Logi Analytics focused, stable as part of Insightsoftware
The formerly independent embedded BI specialist is benefiting from its new parent company's aggressive acquisition strategy as well as its emphasis on product development.
A year and a half after it was acquired, Logi Analytics is more stable and focused than it was as an independent.
Founded in 2000, Logi, a specialist in embedded analytics, was bought by Insightsoftware in April 2021. Logi had previously acquired Zoomdata in 2019 and subsequently made Zoomdata's capabilities part of Composer, a cloud-ready platform built with a microservices architecture that became Logi's flagship tool for developers.
But Logi was small compared with more established embedded analytics vendors. In four funding rounds before being acquired, the vendor raised a total of $48 million. Comparatively, embedded analytics peer Sisense has raised $274 million, and Domo has raised $714.7 million.
Kevin Greene succeeded Schneider and less than a year later found a buyer in Insightsoftware, which is based in Raleigh, N.C.
At the time, the fear was that Logi would disappear into Insightsoftware, according to Donald Farmer, founder and principal of TreeHive Strategy. Instead, Insightsoftware has made a commitment to bolster Logi's capabilities and continue its brand name.
Less than a week after acquiring Logi, Insightsoftware acquired Izenda, another embedded analytics vendor, and merged it into Logi. Then in October 2021, Insightsoftware acquired Exago, still another embedded analytics specialist, and merged that into Logi as well.
Logi is still around, and honestly, that was a serious consideration for potential clients who looked at them before the acquisition. The stability and assurance of being part of Insightsoftware has served them well.
Donald FarmerFounder and principal, TreeHive Strategy
Finally, in August 2022, Insightsoftware acquired embedded analytics vendor Dundas Data Visualization, and now Dundas is part of Logi.
"Logi is still around, and honestly, that was a serious consideration for potential clients who looked at them before the acquisition," Farmer said. "The stability and assurance of being part of Insightsoftware has served them well from that standpoint."
The acquisitions of Izenda, Exago and Dundas complement Composer and make Logi's suite of embedded analytics tools more full-featured, according to Deepak Vittal, director of product management for embedded analytics and data intelligence at Insightsoftware.
Composer is designed for self-service users as well as professional developers, and enables them to build and embed data visualizations within applications without requiring code.
Meanwhile, Izenda and Exago offer pixel-perfect reporting that generates reports to exact specifications for printing, and dashboarding capabilities that enable developers to build dynamic visuals that can be replicated down to the most minute detail to create uniformity. Dundas brings with it augmented intelligence and machine learning (ML) capabilities.
"We liked [Dundas] for various reasons," Vittal said. "It gives us the AI/ML capabilities we've been looking for, and it has a lot of managed pixel-perfect reporting and dashboarding capabilities, while Composer is more self-service."
The clear focus under the guidance of Insightsoftware is to develop a broad embedded analytics suite, he continued. And though an aggressive acquisition strategy -- Insightsoftware has acquired a total of 19 companies since being founded in 2018 -- has been one means of adding to Logi's preexisting capabilities, it hasn't been the only one.
An organization's event sales data is displayed on a sample Logi Analytics dashboard.
Product development
Beyond adding capabilities to Logi through acquisitions, Insightsoftware has invested in Logi's continued product development since acquiring the embedded analytics specialist.
Insightsoftware has raised nearly $800 million in private equity funding and makes product development a priority, according to Vittal.
"Insightsoftware is a product-driven company, so there is a lot more product focus" than when Logi was independent, he said.
As evidence of that emphasis on product development, Logi unveiled a new version of Composer in August. Logi Composer 7 added the following:
new data authoring capabilities to create a more user-friendly interface;
enhanced content creation and system administration tools;
enhancements to APIs to improve the embedded analytics workflow;
improved data connectivity capabilities; and
user auditing so that administrators can track the use of data and monitor access to sensitive data.
As with the launch of Logi Composer 6 in 2021, the release didn't add features that will take embedded analytics in a new direction, but it did include incremental additions that will help users, according to Farmer.
"I liked the Composer update, but it was not one to set the market alight," he said. "Good, solid work. They fixed some usability problems ... which was good to see. Much of what they are doing is consolidating and hardening features for enterprise use cases -- which is not a bad thing."
In particular, Farmer noted that the API enhancements will make embedding analytics tools more straightforward, and the addition of auditing of actions and data access is an important way for developers to make sure they've properly set access permissions for end users of applications.
"These users are generally not analysts who would want to explore data, and they should not have the permissions to do so, so being able to track what data is actually being touched by them is super useful in case developers have inadvertently elevated the privileges of an embedded app," Farmer said.
Elevated privileges can sometimes result when developers take shortcuts as they write code, he continued.
"Logi is taking this seriously, and this shows a mature, experienced mindset, which is promising," Farmer said.
Future plans
With more than 20 years of history, and now bolstered by recent acquisitions that added not only embedded analytics technology, but also personnel, Logi has a strong engineering team in place, Vittal noted.
"Logi has pretty good technical chops, especially when it comes to DevOps, CloudOps and our basic engineering capabilities," he said.
In addition, Vittal said Logi is benefiting from Insightsoftware's sales model.
Logi has not, however, invested heavily in augmented intelligence and machine learning capabilities. Decision intelligence -- the use of AI and machine learning to automatically surface insights that lead to decisions and action -- is a rising trend in analytics, with vendors such as Sisu Data and Pyramid Analytics specializing in decision intelligence.
"One area I would improve is around augmented insights," he said. "We are seeing more and more augmented insights -- AI, machine learning. Not that we want to be creating machine learning models, but anything that can augment insights is one area we really want to improve."
The recent acquisition of Dundas will presumably aid that pursuit.
In addition, Vittal noted that Logi intends to develop a cloud-native offering. Logi's embedded analytics tools can be accessed and deployed in the cloud, but it doesn't yet have a fully cloud-native version of its tools.
Meanwhile, Logi intends to maintain its focus on embedded analytics and developing the most advanced capabilities for the technology, Vittal said.
"That's our niche, and we want to continue in that niche," he said.
