Roambi Adds Cloud-Based Publishing, Analytics for the Masses

BI, Analytics, Data Visualization, Roambi,

In a move to democratize its data visualization technology and expand its market, Solana Beach, CA-based Roambi says today it is launching a new iPad app intended to bring the power of its Roambi Flow publishing platform to the Internet masses.

The company, founded as Mellmo in 2008, introduced Roambi Flow for its corporate customers near the end of 2011, providing a way to publish print-like reports for iPad users with interactive pie charts and other “live” graphics created with Roambi Analytics. The company’s analytics technology converts mind-numbing business data into simple-but-compelling charts and graphic displays. The technology also enables users to refresh the graphics as new data becomes available.

Now, with Roambi Flow in the Cloud, individual users can also create and publish interactive documents that feature info-graphics created with Roambi Analytics and accessible through a cloud-based platform.

During the early years, “We didn’t expect to get as much traction with large enterprise customers as we did,” said Quinton Alsbury, a Roambi co-founder and president of product innovation. Today, Roambi says its technology has been installed in servers “on-premises” at 550 enterprise customers. Such organizations usually have large IT departments to help users master the Roambi Flow publishing technology.

Roambi itself lacked the resources needed to support a broader technology rollout, Alsbury said. As a result, he said, “We weren’t really able to grow the business and take advantage of the inquiries we were getting.”

After Apple unveiled its new iOS 7 software, Roambi embarked on a comprehensive overhaul of its own technology, including a redesign of Roambi Analytics and a cloud-based version of Roambi Flow. The company has grown to 90 employees, and has counted more than 1 million downloads of its free Roambi mobile apps.

For a business subscription of $39 a month, users can import existing PDFs or start from scratch, creating magazine-quality publications for the iPad that feature flipable pages, multi-touch gestures, and interactive graphics from Roambi Analytics, as well as images, YouTube, Vimeo, and more.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.