterprise-grade functionalities. From embedding and white-labelling to seamless Single Sign-On (SSO) integration, the platform is designed to fit seamlessly into various business environments. This is particularly advantageous for product-based companies that need to embed customisable dashboards and analytics into their own offerings. Other advanced features include a wide array of data export options, dynamic email bursting, strict row-level security, drill-down and drill-through capabilities, efficient data caching, smooth pagination, native support for Docker and Kubernetes, high-availability load balancing, and a wide selection of visualisation tools to cater to diverse analytical needs.
The latest version, 5.2.1, introduces significant enhancements, including expanded support for a wider range of data sources. Importantly, the platform now provides direct API support, enabling users to analyse data from any API. The update also includes a user-friendly interface for working with various flat file formats, such as Excel, CSV, TSV, Parquet, JSON, and Google Sheets, all without requiring third-party software. Additionally, these files can be hosted on cloud platforms like Azure, AWS, and GCP.
To meet customer demand for more customised charting options, Helical Insight 5.2.1 introduces new chart types such as Treemap, Waterfall, Radar, Bullet, Gauge, and Tiny-Ring charts. The update also offers advanced customisation options, including sorting and filtering in tables, displaying totals in tables, customising data labels with colour rotation in Axis Charts, and showing totals in the centre of Donut charts with prefix and suffix options for static values, SVG, icons, or URL images. The new “Measures” functionality and additional filtering options further enhance the platform’s analytical power.
Dashboard functionality has also been improved, providing users with more control and the ability to create visually appealing dashboards. New features include Tabbed view dashboards, Overlays, custom dropdowns, and Margins, along with advanced options such as custom HTML and filter dashboard variable access. The platform also introduces new export options, including beta versions of PPT and image formats.
Nitin Sahu, co-founder of Helical Insight, said: “At Helical Insight, we are investing heavily in future. We are already working on GenerativeAI (GenAI) integration, thus allowing a chat based data analysis capabilities. It will also support prescriptive and descriptive analytics and many more very exciting features.”
Nikhilesh Tiwari, co-founder of Helical Insight, added: “We are on a mission to provide a feature rich Open Source BI product as an alternative to other costly proprietary BI tools with features like canned reporting, dashboards, embedding, SSO, row level security, exporting, email scheduling etc. We are one of the rare BI tools which is fulfilling all kind of analysis requirement which includes pixel perfect canned reporting, drag drop self service dashboards and now GenAI powered chat based analysis capabilities that we are integrating.”
In today’s rapidly changing business environment, BI plays a critical role in facilitating data-driven decision-making. Industry projections suggest strong growth for the global BI market, with Fortune Business Insights predicting a rise from $24.05 billion in 2021 to $43.03 billion by 2028, at a CAGR of 8.7%. However, despite this potential, BI adoption remains relatively low, with only 26% of organisations currently using BI solutions according to 360Suite. As more small businesses adopt BI to gain a competitive advantage, Helical Insight is positioned to lead this transformation, enabling organisations of all sizes to leverage data and unlock actionable insights.
