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
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