The solution has been extremely stable. We haven't had any issues so far.
The setup is pretty easy. It's not hard at all.
Technical support, overall, has been very good and we've been happy with their level of service.
Easy to set up with good stability and helpful technical support
Pros and Cons
- "The setup is pretty easy. It's not hard at all."
- "The UI could be updated a bit."
What is most valuable?
What needs improvement?
The basic components of the solution could be improved.
The UI could be updated a bit.
I can't think of any features that are currently missing from the product at this time.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using the solution for about seven years at this point. It's been a while. We have a lot of experience with it.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We've found the stability of the solution to be very good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.
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SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform
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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Plenty of users in our organization actually use the solution.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support for the most part has been very good. We've had a positive experience and we are quite satisfied with the level of support they provide to us.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I don't recall the company using a previous solution. As far as I know, the company has only ever really used SAP.
How was the initial setup?
We've found the initial setup to be pretty straightforward. It's not so complex. A company shouldn't have any trouble with the implementation process.
What about the implementation team?
We didn't need any assistance with the integration process. It's a process that I manage as an integration manager.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We pay our licensing fees on a monthly basis. I can't speak to how much they are. I don't recall there being any extra costs above the licensing itself.
What other advice do I have?
We are customers and end-users. We don't have a business relationship with the organization.
On a scale from one to ten, I would rate it as a perfect ten. It's been great. For the most part, we have been happy with the product.
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.
Project Lead at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
It provides every feature you're looking for to perform OLAP and OLTP-based transactional and analytical reporting.
Buyer's Guide
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform
March 2025
Learn what your peers think about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.
It has improved our work but is difficult to use
Pros and Cons
- "I have seen improvement in our work after using the solution."
- "It is not simple to use."
Business Intelligence Functional Manager BU SAP at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Easy to manage with good features for broadcasting information or scheduling reports
Pros and Cons
- "The solution's user security is extremely effective. You can profile very well. All the users and all the functionality is protected and that includes information and data segregation."
- "The self-service area, or dashboard, needs some improvement. While the reporting itself is great, the dashboard and Analytics Cloud are not user friendly."
Director of Data Analytics at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Jul 1, 2013
Struggled with Excelsius
System Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
It has better scheduling capabilities than other solutions, but it has limitations on how you can use it
Pros and Cons
- "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."
Business Intelligence Analyst at a engineering company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I can perform reliable satisfactory work for my clients with minimal issues.
BI Expert at a transportation company with 51-200 employees
Vendor
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 but a little deeper compare on these two BI platforms.
As we all know both Business Objects and Microsoft are big companies who are working on BI solutions and both have their own advantages. It’s not true to compare them in term of which one is better, we have to check what is our requirements and then depend on requirements take the decision whether MS or BO. A vision like this could help us relief from religious decisions against a software or technology.
In a BI architect first of all we have the data store level, I mean the storage of the raw data not the stage or olap cubes or universe data source, I mean the first place of our data. This is important to know that where your raw data is and what is the type of storage used to store them. Whether file system or Access or Fox database or a complex database solution like oracle, sqlserver or a web service can made our place of raw data. We have to check our tools against them; check to see which one gives us a smooth way to transfer them among ETL process to destination. So take a look at what Business Objects gives us.
There is a Data Integration platform in Business objects but the problem is that you have to buy that separately because it is not shipped with the BI system. In Microsoft sqlserver enterprise you have all the services and features needed for this part of the game. SSIS is the service that sqlserver deliver for data extract, integration and load. Both product gives you the ability to enhance the data quality and data cleansing portion of your integration phase, but when we down to details things change a little to the Microsoft side, because of the ability of using your Dot.Net knowledge to write complex parts of ETL process you have more room to think and do whatever you want in your process, and in BO side it is always look simple and it’s really not easy to take complex situation into it. There are advantages and disadvantages on this. First you can do many things with the ability of dot.net code but it could give you complexity in your development so you have to decide on your situation, if things looking normal both could fit your need, but if the situation is not stable and you have to make yourself ready for the changes in future it’s better to get the power of SSIS and spend a little more time development today to create a powerful and easily changeable mechanism that could help you in future. You can also do that with Business Objects Data Integration but you have to spend more bucks for the development and changes of ETL processes because development cost in Business Objects solutions is always a nightmare for a project.
At this point we have a brief understanding of differences in ETL process between two vendors, so it’s good time to take a look back to the source database. Here is a very quick answer, if you use mostly MS products to store your transactional data then take your decision and move to MS for a robust and compatible BI platform. Business Objects don’t have a database system and it always used other database solutions to store data for its universe.
So guess what happen ! from an administrator perspective performance tuning is somehow problematic ! since we should use other database systems we should use different technics for each database systems. And this is one of the areas that MS wins the competition because when you use Microsoft platforms there lots of joint mechanism for performance considerations.
Before the SQL Server 2012 we have SSAS with its famous aggregated cubes, because of the nature of SSAS in previous versions we couldn’t call it a semantic layer, here is a little why. A semantic layer provides translation between underlying data store and business-level language(Business semantic that business users familiar with). There was no actual translation in previous release of SSAS. Perhaps we had some difficulties over SSAS to understand for a business user. So Microsoft change its approach in SSAS 2012 from delivering a complex understandable solution to end users to a true semantic layer like what we has in Business Objects that called Universe. So from now MS BI users can use a powerful toolset like Microsoft Excel and use their existing knowledge to interact with semantic layer. What Microsoft do in backyard is to create aggregations in memory so the performance of this approach is really high ! I don’t want to deep dive into what Microsoft do in backyard in this post but it would be one of my next topics. (sounds like advertisement 
)
I talked about aggregations so know that in BO there are no facility for aggregation tables, so you have to deal with DBAs to create aggregation tables manually and integrate them into the Universe.
One of the important aspects of a BI system is the learning curve of the solution, it was always the slogan of the Business Object that learning curve is very low ! yes for end users it is not hard to interact with Universe. BUT ! the thing that I say here is the problem of every BI platform from Microsoft to BO or Cognos that deliver Semantic layer, it is very easy for a user to get the wrong answer, because everything is behind the Universe or Semantic Model and know that tracking from report back to the base data is a Non-trivial task. So be aware about letting users create whatever they want with their own knowledge. There should always an IT professional observing the whole process. So never think about a fully out of the box solution, because you will shortly find it on Mars ! or your users may have the chance to take decisions based on wrong calculations and find their way to Mars again
Another important aspect of a BI systems is the cost of it, about the Business Objects we can definitely say that it is expensive and for sure Microsoft could be expensive ! but how can we decide ' the answer is to compare the detail parts, there are 4 main parts Database, ETL, Semantic Layer and Reporting or user interaction layer. If you choose to go over BO you have to find heads for your data warehouse, database solution and Java skills or tomcat or other J2EE platform professionals for ETL and development phase and BO specific heads for Universe Modeling, Design, Implementation, perhaps you need security administration and if you want to integrate your Active Directory with this platform it is problematic and integrating with other LDAP platforms is a nightmare ! so be aware of these costs. The point of Microsoft solution is that we can use our in house knowledge like Dot.Net and SqlServer, SharePoint, Windows Server and these knowledge are transferable to other skills. But with BO we need headcount dedicated to BO (Universe Design, Implementation, Maintenance, Security) since BO skills are not transferable to other skills, those extra heads blow the project’s budget ! Microsoft BI platform is a more manageable, more secure and less expensive solution, I see the BO as a consultant dream, as an endless font of billable hours
Conclusion
I decide to go over Microsoft BI platform but I would not suggest anyone at first place to choose Microsoft. This is really depend on the nature and scale of the project and what you did and what technologies you have used in past but a quick look gives an idea that Microsoft’s platform is looking more robust and coherent in different parts so it can be a very good and convenient choice and perhaps after the release of SQL Server 2012 and its BI Semantic layer the answer is more easier and acceptable than before.
I also would like to hear about your experience on either of these solutions.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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It was an interesting comparison with some useful insight which I appreciate but it gets muddy when you start mixing in the entire platform.
I suggest comparing just the BI tools themselves and leaving database and ETL out of it since those are completely separate decisions. Personally I love BO's semantic layer and its still (even with MS BI 2012) the fact that MS doesn't have it is a massive hole in MS's approach. Yes they now have the "tabular data model" which has potential but its such apples to automobiles comparison to BO universe which is truly just semantic model. MS's approach is an in-memory engine like Tableau or Qlikview server so not really relevant to just a pure BI/reporting evaluation. The other interesting muddy aspect is that BO has multiple tools, not just Bobj/webi and so does MS like Crystal Reports (which is often used without the semantic layer btw). MS has SSRS, Excel services, PerformancePoint, PowerView, PowerMap, Power this and power that. Everything seems to have power these days. Hope we don't get a big solar flair.
Course like someone indicated, the REAL power is in the database. Without a good database platform AND design, the BI tools are all pretty darn worthless. I would argue with the person who claims SqlServer can't handle volume - its a relative thing. Petabytes no. Gigabytes yes. That has more to do with how you build it than it does the platform. Stupid designs have stupid performance. Its usually more about the incompetence of the designer than it is the database. Unless it's my design of course - then it must be the database platform that's at fault ;-)
All that said, it would be an interesting showdown to compare the myriad of MS reporting tools to BO, Cognos, Microstrategy, Tableau, Qlikview, Excel, etc. and include pricing and learning curve in the analysis.
What I see is that SSRS is a 2 day class with no conference verses Tableau has a week long conference just on a reporting tool that's supposed to be a super easy end-user friendly tool! Am I the only one that thinks thats a bit crazy? Oh and the Qlikview 4 day conference is coming up. Don't miss it so you can find out how easy it is to use. It's so easy you have to attend a week long conference every year! Course it is in Orlando and my golf game is bit rusty...