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Paul Grill - PeerSpot reviewer
President & CEO at Infosol Inc
Real User
Top 5
Using Xcelsius dashboard instead of Qlikview


When I first started presenting Xcelsius dashboards back in 2006, I said that it should carry a warning sign stating “May Cause Xtreme Xcitement”!

Despite all the advances in technology and tools over the last decade that statement not only remains true today, but maybe should be changed to “Will Cause Xtreme Xcitement”.

In the last month, I have both seen and heard stories from companies singing the praises of Xcelsius and hailing it as the savior of BI user adoption in their organizations.

A company specializing in reporting and analysis of employee business travel was looking for a client facing BI application that would help sell their solution. The client showed me their current solution running in Qlikview bemoaning how rigid, limiting and unexciting it was to use. They then showed me an example of something they found on the web that was an animated PowerPoint dashboard much closer to what they were looking for. Of course, I recognized it as an Xcelsius dashboard embedded in PowerPoint immediately. It had been developed over seven years ago, but it still sizzled. So, we mocked up a new prototype in Xcelsius for the client and to say they loved it would be an understatement. The VP of Marketing came up with the best quote of the day when he said, “It’s alive!”

A multi-national vehicle leasing company developed a super cool Xcelsius dashboard for improving their vendor management with built-in location intelligence using the GMaps plug-in and the InfoBurst XML Data Caching for high data volume performance. They presented it at their annual sales meeting last month and it stole the show. The excitement generated was so contagious, the VP and Director responsible spent the evening at the bar designing the next dashboard together! (I can’t wait to see that one!).

A new finance director of a global software company needed a way to provide better visibility to their financial statements and reports. She remembered using Xcelsius many years ago and said it really helped then. We put a prototype together for her in a day and everyone loved it, so they are buying it next week.

So why is Xcelsius so amazing and still slaying the BI data visualization competition everywhere? There are dozens of reasons from its ease of use, animations, ability to embed in everything, fast prototyping to its “what if” scenarios and cool components. But it goes deeper than all these features which you can also find in other BI visualization tools. The real secret to the success of Xcelsius is that it was initially designed and developed by computer gamers. To develop a winning computer game, you need to engage your audience visually, make it cool and fun to use and have limitless possibilities. You can find all these elements in Xcelsius dashboards allowing you to create killer BI applications.

That is why Xcelsius dashboards is still the best show in town. Xcelsius lives!

Update Nov 2015 : Lots of activity around Xcelsius HTML5 for deployment on mobile and on desktop with dCode add-on (www.getdcode.com). Now that Xcelsius generates HTML5 output, I see it being around for many, many more years

Update April 2016 : Xcelsius continues to thrive with many organizations using and deploying it for the first time in 2016. SAP provided updates to it with latest BI 4.2 release including full support for Excel 2013

Update Sept. 2016 : Xcelsius HTML5 definitely seems to be the dashboard solution of choice and many new add-on HTML5  components are becoming available including D3 charts, flat components and query drag and drop discover.

Update Sept 2018 : Adobe announced end of life for Flash for Dec 31, 2020 and SAP announced it would no longer support Xcelsius after this date since the development client uses Flash. While some Xcelsius users are looking for a viable alternative solution, others vow to continue to use the tool regardless. There are some new Xcelsius compatible solutions in development so let's see what materializes in the coming months.

Update Feb 2019 : Xcelsius still heavily in use. Some companies looking to replace with Tableau or PowerBI but just not the same. Web Intelligence dashboards may be a viable alternative for simple dashboards .

Update July 2019 : SAP has announced it will no longer support Xcelsius after Dec. 31, 2020 to coincide with Adobe no longer supporting Flash in the browser. However, most Xcelsius users have been generating HTML5 dashboards for a number of years now and are continuing to do so and their Xcelsius HTML5 dashboards should not be affected. SAP has no equivalent follow-on product and is recommending customers move to SAC (cloud only) and rewrite their dashboards - this will require programming skills . An alternative to Xcelsius, called Squirrel,  that requires no training for an existing Xcelsius developer and has a built-in XLF migration utility is due for beta release by InfoSol in October and will be GA in December.

Update Dec 2019 : Squirrel has been in beta for the last few weeks with multiple organizations and is scheduled for general release on Dec 31. Initial feedback is very positive with Xcelsius users who require no re-training to use it. They have been able to both migrate or recreate existing Xcelsius dashboards. This is great news for the Xcelsius community who now have another option when Flash goes away and SAP stops supporting Xcelsius in 2021.

Update May 2020 : Squirrel is now at version 1.3 with multiple Xcelsius customers having converted their dashboards and running with the Squirrel HTML5 versions in production. This appears to be a very viable path forward for those customers left with Xcelsius Flash dashboards that will probably no longer work starting in 2021.

Update Nov 2020 : Squirrel 1.6 which has a cloud based version and allows you to embed dashboards in PPT was just released last week. More and more Xcelsius customers have now successfully moved to Squirrel and companies like Salesforce are using it too. Xcelsius has about a month to go before Adobe and SAP stop all support.

Update June 2022 : Squirrel365 has now replaced hundreds of Xcelsius dashboards and has become the de facto follow-on solution for Xcelsius

Update May 2024 : Squirrel 365 can now be embedded in BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, Tableau and PowerBI bringing "What If" scenarios and write back capability to these traditional BI solutions

Disclaimer: My company is partners with several vendors including SAP BO.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner of SAP
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PeerSpot user

I absolutely would like to hear your point of view and anything you wish to share about the app.
I would like to know things like:

1) Is SAP Crystal Dashboard Design, personal edition 2013 really the upgrade to Engage 2008?

2) How is it possible that they are asking such an outrageous amount of money for it?

3) How is it so different to the Xcelsius dashboard presentation apps they offer for under $500?. Am I missing something?

4) What justifies the kind of money they are asking? I am interested in things like, a fully updated MAP component, brand new dashboards, the possibility of a video component to insert videos, and the like. I guess it is possible that they are including some arcane stuff I don't care about, but I am ready to be surprised by you.

Thanks

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Software Engineer at a mining and metals company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
A stable tool with an easy setup phase that helps with the creation and manipulation of scenarios
Pros and Cons
  • "The initial setup of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform was easy since the solution is user-friendly."
  • "The financial area in the solution has certain shortcomings that need improvement."

What is our primary use case?

In my company, the solution is used when I get involved in scenarios to get more insight into the analytics part before presenting different options to the company's CEO, because of which I stress over those scenarios related to externalities.

How has it helped my organization?

I can create and manipulate scenarios, which has helped me a lot because before we started with SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, I worked on Excel documents. Excel documents used to get modified by a lot of people in our company, so no one could follow all the patterns when working on the Excel sheet. Within SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, I have been able to follow a path and know who or why modifications were done.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that none of the users can modify a status if I don't allow it.

What needs improvement?

The financial area in the solution has certain shortcomings that need improvement. The solution's financial area needs to improve because a lot of the segment reports have been working with the finance part, so a lot of projects can be done now that our company couldn't do in the past.

Sometimes, there is a possibility that our company has to share some files with certain external users, and we find it hard to provide them with all the information that they want even after using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement.

The machine learning part in the solution is an area of concern that should be considered for improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for three months. I don't remember the version of the solution.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

I don't use the technical support provided for the solution since I prefer to use the web or the internet to search for information related to the product.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have programming experience, and now I work on business intelligence tools like Power BI and Tableau.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform was easy since the solution is user-friendly.

The solution is deployed on-premises.

What was our ROI?

Based on my ability to understand the information related to the solution, it does help in providing me with a higher profit. I cannot be exactly sure about the ROI since I don't know the price of the solution.

What other advice do I have?

I recommend those planning to buy the solution to try it for a few days.

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform
October 2024
Learn what your peers think about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Vedat Gunes - PeerSpot reviewer
BI & Analytics Manager at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Beneficial presentation layer, scalable, and reliable
Pros and Cons
  • "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."
  • "SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform should be made easier for the end-users and the performance could be improved."

What is our primary use case?

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an enterprise reporting platform. We use it to read data from the data warehouses and serve the internal usage of the company for reporting purposes.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform should be made easier for the end-users and the performance could be improved.

In a feature release, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform the visual should improve, such as dashboards. They need to improve the visualization issues. The analytics are a bit behind the sector because alternative tools have integration between other platforms, such as Microsoft Office or Cloud. SAP BusinessObjects is trying to move all the platforms to the cloud, but we couldn't use the cloud and we are in the middle of a division. They don't offer an on-premise solution for the platform.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for approximately 10 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is good.

We have approximately 200 power users and 1,000 report users using this solution in my company.

How are customer service and support?

I have used the support from SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform.

I rate the support from SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform a two out of five.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have not used another solution previously.

How was the initial setup?

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is in the middle range of difficulty. It is not easy or complex.

I rate the initial setup of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform a four of five.

We have three people who do the maintenance and support of the solution. They are data and BI engineers.

What about the implementation team?

We used a third party for the implementation of the solution.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

There is an annual license to use SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform.

I rate the price of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform a four out of five.

What other advice do I have?

I would advise others the solution has a great presentation layer, but it needs to be managed well before you receive the most out of the performance.

I rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user431775 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Architect - Business Objects / Datawarehouse at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
The ad hoc capabilities using Web intelligence over universe is very productive.

What is most valuable?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

We had no issues with the deployment.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There have been no stability issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have had no issues scaling it for our needs.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

8/10

Technical Support:

8/10

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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

How was the initial setup?

It's straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

In house with a little help from professional services.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Pricing and licensing is competitive with other solutions.

What other advice do I have?

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

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1394319 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Intelligence & Data Management Director at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Simple setup, beneficial documentation, and scalable
Pros and Cons
  • "The features which the solution has been awesome. The way the data is fetched from the database, and the queries are executed, is unique using the Universe of Business Objects. That makes it unique and we could not find another solution that functions in a similar way. It's has a great way of receiving and executing queries."
  • "SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is lacking dashboards and this would be the only reason we are looking for another solution."

What is our primary use case?

The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is useful for all kinds of analytics, reporting, and alerting.

What is most valuable?

The features which the solution has been awesome. The way the data is fetched from the database, and the queries are executed, is unique using the Universe of Business Objects. That makes it unique and we could not find another solution that functions in a similar way. It's has a great way of receiving and executing queries.

What needs improvement?

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is lacking dashboards and this would be the only reason we are looking for another solution.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for approximately 20 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform depends on your infrastructure. However, the solution itself is very stable reliable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There are other solutions that can be implemented alongside SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform to make it more scalable, but in our environment, it's not used in that way.

We have approximately 500 to 1,000 users using this solution. We are working on this self-service BI strategy and therefore the number of users will be increased in the future.

How are customer service and support?

We sometimes receive technical bugs, especially with the new releases, and some patches are required. We then speak to BusinessObjects SAP support for assistance.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of the solution is simple and the documentation provided was straightforward. It was not a difficult task.

What about the implementation team?

The first time we used it when SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform was when it was not an SAP solution, it was owned by Business Strategies, we brought in consultants to deploy. Later we have created our own team who can manage the implementation.

We have one person who does the administration and upgrades of the solution.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We are satisfied with the solution, but we are not satisfied with the licensing cost which SAP offers. They offer one lumpsum licensing which does everything. That is not the right strategy, because sometimes you don't have power users, they are only viewers, but we need to buy the full license for them. This is not something we want to continue with.

We are on an annual subscription to use this solution.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution to others.

We are using an on-premise version which is good but the cloud version is more up-to-date.

I rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1789389 - PeerSpot reviewer
BI/BO Hana Application Consultant at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Flexible solution for reporting and broadcasting, but its performance, look, feel, and technical support need to be improved
Pros and Cons
  • "This reporting and broadcasting solution has a lot of flexibilities and can connect to multiple source systems."
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

We use SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for reporting, dashboards, and broadcasting.

What is most valuable?

What I find useful in SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is that it has a lot of flexibilities. It's where you can develop so many reports, and it's able to connect to multiple source systems.

What needs improvement?

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to be improved performance-wise. The look and feel of this application also needs improvement.

The scalability of this application has to be improved, and its setup should also be more simplified.

Technical support for SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform also needs to be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform in our company for six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The application is now stable, but there are still some things they have to improve on the hardware side.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is scalable, but the scalability of the servers and other parts is complex. SAP has made scalability complex. It's not so easy, and it's not so quick, while in other solutions, we can increase the scalability of the servers very easily and very fast, e.g. in Microsoft, but in SAP, it's complex and it takes more time.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support for SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is okay, but it depends on the priority level. For example, if you raise a ticket that's high priority, then they'll respond to that ticket, but if you raise a medium priority ticket, they don't respond at all. Technical support needs to be improved in that sense.

How was the initial setup?

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has a complex setup, and could still be simplified, especially if you want to increase your capacity, which could be difficult in the SAP side.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an expensive application, e.g. compared to Power BI. The analytics cloud is complex to set up. It's very hard. It takes a lot of time to complete the setup, because there are so many prerequisites to set it up before your analytics cloud. It's complex and it's expensive.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We've evaluated Analytics Cloud and Power BI.

What other advice do I have?

Just recently, we moved SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform over to the cloud. Before, it was on our home site, but recently, e.g. just two days ago, we moved it to the cloud.

We've been using three different products: SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, Analytics Cloud though not fully on it yet, and Power BI.

I would rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform a seven out of ten.

You cannot compare SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform with Power BI, but WebI, or SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence, is there. Power BI is more powerful compared to WebI, because there are a lot of flexibilities, and you can use them in a simpler way, e.g. these are also possible in WebI, but it's more complex, especially during the setup.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1664538 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager Data Analytics and Interfaces at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Integrates seamlessly within our Epic environment, provides flexibility for numerous data resources, and operates efficiently
Pros and Cons
  • "I like the fact that we can integrate it seamlessly within our Epic environment, but probably the best thing that Crystal Reports offers is the ability to do visualizations. They're simple to do, and they're catchy. So, it is a really great tool."
  • "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."
  • "We're an Epic shop, and Epic is moving away from Crystal. It would be nice if it had tighter integration with products like Epic. It would be awesome to have better integration with third-party products."
  • "They could reduce the licensing expenses. There is nothing really wrong with the product in terms of what it does. It works well. If you are a part of BI Launch Pad, then you could run ad hoc reporting, but for the integration, you need access to BI Launch Pad, which is quite expensive. We're an organization with 18,000 employees. It is not really practical to give people access to BI Launch Pad. So, from a customer perspective, in terms of saturating our employee base, we don't really have great saturation because of the expense."

What is our primary use case?

We use it almost exclusively for our analytics for the Epic environment. So, a lot of healthcare-related reporting and financial reporting is done on it. It is not geared towards the operational world. It is geared towards the analytical world where we're looking at a month of data, a year of data, or a quarter of data.

We try to use its current version.

How has it helped my organization?

On the first of the month, when we get ready to close the books, we run a lot of analytics through the BI platform. The analytics are available to our financial team within 10 hours, and we typically run around 21,000 jobs at the beginning of every month. We schedule them, and they get downloaded as CSVs and then people consume them.

What is most valuable?

I like the fact that we can integrate it seamlessly within our Epic environment, but probably the best thing that Crystal Reports offers is the ability to do visualizations. They're simple to do, and they're catchy. So, it is a really great tool.

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.

It is a really solid product. It has been out there for some time, and it gives you exactly what you need.

What needs improvement?

We're an Epic shop, and Epic is moving away from Crystal. It would be nice if it had tighter integration with products like Epic. It would be awesome to have better integration with third-party products.

They could reduce the licensing expenses. There is nothing really wrong with the product in terms of what it does. It works well. If you are a part of BI Launch Pad, then you could run ad hoc reporting, but for the integration, you need access to BI Launch Pad, which is quite expensive. We're an organization with 18,000 employees. It is not really practical to give people access to BI Launch Pad. So, from a customer perspective, in terms of saturating our employee base, we don't really have great saturation because of the expense. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been probably using it for close to eight years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It has been a solid product. We have had no issues. Any issues that we had were self-inflicted. They were not consequences of the product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We run around 21,000 reports at the beginning of every month, and we get them done in 10 hours. These are not operational reports. These are analytics reports. Some of those reports pull a year's worth of data, aggregate that data, and then spit it out with visualizations and everything else. So, it operates efficiently.

We're a healthcare system in Dallas, Texas. We have 11 hospitals. A vast majority of the leaders, probably more than 2,000 leaders, use the results of the products we create from Crystal Reports, etc. A significant amount of the other staff also uses the results. Our finance team uses it almost exclusively to generate their data. We have probably more than 18,000 people working through our facilities, and probably half of them in some fashion or another touch the SAP environment at some point during the course of a month. So, it is being used extensively. We rely on this product.

How are customer service and technical support?

We don't call SAP directly. We work through Epic. Our licensing with SAP is through Epic. So, Epic has a direct relationship with SAP, not us.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used other products, but my company hasn't really used any other product or any big data solution like this.

How was the initial setup?

It is pretty straightforward. We had no complications at all in installing it. We had some complications getting it to work with Epic, but once it was set up, it has been sitting there and doing its thing. We don't ever have to mess with it. It has been a solid product. It just works.

What about the implementation team?

For its implementation, we used a consultant, but he was not associated with SAP. We took the help of a gentleman who was DBA experienced in implementing this product in an Epic environment, but he was not an SAP employee.

For its maintenance, I have one staff member who's the admin of SAP. She has additional duties with the maintenance of this product, which probably takes up 10% of her time.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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 Webi 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.

What other advice do I have?

I would advise others to get somebody who knows what they're doing when they install it. That's what we did. It is a complex product, and trying to fumble through all the bits and pieces and the nuances of it is challenging.

It has been around for years. It has been there ever since I went to software engineering. It does what it does. It is built to do that every year. It just needs to get more efficient at doing it. It just needs better integration with third parties and maybe a price reduction for the licensing.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user440979 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Provided us with best practice reports out of the box for various modules. It wouldn't scale when we needed to handle over one terabyte of data.

Valuable Features:

  • 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.

Improvements to My Organization:

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.)

Room for Improvement:

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.

Use of Solution:

I've used this solution for over 10 years.

Deployment Issues:

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

Stability Issues:

We had no issues with the performance.

Scalability Issues:

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

Customer Service:

Customer service was found to be satisfactory.

Initial Setup:

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.

Implementation Team:

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.

Other Solutions Considered:

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.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Paul Grill - PeerSpot reviewer
Paul GrillPresident & CEO at Infosol Inc
Top 5Real User

I do not think the integration of Design Studio into Lumira as a second client - Lumira Studio - will add very much that would impress an existing Tableau user. I would be interested to hear what your Tableau users think after they have evaluated this.

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Buyer's Guide
Download our free SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: October 2024
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