We performed a comparison between ibi WebFOCUS and SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Predictive Analytics solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. It's highly scalable and can handle significant data volumes."
"The most valuable feature is building ad hoc reports."
"The solution can read and write 500 different types of outputs."
"It stands out for its ability to work across different platforms, support mainframe data, offer cloud integration, automate report scheduling, and provide a robust scripting language."
"It has got great flexibility. As a reporting tool, it has a great deal of flexibility for numerous data resources that you can bring into it. It allows you to write your SQL query directly within the product. So, it allows you to do server-side joins instead of pulling all the data into Crystal Report to aggregate that data. It has great visualization. For the most part, it operates quite efficiently."
"The solution's user security is extremely effective. You can profile very well. All the users and all the functionality is protected and that includes information and data segregation."
"The feature that allows pivot users to create the report dashboards and run them when they want with a lot of flexibility with the drill-downs is very useful. The drill-down features are very good because, in other solutions, such as Excel, you have to create separate pivot tables and a lot of other operations to do drill-downs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform tool does the drill-downs automatically. Overall the solution is user-friendly and has a lot of drag and drop features."
"The most important feature of BusinessObjects is its integration with the SAP ERP system. If an organization is using SAP as its ERP system, and they want to do business intelligence, reporting, or analysis, SAP BusinessObjects is the only tool that I see doing that quite efficiently. That's because of the fact it is tightly integrated, and it gives a good user experience in terms of faster reporting. Its integration is the feature that I have found most valuable, but there are also other factors."
"It has been extremely valuable, to combine data from various data sources."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform's most valuable features are it has a great presentation layer. We can develop the presentation layer with drag-and-drop capabilities. For end-users and for our interns in the company can create reports and do their data analysis processes or works by using the objects that we created on the presentation layer by themselves."
"The solution can scale."
"What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making process."
More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Pros →
"The solution can be improved by adding more automated options for reporting."
"If there were to be any improvements right now, their documentation needs to get in sync with their product."
"The challenge lies not in what the tool can do but in how you use it and understand the data."
"When it comes to customer support, we don't always reach the right person. Sometimes, we get junior-level reps who aren't as knowledgeable as we are."
"Integrations with things like Active Directory and LDAP tend to be a little complex."
"This solution is complex to configure and administer."
"Its price should be better. It is expensive and not cost-effective. It should also be improved in terms of end-user experience. It requires further improvements for usability and ease of use. It should have more dashboarding metrics and much faster integration with ERP so that when you double click, you can instantly see the scenario-based result."
"The self-service area, or dashboard, needs some improvement. While the reporting itself is great, the dashboard and Analytics Cloud are not user friendly."
"The dashboard tool is called Lumira and it is very uncomfortable for developers to use. They should improve this in the future."
"Over the years, the product tends to rename and rebrand itself and change its direction. This is a deficit of the solution."
"It would be good if they could integrate the possibility for end users to create end models for themselves that they can use, especially for site operators, and if they could provide the end user not only the self-service BI, but also the self-service analytics, based on a predefined model, the same way that Oracle did."
"More thorough testing of Service Packs before release."
More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Cons →
More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Pricing and Cost Advice →
ibi WebFOCUS is ranked 6th in Predictive Analytics with 18 reviews while SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is ranked 6th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 103 reviews. ibi WebFOCUS is rated 8.8, while SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of ibi WebFOCUS writes "A flexible mainframe product with unique file features and a rock solid scheduling feature". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform writes "Visualization is better than other tools, offers good dashboard and analytics features but it is not easy to adapt to the product". ibi WebFOCUS is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, Databricks and Amazon QuickSight, whereas SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is most compared with SAP Analytics Cloud, Microsoft Power BI, Oracle OBIEE, IBM Cognos and Looker. See our SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs. ibi WebFOCUS report.
We monitor all Predictive Analytics reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
I have not used BusinessObjects since the acquisition by SAP, but had experience using Crystal Reports and been\seen many SAP presentations regarding BusinessObjects.
Big positive and negative for WebFOCUS is that everything is programmable, we used it in a procedural language type of way and everything can be a variable which is nice when you need to program a complex solution. Can be a real headache when you need to debug/troubleshoot/maintain.
The FocalPoint community for WebFOCUS is very strong and probably IMHO one of the greatest strengths for WebFOCUS.
Weaknesses, the toolset has not kept up with other IDEs in regards to change management, version control and DEBUGGING - most times at our company, you are better off programming in Notepad and keeping copies of the file and "print out" a debug statement.
That's from experience. From a tool vs. tool perspective, I'd say they are very close.
What might put you in favor of one over the other will be BusinessObjects. If you have an SAP ERP - likely you have a jumpstart with pre-delivered content that you can build upon or enhance.
From WebFOCUS - customization and freedom in development (programming flexibility, D3, jquery integration)
I have to apologize as I don't have experience using WebFocus.
However, I did find a few articles that you might find interesting (related to WebFocus):
1. www2.microstrategy.com
2. ikax.net
3. www.technologyevaluation.com
4. www.webfocusexpress.com
5. www.ncat.edu
Yes, I can help you. Feel free to send me a message.
I can provide some feedback on WebFOCUS, and have SOME experience in BO. What questions can I answer for you?
I could answer the Business Objects questions ... Webfocus is not my expertise.