The new face of business intelligence (BI)

‘The new face of BI for SAP’ is an adage that sums up the role Business Objects solutions play as the new BI front-end for SAP applications. Business Objects suite of BI solutions will take over the leading role in providing reporting, analysis and dash boarding capabilities for SAP customers who are looking for a fuller, more enhanced suite of BI solutions to meet the growing needs for information access across the organization. SAP has long been a pioneer and leader in the enterprise applications market, helping organizations automate and improve business operations, leading to better business execution. And Business Objects has been a pioneer and clear leader in the business intelligence market, helping organizations make more intelligent decisions, leading to better business strategy. Together, SAP and Business Objects brings together two clear leaders in their markets combining the best of execution with the best of strategy.

The Business Objects premium BI solutions include a full range of core business intelligence capabilities, as well as end-to-end information management solutions that already have deep integration to SAP applications today. This means SAP customers do not have wait to take advantage of the Business Objects BI capabilities to meet the needs of current or future BI projects. In addition, SAP customers can leverage the BI capabilities of Business Objects to gain access and insight into both SAP and non-SAP data allowing for a 360-degree view of business operations.

Enhancements
The release of SAP NetWeaver 7.1, scheduled for Q3 of this year, marks the end of major enhancements to the SAP NetWeaver Business Explorer (BEx) tools. Although these tools will continue to be supported under SAP’s maintenance policy, SAP’s strategic focus and development efforts will be placed on the Business Objects BI solutions. SAP is encouraging customers to adopt the Business Objects Business Intelligence Platform to meet the need for more sophisticated and strategic BI solutions. Let’s take a closer look at how the different core BI capabilities and information management solutions from Business Objects will offer expanded functionality for SAP customers going forward:

The tool of choice for creating compelling dashboards is the Business Objects’ dashboarding tool called Xcelsius. After the release 7.1 of SAP NetWeaver, the BEx Web Application Designer will no longer be developed and although it will continue to be supported under maintenance, SAP’s go-forward strategy for a dashboard tool is Xcelsuis along with the Business Objects Dashboard Builder – a dashboard layout tool that complements Xclesius in building out dashboard projects.

Visual Composer
SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer will continue to be an integral part of SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment (SAP NetWeaver CE). SAP will continue to enhance SAP NetWeaver VC by allowing customers to embed business intelligence into business processes via composite applications. Furthermore, between 2009 and 2010, customers will be able to us SAP NetWeaver VC to embed and call Business Objects Crystal Reports, Business Objects Xcelsius, and the planned ‘Pioneer’ product.

It is important to note that all of the Business Objects BI tools described above run on one integrated BI platform that allows for the managing, distributing and securing of reports, dashboards and so on to thousands of users both inside and outside the company. As well, this same BI platform directly leverages the NW data warehouse (NW BW) or the SAP Business Suite application meaning that SAP customers should continue down their usual paths for data warehousing and information management projects. So in summary, with Business Objects, SAP dramatically enhances its offering in the BI space by providing a full stack of BI solutions that SAP customers can leverage to fully realize strategic BI projects and allow for closed loop business performance.

SAP’s current BI platform is the combination of SAP Enterprise Data Warehouse (aka BW) and Business Objects BI tools. EDW (Enterprise Data Warehouse) is SAP’s one-and-only Data Warehouse offering. EDW front-end tools (reporting, OLAP analysis, ad hoc, dashboards) are all from Business Objects going forward. Each Business Objects toolset – Webi, Xcelsius, Voyager, Crystal and so on all have their specific value prop and, in general, there is a very compelling value prop to the ‘BI platform’. These tools have, primarily, always complemented SAP's basic analytical tools – specifically BEx (Business Explorer). For those clients currently using BEx, we want to ensure that their plans forward for BI are solid and, as well, any work they may undertake now and in the near future is the right decision with the correct product set.

Dan Kearnan joined Business Objects in 1998 to focus exclusively on Business Intelligence solutions for SAP customers. With the acquisition of Business Objects by SAP, Kearnan is now the Director for SAP Business Intelligence (Solution Marketing) and spends much of his time working with SAP customers to help them better understand how the BI solutions from Business Objects works within their SAP environments to provide enhanced BI capabilities across the organization. Originally from Vancouver, Canada, Kearnan is now based in Palo Alto, California.