Actuate 9, which will be generally available in the third quarter, includes a personalized portal, the company's first ad hoc Web reporting tool and enhanced end-user customization of reports. In addition, the suite allows reports developed with the open-source BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools) to be available on Actuate's iServer enterprise reporting server.

All of the new products are built on the BIRT framework, which allows power users to take on more of the requests from casual users to change reports, said Nobby Akiha, Actuate's vice president of marketing.

"Because of the common report design format ... if the casual user finds they need some other component to do what they need, they can pass that back to the power user to add a particular field or chart," he said. "This collaborative report development helps to eliminate some of the tension between IT and the end user. End users can get to the data much quicker, [and] it does speed up the decision-making."