Jinfonet Software announced that Creekpath Systems has integrated JReport into the newest version of Creekpath Acuity. Creekpath Acuity helps enterprises gain insight into the costs, utilization and relationships between business applications and storage.

Creekpath Acuity is the newest version of Creekpath’s asset and business service management solution for storage infrastructure. Creekpath Acuity provides IT executives with the information required to increase the return on assets and mitigate risks inside their storage infrastructure. Creekpath Acuity meshes the asset and business service management aspects of enterprise storage systems with IT governance policies.

Creekpath chose Java for their application development in order to meet their corporate strategy of creating vendor-neutral storage asset management solutions. Creekpath then embedded the 100% Java-based JReport solution to streamline its product, improve functionality and reduce complexity.

Previously, Creekpath had been using a Windows-based reporting tool to address reporting and visualization requirements as part of its solution. JReport’s Java architecture provides numerous advantages over the previous solution, including the ability to become a native part of Java-based Creekpath Acuity. Customers can now install Creekpath and the embedded JReport offering with a single installation package on one server, and the reporting product does not require any separate maintenance.

“While it was a difficult decision to change our reporting technology, the value of JReport for us and our customers made it absolutely worthwhile,” said Craig Reed, vice president of engineering for Creekpath Systems. “Using JReport, we are able to deliver the reporting capabilities our customers want much more quickly and with enhanced functionality. Customers can get answers to their questions more effectively through the features enabled by JReport. Reports are much richer, easier to use and more tightly integrated with the rest of our application.”

Mr. Reed continued, “Our previous reporting tool required Creekpath to build – and our customers to learn – more than 150 different report templates. End users needed to know exactly which specific report they wanted because the reports were relatively static and inflexible. With JReport, we’ve reduced the number of report templates by 50%, down to just 75 report templates. Surprisingly, those 75 JReport templates contain more usable information than the previous 150. Once users select a report, they can do further queries within the report, aggregating and sorting data without having to re-launch a new report. The JReport dynamic HTML (DHTML) viewer enables the users to get the exact information they need.”

John Gularson, Jinfonet’s executive vice president, added, “We recognize it’s difficult to change a strategy midstream, and Creekpath’s decision to switch to JReport means two things. First, it means they’ve placed a great deal of trust in us, and second, it means we have a tremendous responsibility to continue our leadership in reporting to ensure their customers have the best solution. Working with Creekpath, we’ve helped them achieve their goals of creating a new version of the product with a smaller footprint, running on one server that can provide run-time filtering and sorting.”