SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Reviews

Flexibility and 'integratability'.

Can integrate the reference services of a metadata repository. Saves a ton of maintenance and ensures Data Quality.

Performance, but they all have room for this. Nevertheless, performance is highly dependent on data architecture and design as well as server capability. Far less so on the reporting tool that can fetch results; set once and re-use over several 'reports'.

I have been using the solution since 1998.

Confessions ... this is hardware and networking and unix. All of the server based reporting products are complex to install and beyond my skills. Adapting these products to the foundational environments is always adventure-prone but most vendors provide substantial help in installing.

With most of these products, BO, too, instability arises often when resources are challenged. So, in general, planning for capacity processing is a good way to keep systems stable.

BO has had 1000's of individuals in organizations running BO when they want to. Most toolsets address scalability.

I am a consultant; even if I advise changing BI reporting toolsets, I do so reluctantly. It is more involved than at first glance, particularly if you have a user base. To date, I have not encountered a situation where I would advise changing BI toolsets that have some traction in the organization. At least not without a plan.

Strongly recommend a vendor team for the initial period. Make sure they interface heavily with network, DB and DW folks.

ROI for the reporting product alone, as a component in a whole stack of things contributing to ROI, is in my view a minor contributor. How reports are developed and cast, the underlying data structures, data quality efforts, etc... these are the major contributors to ROI, not to mention the comprehension of the report viewer.

This can vary from site to site. Depends greatly on folks at the company and on the licensing deal worked out.

Category leaders have their strengths and weaknesses but as seen from the lens of the person using the tool. Some may want ease of use ... others a full-blown suite of DML tools. From this perspective, BO is as good as any of the other leading tools for reports. If anything, BO is great at controlling the user's interface eg highly user friendly capable. It does not come out of the box that way, but a competent BO wizard can make that happen on balance easier than other products. Finally, BO supports conserving server resources better than most. BI solutions are not about the tool. Any solution concerning the presentation of information has to focus on the business requirements and then a corresponding data foundation. Getting these is often a challenge at several levels and so I understand that there is this hope that maybe the toolset can make up for a lack of clear specifications. Bottom Line: Get the data foundation in shape first prior to implementing a reporting tool.

In general, we use BusinessObjects for extensive reports. BusinessObjects reports have several pages. Our users prefer BusinessObjects over Microsoft Excel because Excel is limited in its data files and all that. 

We are using SAP BusinessObjects because its scheduling capabilities are more powerful than those of other tools. 

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.

I've been working with BusinessObjects for about eight years.

BusinessObjects is scalable, allowing us to work with many pages. 

We are thinking about switching to Power BI. I think we will no longer use SAP BusinessObjects after one or two years.

I rate SAP BusinessObjects seven out of 10. However, I can't recommend BusinessObjects because its usage is limited, and it can't provide a new solution for end-users.

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.

• Way of creating reports
• Ease of use
• Can connect to any database
• Create models with ease.

In our organization, they chose this product mainly due to its ease of use. They were also able to generate high revenue by identifying their backlog areas.

The calculation engine requires some improvement.

For eight years.

No issues with stability.

No issues with scalability.

A 10 out of 10.

I would say it's mostly straightforward, because it has a wide range of compatible operating systems and also it was easy to install. The whole software is bundled and provided to the consumer.

It's the best product in the market when it comes to reporting technology.

• Design Studio is very flexible because we can use JavaScript.
• We can use CSS styles for stunning visualization.

• Design Studio is a highly optimized tool for integrating with SAP BW and SAP HANA. Obviously, that increases reporting performance.
• Complex requirements can be met using JavaScript.
• The CSS editor saves time.

In Design Studio version 1.6, when creating a custom geo map component, we are not able to associate a shape layer with data sources.

We have used all the business objects tools, but this one satisfies all of the business requirements in an optimized way.

It’s a straightforward and simple tool to install.

It was a simple to implement after we met the prerequisite before installing it.

The features that I think are valuable in SAP Business Objects - BOBJ (WEBi, BI Launch Pad, Rich Client) are the drill down capabilities to the nitty gritty lowest level, and perform an in depth analysis from different angles. Other products may also have this, but I believe with BOBJ, it is a lot better.

By giving more options of looking at the same scenario, in various forms, I can perform reliable satisfactory work for my clients with minimal errors. I believe this product has gained the market share well enough to call itself, the market leader.

SAP should work on performing the deployment and-post implementation support, a bit easier . I believe that would be a solid enough ground for this product to gain more pieces in the pie (market share). Also, they need to have more "Step-By-Step" documentation available for consultants, similar to what others have e,g. IBM.

7+ years.

No.

None, for the most part.

There have been no issues scaling it for our needs.

Customer Service:

N/A

Technical Support:

N/A

I have also used Bi-Query, Micro Strategy, Cognos, Tableau, etc. I like SAP BO better than other ones.

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

None.

1. SAP BO/BI

• Enterprise scalability
• Security
• Ease of use
• Semantic layer

2. Tableau

• Visualization
• Data discovery
• Turnaround time

3. IBM Cognos

• Enterprise scalability
• Security
• In-memory feature

4. MS BI - Flexibility

5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade

6. QlikView

• Data visualization
• Turnaround time.

7. OBIEE

• Enterprise security
• Semantic model

1. SAP BO/BI

• Visualization

2. Tableau

• Scalability

3. IBM Cognos

• Ease of use

4. MS BI

• Visualization
• Ease of use

5. Pentaho

• Ease of use
• Semantic layer

6. QlikView

• Scalability

7. OBIEE

• Visualization
• Database connectivities

• I have used SAP for almost 12 years
• Tableau – Rate 6/10 overall but 9/10 for visualization. I have used it for three years
• IBM Cognos - Rate 7/10 and I have used it for three years
• MS BI - Rate 5/10 and I have used it for two years
• Pentaho - Rate 5/10 and I have used it for over five years
• QlikView- Rate 7/10 and I have used it for two years
• OBIEE – Rate 7/10 and I have used it for five years

Customer Service:

• SAP BO/BI - Below average
• Tableau - Good
• IBM Cognos - Average
• MS BI - Average
• Pentaho - Average
• QlikView - Above average
• OBIEE - Average

Technical Support:

• SAP BO/BI - Below average
• Tableau - Good
• IBM Cognos - Average
• MS BI - Average
• Pentaho - Average
• QlikView - Above average
• OBIEE - Average

There is no perfect solution or one size fits all. Be clear on the requirements that you are trying to meet with the tools and solutions and do a POC and thorough evaluation. Also most of the time a single vendor works better than using best of the breed solution.