Ushering in a New Era of Embedded Analytics

[ArielKatz]

Ushering in a New Era of Embedded Analytics

For decades, the value of data and the importance of robust analytics have shaped products and businesses. Today’s product teams fully grasp the potential of their data, and their success relies on their ability to monetize it at scale and speed, extract insights, and provide value for their customers. 

Amidst the increasing necessity to future-proof solutions, a pivot toward the adoption of flexible, modular, composable solutions is taking place in the market. A recent study from Gartner predicts that businesses will prioritize modular offerings that deliver UI- and API-first functionalities in order to keep up with the pace of innovation and change. And much of this race to innovation relies on APIs’ ability to abstract complexity for developers and requires robust analytics platforms that can seamlessly integrate with development and CI/CD ecosystems. 

Sisense is thrilled to unveil Compose SDK for Fusion, a new step in our continued mission to empower app builders to embed analytics everywhere. It’s a flexible and modern development toolkit that enables the embedding of context-aware analytics in a code-first, scalable, and modular way. Compose SDK is essentially built as an innovation engine for product teams, accelerating productivity and time to market, and lowering development costs. This new addition expands Sisense’s no- and low-code embedded analytics platform with pro-code tools, and allows us to support various use cases—from Product Managers seeking a no-code experience to pro developers crafting bespoke embedded analytics experience—meeting product teams where they are. 

Sisense’s success in the embedded analytics space

Reflecting on Sisense’s 15-year journey fills me with immense pride. From our humble beginnings as a small, driven team, we’ve evolved into a profitable analytics powerhouse thanks to our teams’ relentless innovation and unwavering commitment to our customers.

In the past half-decade, our focus has been on perfecting embedded analytics through our flagship offering, Fusion. In coworking closely with our design partners and customers, we’ve heard time and again that dashboards are not “dead”. Our clients deeply appreciate and rely on the flexible power Fusion brings to the creation, customization and embedding of artifacts like dashboards, widgets, AI, and code, and the ability to embed these elements into their applications at scale.

The API-fueled era of embedded analytics

As the technology landscape continues to evolve, Sisense is set to adapt and grow alongside it. In this flourishing “API economy,” and with data’s growing role in monetization, developers are seeking greater control and integrations that align with their unique development practices and CI/CD pipelines. This search has ignited a surge in demand for “developer-first analytics.”

Now, the vast majority of organizations are naturally focusing on their core competencies to stay ahead of the market, and do not have the time or resources to build and maintain this complex analytics solution in-house. Today, they’re looking outward for solutions that can abstract this complexity via APIs—just like Twillio did for communication and Stripe did for payments.

However, the traditional BI analytics space hasn’t adapted fast enough to this new market need. Many BI vendors offer ’embedding,’ but often as an afterthought or satellite feature. Developers have little use for the restricted, non-secure, monolithic iFrame or simplistic API integrations offered by traditional BI tools. They require a  robust solution, designed for and tailored to their needs, that can harness the full potential of modern technologies, including Generative AI.

The promised (and limited) land of open-source 

The growing shift towards open-source tools is a testament to developer’s struggle to find such solutions. But while open-source tools may initially seem appealing for in-app analytics, their luster often fades when challenges arise. Developers must be able to navigate efficient query performance, diverse data source management, and intricate integrations. Additionally, CTOs are tasked with ensuring data security, meeting compliance requirements, managing updates and support, and coordinating integration with existing systems. The initial allure of open-source analytics gives way to a complex web of tasks, potentially jeopardizing project timelines and straining resources. Ultimately, open-source tools aren’t able to provide the scalable, enterprise-grade, and secured capabilities organizations require.

Composability as a core strategy

Gartner predicts that 60% of new SaaS designs will support both UI- and API-first access by 2025—making preparedness for composability a common cloud application trait—and that 60% of new custom business applications will be built using reusable business services via shared curated component libraries or marketplaces. 

Composability isn’t just a buzzword; it’s the frontier of modern application development. I believe that this new era of composable modern apps is fundamentally changing how applications are developed and delivered: Agile and modular, these products seamlessly integrate insights data and operations at their core, allowing developers to create innovative experiences tailored to the specific needs of their users.

For example, a beloved navigation app runs on a robust analytics engine fueled by big data, real-time user inputs, and complex algorithms behind the scenes. AI enriches this capability, powering features like “leave home now,” which uses machine learning to analyze real-time and historical data for optimal departure times. This intricate system not only informs core navigation features but also integrates into users’ broader “systems of action,” such as sending real-time traffic alerts or “leave home now” notifications to email or phones. But building and maintaining such complex analytics in-house is a gargantuan task most organizations can’t afford. Turning to APIs for embedded analytics would yield a much higher ROI by enabling developers to rapidly adapt to change and create new value for their users. A composable modern app would drastically lower development costs, accelerate time to market, and allow businesses to thrive in the gen-AI speed age.

Compose SDK: Expanding our dev-first offering

With the launch of Compose SDK for Fusion, Sisense is meeting the moment and answering the modern developer’s needs. The excitement we’ve received from our customers and partners so far has been overwhelming. Designed with a developer-first approach, our solution is built to accelerate the development process, reduce maintenance overhead, and save valuable time. Compose SDK currently supports native React and Typescript, promotes a code-first methodology, and is delivered as NPM packages. This enables developers to integrate Sisense data and visualizations directly into their application code, harnessing the potential of Generative AI to create sophisticated, dynamic, and intuitive analytics experiences.

But we’re not stopping at meeting immediate demand. Compose SDK is our pledge to revolutionize the embedded analytics landscape, and the first step in our mission to empower developers across the globe. By providing developers with unrivaled capabilities to build analytics into their apps and monetize their data with full flexibility, we’re envisioning a world in which the boundaries of creativity and innovation exist on entirely new heights.

“We switched to Compose SDK and it has allowed our team to focus on building better data models rather than dashboard design,” says Hive Co-Founder and CTO Eric Typaldos. “It allows us to envision a world of possibilities which puts our users in control. The most exciting thing about the developer experience has been the fact that Compose SDK is built with modern, high-quality tooling that makes it a joy for our developers to work on top of.”

Embracing a holistic low- or no-code, light-or limited-code, and full-code approaches, Sisense is now uniquely positioned to serve a full, use-case agnostic spectrum of development teams—regardless of their analytics maturity.

A heartfelt salute to our incredible Sisense team who made this possible—your dedication and drive continue to inspire me. 

To our cherished customers—your enthusiasm and support are inspiring. Our exploration of this new embedded analytics era has just begun, and you can expect to hear much more from us in the next few months. We are thrilled to have you with us on this journey.

Onwards,

Ariel Katz, CEO of Sisense.

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