Mobile-based visualization engine Roambi today announced the availability of its visualization package on the Android platform. Roambi also announced a partnership with online security company Okta, which provides single sign-on services.

The Android version of the visualization tool is intended to emulate the features and functions of the company’s flagship iOS product as closely as possible on Android smartphones and tablets, Roambi said.  The current release does not include the Roambi publishing package, which will be delivered later.

“We developed this not because Android has huge presence in the corporate market but to guarantee to our corporate users that Roambi will run on whatever mobile platform they need,” said Quinton Alsbury, co-founder and president of Product Innovation. The Good Technology Mobility Index reported that iOS dominated Android in enterprise market share in the fourth quarter of 2013.

The two versions use the same visualization metaphors and have the same user interface. Both operate fully offline while storing visualizations and other information in Roambi’s cloud.

The reason the Android version has taken so long to deliver is because Roambi built a new framework that will allow it to produce native versions for other platforms quickly and keep all the versions consistent through the upgrade cycle, Alsbury said. Device profusion is a major problem for small vendors trying to manage versions of the same app on three or more platforms such as iOS, Android, and  Windows RT. Samsung is also said to be developing its own platform.

Okta alliance eases sign-on

x

Alsbury said that since announcing an online version of Roambi to compliment the on-premise software version, the company has seen half of its new business come on the new platform. Roambi has started forming alliances with other online service providers, starting with SalesForce.com. That partnership enables Roambi users to incorporate data from SalesForce into Roambi visualizations. Roambi also recently announced an alliance with Box that enables users to store their data in Box and build visualizations from it.

The new alliance with online security company Okta provides single sign-on capabilities across Roambi online and its various cloud partners. The agreement allows Roambi to provide Okta services free for use with Roambi, Salesforce and Box. This solves a major problem for companies trying to manage large numbers of end-user accounts and also for end-users who don’t have to log in separately to each service. Companies that then wish to use Okta for other on-premise or online end-user services can become Okta customers.

 Customer growth

x

Roambi uses a library of pre-designed templates that allow users without training to quickly create graphs using data from any of several sources from Excel spreadsheets to Salesforce.com and data stored in Box. It now has about 800 corporate customers, ranging from the Phoenix Suns to all of the top 10 pharmaceuticals. While some are in the test stage, others have done rollouts to as many as 10,000 users.

The pharmas are Roambi it to their large field sales forces who visit clinics to promote their company’s products. Alsbury said that that before Roambi came along sales people typically spent more than two hours each morning downloading statistics on the use of specific drugs and printing copies. With Roambi, the data downloads are incorporated into visualizations automatically every morning, cutting sales prep time to about 20 minutes.

Another measure of Roambi’s growth is that it now has customers in more than 100 countries and has fully localized versions of the product in 11 languages. It has always had an international focus. Its first customer in 2009 was in South Africa and its second was in the U.K.

Being everywhere is part of the plan, Alsbury said. “It’s all about making sure that all mobile devices are covered, now and in the future,” he said.

Roambe in nexus 7 image courtesy of Roambi