SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Reviews

• Universe Designer - I use single interface for all the BI users who access/create ad hoc and canned report
• SDK - important because we architected and designed a BI Product for 200+ customers using SDK
• Lifecycle management tools - We keep releasing new versions of our product based on customer requirements/changes requests depending on product changes.
• Multi-source connectivity - Extended the same BI product to support analytics/reporting on other applications/sources from same portfolio.

It's provided us with best practice reports out of the box for various modules. 
As well as an interface for creating adhoc reports with more analytical capabilities. This now allows us to exporting/share data in various formats (Excel, PDFs etc.)

We do not have self-service BI tools which would enable SAP to compete with tools like Tableau and Qlikview. Reports/Dashboards on RDBMS cannot handle or scale the demands of the latest data analytics solutions.

I've used this solution for over 10 years.

For deployment, SAP Business Objects has lifecycle management tools. It comes with features such as revert changes and automatic backup which helped us.

We had no issues with the performance.

It wouldn't scale when we needed to handle over one terabyte of data.

Customer service was found to be satisfactory.

SAP Business Objects when compared to Linux/AIX/Sun-Solaris is complex to install on Windows due to version/patch issues, and we had to put in requests for patches. Business users who used Web Intelligence were able to find some Java script plug-ins that needed to be installed.

We communicate with a vendor team as part of all our evaluations and implementations. This provides clarifications, resolutions, and additional features but mostly it was implemented an in-house by team.

It is dependent on our customer needs/requirements, and specific version with specific features were available. We also evaluated Tableau for its technical features, as per business user requirements, pricing, and licensing for choosing the product and also based on outcome of the Proof of Concept.

In my experience, the Analytics module provides the business the ability to make the appropriate decisions for improving our organization.

It provided our customer and their users usage of the product, and enable their planning team to be able to plan their stock availability accordingly.

It needs to be more user friendly for web use. Its integration into social media platforms needs to be easier.

I've used this solution for approximately 10 years.

There are issues with deployment, but only during new rollouts. Once the product development team fix the issues and provide customers with support packs, we are good.

We had no issues with the performance.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

You have to pay to get the good service. The really nice thing about is that tech support is performed across the globe, so timezones doesn’t get into picture.

It's straightforward but you need the expertise.

We have done implementation using both in—house and vendor teams. If you are using a vendor, make sure it is done by one vendor, else it will be hard to get a good quality end product.

I did a partial evaluation as every solution has its pros and cons.

This works only for medium to large scale companies due to the high cost.

Semantic Layer (Universes), ease of use

New Undelete of Public objects..

New Dashboard of overall environment

Java Applet still relying on the quirkiness of Java VM, and potential version mis-matches.

10+ Years

With proper planning and understanding of the application landscape the deployment is fairly straight forward. Better to do a new install if you have multiple updates and patches...better to build from scratch vs remodel

Highly scalable, new configuration wizard with 4.1 version assists in scaling correctly.

Fair

Fair to Poor..Business Objects sometimes gets lost in the quagmire of SAP

No

Depends on the deployment. Can be very complex in a 100% fail over/fault tolerant/load balanced scenario.

I deploy for clients.

No

Use a consulting firm with expertise in deployment.

It provides every feature you're looking for to perform OLAP and OLTP-based transactional and analytical reporting.

We've used it for some time now, and it's an SAP product that gets more and more mature with each new upgrade or version.

There are definitely some areas of improvement (i.e. interface, etc.), just as every product needs improvements to meet changing demands over time.

When you test and find a bug, you raise a ticket with SAP - which gets fixed by support either because you don't know how to apply the features or it gets fixed with the next patch from their product development team. Also, apart from this, every quarter service pack enhancements come onto the market.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We've had no issues with stability.

We've had no issues scaling it for our needs.

I use IDT and Web Intelligence the most to enable self service and ad-hoc reporting capabilities for our end users. When building a dashboard with defined KPIs, I'll use Design Studio as it gives a clean and uniform look.

The combination of IDT and Web Intelligence has taken some of the burden of report creation off of our central data team. The corporate team has the task of creating sound, reusable universes, and we give 'superusers' out in the business the ability to create their own Web Intelligence reports using these universes. in this way, the business is able to develop the reports they feel would be valuable, and if a different view/additional data is needed, the corporate team would fulfill that need.

IDT and Web Intelligence are pretty mature products, and have many features that make them adaptable. Design Studio in combination with SAP HANA as a source can be valuable although when using crosstabs, database calls become costly. I would expect this functionality to change to better utilize returned data sets in the future. Lumira is also a promising tool, but at this point still feels inferior to Tableau. SAP continues to pour money into this visualization solution, and claims that in the near future will be more feature rich than it's competitor.

I've used Business Objects for about four years, versions 3.1 and 4.1.

We've had no issues with the deployment.

We've had no stability issues.

The only issue that comes to mind with the toolset is the scalability of Design Studio when using crosstabs as I stated before. When defining a dataset for a crosstab, you are locked in to that 'view' of the dataset and are unable to create a second view of the data with different dimensions from the same source - you must call the database again to accomplish this.

Customer support is responsive, the SAP help forums also have an extensive amount of knowledge and help if your organization does not have a support agreement with SAP.

Our organization also uses Tableau in some instances when we need to query several data sources/views for one dashboard because of performance. However we usually try to use Business Objects because of the synergy we find with SAP systems as a data source as well as the data security options available in SAP HANA.

I was not involved in the technical set up of the tools.

We used this product for years with Teradata as the datasource, but much can be gained by using SAP HANA as the source if possible - not only in performance but also in data security and not requiring a universe for a few of the tools.

• Universal concept
• Connectivity with databases
• Good visualization

It's improved decision making process.

• Better visualization
• Better portal
• License price is prohibitive should go back to CPU based
• Improve customer service.

I've used it for five years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We had no issues with the stability.

I've had no issues scaling it.

Not good. SAP does resolve issues in time.

We are retiring SAP Business Object Webi and Xcelsius, they will be replaced by IBI Web Focus.

The security set up is complex, and there are compatibility issues with Internet Explorer.

We built some dashboards and an application brought some reports out of the box.

It is too expensive, charging by user and if you have hundreds of them you won’t be able to get ROI not even in many years.

Be careful with the license model. If you want to promote personal BI or ability to run your reports in disconnect/passive mode this is not the product.#

I would say universe designer as I have used or looked at other vendor tools and they don't even come close. Semantic layer is their main heart of SAP Business Objects.

Not one tool can satisfy everyone, and this tool is no different but in my opinion the ad hoc capabilities using Web intelligence over universe is very productive as users can self serve themselves

The Dashboard tool Current Xcelsius is not so user and developer friendly and is very bad compared to other vendor products. It has been wonderful but they have to integrate it with the Big Data economy system to sustain it.

This particular version six years, but I have been using Business Objects before SAP acquired for over 16 years ago.

We had no issues with the deployment.

There have been no stability issues.

We have had no issues scaling it for our needs.

8/10

8/10

It has been wonderful but they have to integrate it with the Big Data economy system to sustain it.

It's straightforward.

In house with a little help from professional services.

Pricing and licensing is competitive with other solutions.

Keep an eye upgrade and converting cost especially with deprecated tools like desk and it's reports, make consolidation of reports and universes and other objects early on .advise you to do user inbox,personal doc spring and fall clean up to make future upgrades easier

SAP Business Warehouse for its pre-built BI standard contents as it contain best practices generally and specific to industries both. Also standard analytic reports are very valuable.

SAP BO because of its functionalities, ad-hoc reporting, drill down, formatted reporting features. SAP BO tools like Explorer and Lumira for data explorer and trends.

All these things have benefit the main stakeholders to check and observe the trends and take the decision for the betterment of the company. Dashboards are one of the best features of SAP BO tools.

It helped the organization in analysis. It always helps the C level and upper management in monitoring the progress of the company by using dashboards and reports which contain important KPIs and trends. Based on such things, then main stakeholders take the decision for the betterment of the company.

Of course every product needs some room for improvement but currently nothing is coming to my mind. However, because SAP lacks a professional services offering, we had issues with deployment, stability, and scalability. Also, the initial setup had a medium level of complexity, so it should be done by someone with relevant knowledge.

I've used it for eight years.

There were issues because they lack professional services.

There were issues because they lack professional services.

There were issues because they lack professional services.

8/10

8/10

Because of its features and ease for adoption for the user. IT become strategic after adopting these tools.

It was on medium level.

Have a capable resource who knows how to work and have a good knowledge and experience in the relevant field.