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SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs SAS Visual Analytics 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

SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (6th)
SAS Visual Analytics
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is designed for BI (Business Intelligence) Tools and holds a mindshare of 4.0%, down 5.5% compared to last year.
SAS Visual Analytics, on the other hand, focuses on Data Visualization, holds 4.7% mindshare, down 6.5% since last year.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
Data Visualization
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user178362 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 13, 2015
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Renato Vazamin - PeerSpot reviewer
Single environment for multiple phases saves us time, and has good visualizations
We had that solution installed previously in another solution, Selvaya, but I don't think we used it at the time. We are now using SAS Detect Investigation as a complementary solution, in which we have part of the process, use a gene, SAS collects information and identifies some business situations, and the business guys use Visual Analytics to explore the results of the process. We previously used the FICO platform, but we switched because FICO's pricing was not scalable. Bringing more data or workloads to the platform required a significant investment in order to scale. We needed to change because we have a lot of data to process every day. FICO was also a little more complicated than SAS Visual Analytics.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making process."
"The planning and dashboarding features have been useful. Additionally, the fixed-format reports are good."
"The ability to merge dimensions in a report is great."
"The web intelligence reporting tool and universe designer are the most valuable aspects of the solution."
"The scheduling and publication features are very useful."
"We find that we can scale it as needed."
"It provides flexibility for creating reports. It is very good for creating highly-complex reports. I like this solution because when I buy BusinessObjects, it comes with many components, such as reporting, dashboard, and data visualization tools. Its performance is good. It is running on top of SAP BW and SAP HANA."
"Reporting from SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence is amazing, and gives users the ability to quickly access data from existing universes and/or relevant data sources, without the need to involve a functional business analyst or financial analyst."
"I like SAS Visual Analytics for its ability to provide an initial understanding of data through exploration, even before deep analytics."
"What I really love about the software is that I have never struggled in implementing it for complex business requirements. It is good for highly sophisticated and specialized statistics in the areas that some people tend to call artificial intelligence. It is used for everything that involves visual presentation and analysis of highly sophisticated statistics for forecasting and other purposes."
"It integrates well with SAS, making it simple and quick for developers."
"The alert generation feature also helps in sending out ad hoc messages to the business users if business thresholds have been crossed."
"The tool's most valuable features are its ease of use and advanced data visualization capabilities."
"Data handling is one of the best features of SAS Visual Analytics."
"I use Visual Analytics for enterprise reporting."
"The most solution's notable aspect, in my view, is the ability to integrate various data sources and harness advanced technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. This helps with quality assurance processes."
 

Cons

"The solution could be less expensive. It's a bit pricey now."
"The financial area in the solution has certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"The self-service area, or dashboard, needs some improvement. While the reporting itself is great, the dashboard and Analytics Cloud are not user friendly."
"More thorough testing of Service Packs before release."
"Its data visualization tool is not as good as Power BI and Tableau. Currently, for data visualization, you need to spend more money to buy another solution such as Power BI or Tableau. It is also very hard to integrate it with other third-party solutions. Its integration with other solutions should be improved."
"This solution is complex to configure and administer."
"The combination of Lumira along with Design Studio merger last year still needs development from a visualization standpoint."
"The user interface should be easier to use and navigate."
"There is a need for coding when it comes to digital reporting which can be intimidating."
"The solution should improve its graphics."
"SAS Visual Analytics could be more user-friendly."
"The deployment isn't smooth. Deploying Visual Analytics on the cloud takes a lot of work, or you can use some providers that give you SAS as a service. For example, there is a provider called SaasNow. They host SAS Visual Analytics and the license. You can buy the license and deploy it there without the hassle of installation because deploying the software isn't easy."
"The product is expensive and needs the integration of more languages."
"The solution is a little weak at the front end."
"There are a few little things that are predefined and can be done out of the box immediately. There is no business intelligence application that is predefined, which is something some customers or prospects would love to have. Small and mid-sized companies would struggle with it because they prefer something standard that has been predefined by somebody else."
"The integration aspects of the solution could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an expensive application."
"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."
"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."
"There is an annual license to use SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform."
"​It is not an expensive platform. The licensing is for a package of users starting at 10 users."
"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's no additional charge for a Development environment license, so build an additional development server."
"The price and the pricing model are fine. We find the solution does not give us a lot of additional value."
"The product is expensive."
"SAS Visual Analytics is expensive, as is the rest of the platform."
"The cost of the solution can be expensive. There is an additional cost for users."
"Visual Analytics is expensive for a small company like mine. You also need to deploy it on a server or cloud, so you pay for the license as well as the cost of the cloud or the server that you will deploy on."
"It's approximately $114,000 US dollars per year."
"It was licensed for corporate use, and its licensing was on a yearly basis."
"The product is quite expensive."
"Licensing is simple."
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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

it_user178362 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 13, 2015
Jan 13, 2015
Hi, I suppose the effectiveness of the comparison also depends on the objective of it. As far as the tools the Sas VA is not in the same category as SAP/BO, which is more of a query and reporting OLap tool and although VA has some of such capabilities it has embedded additionally models with predictive intelligence. Both have space in the same organization as User profiles are different and c...
2 out of 17 answers
it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 6, 2015
Hi, SAS VA (visual analytics) is primarily a data exploration and data discovery tool. Since it is from the SAS family of products so yes it has good integration with the predictive and statistical analysis engine of SAS. In my opinion if you are a big SAP and BOBJ shop then lot of this functionality is possible using SAP Lumira (it has integration with R). Personally if your company is already invested in SAP, it does not make a lot of sense to go with another enterprise class software. Having said that if it is already decided that it needs to be bought then the key differentiator (as I know) in addition to predictive and statistical analysis is the visual analysis which is far superior than SAP and also the in-memory feature of the SAS LASR analytic server. That is probably the only difference (assuming you do not have HANA in your landscape). Hope this helps, Amit
it_user78834 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 6, 2015
in my opinion, SAS offers a much richer set of features that Business Objects offers. SAS requires advanced knowledge of SAS programming and domain of the tool, while BOBJ is more oriented to users less experts in IT. SAS allows, with its various modules, all ETL processes, advanced data analysis and reporting, while BOBJ is more oriented to reporting only, as far as I know. Elisabete
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Government
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What do you like most about SAS Visual Analytics?
The most solution's notable aspect, in my view, is the ability to integrate various data sources and harness advanced technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. This helps w...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAS Visual Analytics?
It's about an average of five. It's easy to scale, but it comes with cost.
What needs improvement with SAS Visual Analytics?
Some capabilities are missing compared to Power BI, especially when working with spreadsheet types. Furthermore, Excel is more customizable compared to SAS Visual Analytics, which can be quite rigi...
 

Also Known As

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects
SAS BI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.
Staples, Ausgrid, Scotiabank, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Oklahoma Gas & Electric, Xcel Energy, and Triad Analytics Solutions.
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs. SAS Visual Analytics and other solutions. Updated: January 2022.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.