Crystal Reports 2011 just finished Beta and is coming out within the next 6 months (Q2).  Don’t expect dramatic changes.   You can read about the new features in this PDF.  There is also a video of CR 2011 within Enterprise,  which is a slightly different version so the features highlighted are mostly related to enterprise users.  I have also read that the interface for CR within Enterprise will be different than in the standalone version of CR 2011.  The one within Enterprise is more consistent with other Enterprise tools, while the standalone is supposed to be more like CR 2008.

The standalone version mentions the following new features:
1) Read-only RPTs that can only be opened in the CR viewer
2) New XLSX export format

The enterprise version talks about:
1) A new look and feel that is more consistent with other SAP and BO tools
2) Tighter integration with the meta data layer (universe, business views, etc)
3) A translation manager that allows you to store multiple versions of the labels, each in a different language.

But there was one new feature mentioned that was mentioned in the Enterprise version that got my interest.  Something called “Smart Guidelines”.  These allow you to insert, remove or adjust one column and have the other columns adjust automatically to make room or fill in the gap.  This is an updated, drag-and-drop version of the ‘auto-arrange” feature that CR had back in version 8.x.  To see this feature in action watch the video linked above and skip to the 4:00 mark.  Hopefully this will make it into the standalone version.

Another interesting feature is the “Read Only” RPT file.    This protects proprietary calculations and also prevents unauthorized changes.