BOBJ 4.0 Makes an Entrance
By Sam Sliman, President, Optimal Solutions Integration

 

SAP Business Analytics General Manager Steve Lucas describes the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Suite 4.0 release as the "the single most important business intelligence and information management release in the history of the company.” SAP Senior VP of BI and EIM Dave Weisbeck adds that "every single tool has had some major upgrades. There's not a single place we haven't touched."

A review of media and analyst commentary on BOBJ 4.0 confirms that these statements are credible. BOBJ 4.0 is, in fact, huge. Announced in February with general release most likely to happen during SAPPHIRE in May, BOBJ 4.0 gives SAP customers much to think about as they map out their BI strategy.

To help on this front we’ve prepared a BOBJ 4.0 breakdown guided by two primary questions: What are the major changes in BOBJ 4.0? And how do these changes deliver greater value?

SAP BOBJ 4.0 Quick Overview

In broad strokes, BOBJ 4.0 represents the culmination of SAP’s acquisition of BusinessObjects back in 2008. The integration of BOBJ and SAP solutions has inspired numerous, often confusing name changes, and release 4.0 brings with it some additional renaming. However, no need to rack your brain over new names in BOBJ 4.0, as SAP has thankfully prepared a clear, succinct then/now naming chart that can be downloaded here: http://bit.ly/fVZb3L. (Note: This PDF includes a link to a comprehensive listing of what’s new in BOBJ 4.0.)

With varying degrees of fulfillment, the promise of BI has pretty much held constant over the past decade: Drive efficiency, competitiveness and profitability by getting accurate, actionable information to decision makers as quickly as possible. Changes in BOBJ 4.0 improve upon all facets of the BI promise. In so doing, the business value BOBJ 4.0 delivers is arguably greater, more immediate, and more meaningful than that of competitive offerings as well as the BOBJ Enterprise XI 3.1 release that is superseded by BOBJ 4.0.

SAP BOBJ 4.0 Change/Value Breakdown

• More accurate and consistent information

At bottom the success or failure of any BI initiative hinges on quality data. SAP has made significant enhancements to the semantic layer of the BOBJ platform. The Business Layer (formerly Universe) supports all data types and presents a single, consistent version of metadata across all BI tools, making BI more consumable. The Business Layer now has an integrated federation engine -- a must have for companies with diverse, sprawling, disparate data sources -- and can be directly linked to Dashboards, enabling the creation of multisource universes and making it much faster and easier to perform analysis across multiple data sources and types. Another key improvement on the data quality front in BOBJ 4.0 is the Information Steward module, which lets individuals with interest in a particular data field continuously monitor the quality of the data contained within it.

• More applications and data sources in the BI loop

SAP’s acquisition of BusinessObjects brought with it the formidable challenge of integrating BOBJ applications with SAP Business Suite applications, as well as with the existing SAP environments of its customers (while maintaining the ability to integrate with non-SAP platforms). With SAP BOBJ 4.0, SAP has made marked progress in addressing the integration challenge. The new Business Intelligence Consumer Services (BICS) tool makes integration with the SAP Business Warehouse (BW) easier and greatly improves scalability and performance. BICS also makes it easier to connect to front-end BI tools such as Crystal Reports, Dashboards (formerly Xcelsius), and Web Intelligence. BOBJ 4.0’s integration with Solution Manager, Identity Manager, and SAP Change and Transport also helps to ease the process of bringing the entire SAP landscape into the BI loop. Also on this front, SAP has integrated BOBJ 4.0 with a broad array of SAP solutions key to driving BI value, including Enterprise Information Management (EIM), Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC), and Enterprise Performance Management (EPM).

• Faster delivery and more complex analysis of information

Bringing real-time transactional data into its fold is arguably the Holy Grail of Business Intelligence, and with BOBJ 4.0’s support (optional) of the SAP High-Performance Analytic Appliance (HANA) and utilization of columnar, in-memory database technology, SAP has put the Holy Grail of BI well within reach. Converting the few remaining skeptics who believed HANA was more hype than reality, a recent benchmark conducted by independent consulting firm WinterCorp, demonstrated that HANA, running on IBM servers, can perform 10,000 queries an hour against 1.3 terabytes of data, returning results within seconds. BOBJ 4.0 also incorporates Complex Event Processing (CEP) capabilities gained through the Sybase acquisition. Dubbed Event Insight, the CEP tool in BOBJ 4.0 helps SAP customers identify trends, track key metrics, and take appropriate action by processing in real time the massive amounts of data that flow daily through a company’s transactional systems.

• More decision makers with access to information

The value equation here is pretty straightforward -- extend the reach of BI to more decision makers throughout your enterprise, provide an intuitive user interface and easy-to-use modeling tools, and deliver decision-ready data in appropriate formats and the ROI on your BI investment increases exponentially. According to a recent benchmark by Ventana Research, usability is the top consideration when evaluating a BI vendor and its solutions. With BOBJ 4.0, SAP achieves unprecedented and unparalleled usability that facilitates greater adoption among business users. A common user interface and common semantic layer make BOBJ 4.0 much easier for business users to learn and use. SAP Explorer 4.0 enables business users to directly search and access data contained in BOBJ 4.0’s Business Layer. BOBJ 4.0’s personalized dashboarding, enhanced data visualization and modeling tools, and support for a variety of mobile platforms makes self-service BI more compelling than ever and ensures that BOBJ 4.0 will be embraced throughout the enterprise.

• A selection of additional, noteworthy enhancements to BOBJ 4.0 include:
• Industry and LoB Analytic Applications – defined as Industry Specific Dashboards and BI Content.
• Enterprise Event Driven Alerting -- i.e. a machine goes down in a plant somewhere and an alert is triggered.
• Unified UI for all BOBJ presentation layer tools.
• NetWeaver version of OLAP Analysis Tool – designed for Business Analysts in an SAP Environment.
• Increased Performance – 64 bit OS compatibility
• Compatible with 20 Languages.

(Visit the Optimal SAP Blog for a comprehensive roundup of articles and analyst commentary on SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.0)

 

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