Yellowfin announces free Business Intelligence for students and not for profits

SOURCE: Yellowfin

Global Business Intelligence (BI) software vendor, Yellowfin, has today announced that it will offer free software licenses to students and teachers for classroom learning, as well as not-for-profit organizations.

Under the initiative, Yellowfin will be unconditionally free for student learning and teaching purposes.  Training for Yellowfin students will be offered via Yellowfin’s library of free training resources, available through the Yellowfin website, and dedicated YouTube channel (Yellowfin Team).

Not-for-profit organizations are eligible for limited free licenses depending on individual circumstances.

Interested parties should contact Yellowfin for specific terms and conditions, and to assess eligibility: http://www.yellowfinbi.com/YFContact.i4

CEO, Glen Rabie, said that Yellowfin had developed the new policy for two main reasons.

“Firstly, we believe that data analytics and BI is for the many, not the few,” said Rabie.  “That’s always been our belief – that’s what Yellowfin is all about.  Why should not-for-profit organizations be barred from attaining the insights they need to make the best operational and strategic decisions possible, just because they don’t have the buying power of big corporations?”

Rabie said that the motivation for offering free BI software to students and teachers came from the realization that for business analytics to go mainstream, the global analytics skills shortage must be addressed.

“Secondly, the BI and analytics skills shortage in the global workforce will undoubtedly prevent organizations from using their rapidly growing data assets to their fullest potential,” said Rabie.  “We need to assist academics, and academic institutions, to enable the next generation of information workers with the skills they need to exploit Big Data.  If we fail to close the current knowledge gap, many organizations will simply continue to lump analytic responsibilities on their current IT departments, and experience poor ROI as a result.  To realize best practice BI, you need the right technology and the right skills.”

The BI Congress – an educational event that aims to align BI academia and practice – recently finalized its annual The State of Business Intelligence and Business Analytics in Academia report.  The report – which included input on BI and analytics education challenges and expectations from 319 professors, 614 students from 96 schools, and 308 BI hiring businesses – found that continuing dissociation between software vendors and education institutions, while improving, contributed to a problematic “skills gap”.

International analyst and advisory firm, Gartner, recently predicted that 4.4 million IT jobs would be created globally by 2015 to support Big Data operations, but that the majority would remain unfilled due to a skills shortfall.

“There is not enough talent in the [BI and analytics] industry,” said Gartner Senior Vice President and Global Head of Research, Peter Sondergaard, in a statement.  “Our public and private education systems are failing us. Therefore, only one-third of the IT jobs will be filled. Data experts will be a scarce, valuable commodity.”

Yellowfin’s BI solution retails for $600 per user per annum.  A Yellowfin user is defined as any named user that can log into Yellowfin – regardless of how many different devices that user uses to access Yellowfin.

About Yellowfin

Yellowfin is a global Business Intelligence (BI) software vendor passionate about making BI easy. Yellowfin is headquartered and developed in Melbourne, Australia, offering a highly intuitive 100 percent Web-based reporting and analytics solution. Founded in 2003 in response to the complexity and costs associated with implementing and using traditional BI tools, Yellowfin is a leader in mobile, collaborative and embeddable BI as well as Location Intelligence and data visualization. For more information, visit www.yellowfinbi.com