SAP BusinessObjects Update
One Year Later: What You Need To Know About SAP and the SAP BusinessObjects Portfolio
by Davin Wilfrid
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A year after acquiring business intelligence (BI) and performance management vendor Business Objects for $6.8 billion, SAP has continued to push the evolution of the combined suite of products. Business Objects is now called SAP BusinessObjects, and offers a more tightly integrated suite of tools and technologies that sit on top of SAP ERP, SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (SAP NetWeaver BW), and other data sources. The result is a unified platform that delivers real-time information to business users and offers business process-focused solutions for other important areas such as risk management and system performance.
In January, SAP changed the names of some products to clarify how the pieces all fit together. All the former Business Objects tools — and some former SAP applications, such as those for managing governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) — now fall under the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio. See Figure 1 for an updated list of all products now in the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio.
SAP BusinessObjects and BI
When it comes to BI and your system landscape, SAP makes a clear distinction between where the data is stored and how it is presented. For all user-facing tools and applications, SAP BusinessObjects is the sole focus of SAP development going forward.
"All of the innovation and growth on the front-end BI capabilities will be clearly focused on SAP BusinessObjects BI functionality. The SAP BI tools will no longer continue as the face of BI going forward," says Dan Kearnan, SAP BI director.
That means companies using the SAP BEx tools (BEx Report Designer, BEx Web Analyzer, etc.) should consider moving to the SAP BusinessObjects capabilities such as Crystal Reports and SAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius, says Kearnan. SAP will continue to support the SAP front-end BI tools, but will not enhance them in the future.
To accurately mark the distinction between front-end BI tools and back-end data storage, SAP has changed the name of its central data warehouse to SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (BW) from SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence (BI).
“From now on, the term ‘business intelligence’ is going to be clearly associated with SAP BusinessObjects, says Kearnan. “In the past, BI was associated with NetWeaver BI — which in fact meant the data warehouse, the OLAP engine and the various SAP NetWeaver BI tools. Now we refer to these components separately.”
The SAP BusinessObjects suite is not a replacement for SAP NetWeaver BW, says Kearnan.
“This does not disrupt anyone’s investment in SAP NetWeaver BW. You can still leverage all the modeling you’ve done,” he says. “It means you have a new suite of BI capabilities with a much broader set of functionality that can be used to access any data, both SAP and non SAP.”
SAP BusinessObjects and GRC
SAP BusinessObjects is more than just a suite of business intelligence tools, say company executives. Rather, it is a central location for cross-platform integration of data, performance management, and GRC applications.
To help cement this idea, SAP moved its solutions for enterprise performance management (EPM) and GRC under the SAP BusinessObjects umbrella. For example, SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (SAP BPC) is now called SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation. SAP GRC Process Control is now called SAP BusinessObjects Process Control. See Figure 1 for a complete overview of the SAP BusinessObjects product portfolio.
According to David Ahrens, vice president of Business User Applications at SAP, the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio is the natural home for tools and applications that extend beyond the core SAP Business Suite into legacy or other technologies. Grouping GRC and EPM applications in with the platform-agnostic SAP BusinessObjects BI tools helps reinforce the full reach of the product suite (Figure 2).
“When I go to a customer and show them an overview of the entire portfolio, they often say they didn’t know SAP had this. That’s part of why we put this under the SAP BusinessObjects umbrella. It’s a home for the entire portfolio of solutions targeting the business user that exists outside of the core SAP Business Suite,” says Ahrens.
Another advantage of this approach is to convince customers to think of solutions in a more holistic way, says Ahrens. Instead of considering each application as a single solution to a single issue, SAP hopes that customers understand the relationship between the solutions in the context of business processes.
“EPM is more than just BPC, and GRC is more than just Access Control and Process Control. They all work together. Customers want to understand the solutions in the context of business value. That’s when they have the ‘A-ha!’ moment,” he says.
Companies will not be required to purchase the full SAP BusinessObjects portfolio to implement individual components such as SAP BusinessObjects Access Control, but SAP urges companies to consider the advantages of doing so. For example, on its own SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management can manage corporate objectives and track KPIs. However, it can also pull in “key risk indicators” from SAP BusinessObjects Risk Management for a more comprehensive risk-adjusted perspective on a company’s strategy.
Going Forward
To help companies assess which components of the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio will help drive business value and overall sustainability, SAP and some of its system integrator partners are conducting on-site assessments, workshops and strategy sessions. These sessions last anywhere from two days to 10 weeks, depending on the depth and complexity of a client’s needs, according to Kearnan.
He also mentions that business intelligence will increasingly be integrated with the core SAP suite in future releases. The SAP Business Suite enhancement package scheduled for the latter half of 2009 will include some components of the SAP BusinessObjects suite embedded inside the SAP Business Suite.
The Updated SAP BusinessObjects Portfolio
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) solutions
- Analytics
- SAP BusinessObjects Voyager
- SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Workbench
- SAP BusinessObjects Set Analysis
- Dashboards and Visualization
- SAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius Enterprise
- Xcelsius Engage Server
- Xcelsius Engage
- Xcelsius Present
- SAP BusinessObjects Dashboard Builder
- SAP BusinessObjects VizServer
- SAP BusinessObjects StarTree Software Development Kit (SDK)
- SAP BusinessObjects TableLens SDK
- SAP BusinessObjects TimeWall SDK
- Information infrastructure
- SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise
- Query, reporting, and analysis
- SAP BusinessObjects Desktop Intelligence
- SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence
- Search and navigation
- SAP BusinessObjects Polestar
- SAP BusinessObjects Intelligent Search
SAP BusinessObjects Information Management (IM) solutions
- Data integration
- SAP BusinessObjects Data Integrator
- SAP BusinessObjects Data Federator
- SAP BusinessObjects Rapid Marts packages
- SAP BusinessObjects Text Analysis
- Data quality management
- SAP BusinessObjects Data Quality Management software
- SAP BusinessObjects Universal Data Cleanse software
- SAP BusinessObjects Data Quality Management for SAP solutions
- SAP BusinessObjects Data Quality Management for Oracle’s Siebel CRM
- SAP BusinessObjects Data Insight software
- SAP BusinessObjects Portalsoft software solutions
- SAP BusinessObjects Watchlist Security software
- Data services
- SAP BusinessObjects Data Services
- Metadata
- SAP BusinessObjects Metadata Management
SAP Business Objects OnDemand offerings
- SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand
- Crystalreports.com
- SAP BusinessObjects Information on Demand
- Business Applications OnDemand
SAP BusinessObjects governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) solutions
- Risk management
- SAP BusinessObjects Risk Management
- Access
- SAP BusinessObjects Access Control
- Process
- SAP BusinessObjects Process Control
- Global trade
- SAP BusinessObjects Global Trade Services
- Environmental, health, and safety (EH&S) compliance
- Data privacy
- The Data Privacy composite application by SAP and Cisco
SAP BusinessObjects enterprise performance management (EPM) solutions
- Strategy management
- SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management
- Business planning and consolidation
- SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation
- Financial consolidation
- SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation
- Financial information management
- SAP BusinessObjects Financial Information Management
- Intercompany reconciliation
- SAP BusinessObjects Intercompany
- Profitability and cost management
- SAP BusinessObjects Profitability and Cost Management
- Spend analytics
- SAP BusinessObjects Spend Performance Management
- Supply chain performance management
- SAP BusinessObjects Supply Chain Performance Management
For small and midsized companies
- SAP BusinessObjects Edge
- SAP BusinessObjects Edge Standard
- SAP BusinessObjects Edge with Data Integration
- SAP BusinessObjects Edge with Data Management
- Crystal Reports solutions
- Crystal Reports
- Crystal Reports Visual Advantage
- Crystal Reports Server
- Crystal Reports Viewer
- Crystal Reports for Eclipse
- Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET
- Crystal Reports Developer Advantage
- Xcelsius
- Xcelsius Engage Server
- Xcelsius Engage
- Xcelsius Present
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| Figure 1 |
The full SAP BusinessObjects product suite |
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| Figure 2 |
How the pieces fit together |
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