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SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs ibi WebFOCUS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

ibi WebFOCUS
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Predictive Analytics (7th), Embedded BI (10th)
SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. ibi WebFOCUS is designed for Predictive Analytics and holds a mindshare of 1.1%, down 1.8% compared to last year.
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 4.0% mindshare, down 5.5% since last year.
Predictive Analytics
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Q&A Highlights

Ariel Lindenfeld - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 28, 2014
 

Featured Reviews

Twanette Jurd - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Intelligence, reporting, data integration, ETL, data migration - everything is handled within one unified platform and highly scalable solution.
WebFOCUS goes beyond just dashboards. It's also used for operational reporting, making it crucial for mission-critical systems. In fact, a core strength is that it's not "just" a BI tool; it can be used to build complete applications. It is the best tool because of its all-in-one nature. Data integration, ETL, data migration, everything is handled within the same platform. Then, on the front end, it offers portals, reporting, distributed analysis, and more. For customers who have data in the right structure and right format, the WebFOCUS Designer tool is very powerful. It allows them to create self-service reporting applications.
Sumeet  Zalpuri - PeerSpot reviewer
Fully integrated enterprise-level tool
The initial setup was not straightforward. Since it is a complete enterprise tool, it needs a certain level of expertise to set up the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. There are a lot of steps involved. You need to get the user accepted and you need to validate the data. So you need to understand the architecture of the application. I would rate the initial setup as moderate since it's not very easy or much difficult. For a small enterprise, the installation would take one day. You must ensure you are on a supported platform like Windows or Linux and if your database is not on the server but in a different zone of the network, you need to ensure connectivity. You must also ensure the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform supports your organization's browser. These are the major things that must be taken care of before the installation. Around 500 users are using the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform in my company. We are a team of around eight technical people involved in the deployment and maintenance of the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. If you run a SAP shop with ECC, the best solution is the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform because it's tightly integrated. You'll get lots of offers from SAP when it comes to licensing. So there's an advantage. But if you are not a SAP shop, the licensing becomes a hindrance. So if you have SAP as a source, then I recommend people to go with SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform as it's a tool that works wonders. I have been working on POCs where we use SAP data for BI, which was a nightmare. So if you have ECC and SAP in the back end, go with the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. If you have any other tools in the back end, then try to negotiate and see the use case.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution can read and write 500 different types of outputs."
"The most valuable feature is building ad hoc reports."
"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."
"I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. It's highly scalable and can handle significant data volumes."
"The platform uses a lot of Java technologies so the performance and system-level management are tricky because it needs a lot of resources."
"We are using SAP BusinessObjects because its scheduling capabilities are more powerful than those of other tools."
"I have seen improvement in our work after using the solution."
"It has been extremely valuable, to combine data from various data sources."
"The Dynamic HTML (DHTML) client option of Webi has been enhanced adding features that were previously only available with the Java client including conditional formatting and support of XLS as a data provider."
"Way of creating reports."
"We find that we can scale it as needed."
"​It is a very good product, stable, and has good technical capabilities.​"
 

Cons

"The solution can be improved by adding more automated options for reporting."
"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."
"The challenge lies not in what the tool can do but in how you use it and understand the data."
"If there were to be any improvements right now, their documentation needs to get in sync with their product."
"Tableau was easier for me to use because the interface is more similar to Excel which I was used to using."
"I would like to see their data visualization products enhanced and made more robust and easier to implement."
"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has always struggled with dashboarding."
"The biggest area for improvement would be the dashboarding capabilities due to the recent change from Xcelsius to Dashboard Designer. This has created a gigantic ripple in many companies because the skill sets required are drastically different."
"The performance could be improved, like when we extract a large amount of data."
"It is limited for us because SAP is shifting toward the cloud, and we can't use a cloud solution for SAP BusinessObjects. SAP introduced a product called PlusTimes one or two years ago and another one that I believe was called Automatic BI. This tool is more powerful than BusinessObjects and other tools because it's provided in the cloud."
"Integrations with things like Active Directory and LDAP tend to be a little complex."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to be improved performance-wise. The look and feel of this application, its scalability, setup, and technical support also need improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"I have always found SAP BI to be expensive. It is expensive even when you compare SAP BI Cloud with Microsoft Power BI. Power BI is probably around $9.99 per month, and the cheapest SAP BI is around $20, which is double. In terms of price, Power BI is definitely a lot better. If you have budget issues, you may want to go for Power BI."
"We purchase licenses through Epic. So, we get an Epic price as opposed to the SAP price. If we were going to use other products like Webby that they offer or exclusively use BI Launch Pad, it would cost a lot because half of our employees would touch it in some fashion. So, we use Epic-Crystal integration to keep the licensing cost down. I believe the BI Launch Pad licensing is something like $800 for each, and the Crystal Report licensing is something like $500 for each, but that's not what we pay."
"It has an option of a Cloud Platform (SAP Analytics Cloud) which has a lower price than the on-premise platform, and you can buy individual licences per user.​"
"There is an annual license to use SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform."
"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to improve its licensing cost."
"​It is not an expensive platform. The licensing is for a package of users starting at 10 users."
"It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."
"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."
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Comparison Review

it_user6663 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 25, 2013
SAP Business Objects vs. Microsoft BI
A quick look at the whole idea on another weblogs gives you a sense that all of them just talked about very brief things like report refresh feature in BO or cube feature in MS Analysis Service. I choose MS BI and I want to share my reasons and opinions on why I choose it and give you another quick…
 

Answers from the Community

Ariel Lindenfeld - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 25, 2014
Mar 25, 2014
I don't want to interfere in a community discussion, but I need to note that the information posted by Nurul Haszeli isn't good to work from. The Microstrategy brief is old and contains statements that were badly inaccurate even when it was created. The Summary of New Features document is for WebFOCUS 5.2, while the latest release is WebFOCUS 8. The technologyevaluation.com link is from 2000. W...
2 out of 6 answers
it_user6534 - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 23, 2014
I could answer the Business Objects questions ... Webfocus is not my expertise.
it_user78798 - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 23, 2014
I can provide some feedback on WebFOCUS, and have SOME experience in BO. What questions can I answer for you?
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Information Builders WebFOCUS?
I would rate the pricing a five out of ten, with ten being expensive.
What is your primary use case for Information Builders WebFOCUS?
I use it for supplying and developing business intelligence (BI) solutions, data management and reporting applications, and for the development of complete web-based applications. It's a versatile ...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...
What do you like most about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform?
What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making process.
 

Also Known As

WebFOCUS
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ace Hardware, AutoZone, Fred Hutch, MasterCard, OFS Brands, PostFinance, Real D, Yellow Pages, ABC Financial, AcuSport, BBVA, Babcock
SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs. ibi WebFOCUS and other solutions. Updated: January 2023.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.