SAP retires overlapping BI products

Received today

From: Kemal Aydin Date: May 2, 2008  Linked-In

To: Fermin Iduate

Hello,

I asked a question about SAP's acquisition of BOBJ couple months ago, and got very informative responses from the members and on the other boards I posted the same question.

I found out another article on InfoWorld:

SAP retires overlapping BI products
Analyst commends SAP for taking decisive actions, says more is likely to follow

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/03/28/SAP-retires-overlapping-BI-products_1.html

What are your thoughts on this?

And, I also started a new LinkedIn group named "New SAP BI Landscape" to network with people who has experience in these BI solutions ( SAP, BOBJ, Outlooksoft etc ) which are under SAP umbrella now, if you want to become a member please visit this page:

http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/98330/2BCCEC6C8892

Thanks,
Kemal

You pick a very important and demanding question to answer...one that most would not dare to touch unless protected by disclaimer and non-disclosure...or....working with published roadmap documentation.

There have been a few commentaries within the last couple of weeks regarding the theme of your question...that of "retiring" certain products within either organization, which have led me likewise to ask internally the preciseness of these commentaries...given my involvement and understanding of the products from a functional perspective...and also having taken a look under the hood (so to say) under each megamachine from a "non-developer" technical perspective.

Its not a quick nor easy task to select the best of breed or "Golden Applications" out of either side. BO comes to the table from a mostly "Business User" or Departmental perspective with on average a larger # of deals at a lower deal price which is perfect for the ME and SMB markets. They lacked in Business Content and saw that SAP would complement them from a Best Practice and Bsn Content perspective. SAP comes to the table with the biggest most robust global platforms and platform control and developement. Although they have been very thorough in their design interpretation and most importantly EXECUTION of the best practises of the Data Warehousing industry and have employed the latest in technological tools and protocol...they have not received the acceptance of the Business User or Departmental community due to complexity of implementation and a UI which simply "doesn't ring the users bells".

Some of the positive commentary I've seen regarding this subject from both press and even some of your answers here applaud the fact that "Decisions are being made" and that Oracle should in fact take note as they could benefit from such determination and direction. I do take note that this opinion may be somewhat biased.

On one hand you have a slick front-end with what I've got to admit is a pretty sweet mSQL & Office > to Dashboarding mechanism. But I find that if you look into some of the implementation tasks and customization you may need to be a bit more SQL intensive. This is common with what are known as 2-Tier systems. Report/Query writers > Database

On the other hand, you have an immense infrastructure that runs on multiple databases, is fully up to par with all technical protocols and standards, runs off ABAP, .NET, or Java, is integrated with a role based portal, complete with taxonomy engines and fully compliant with all DW practices as well as datamining and information distribution with an Object based and role based authorization concept allowing for SSO capabilites as well. Oh yes...and more importantly this is a 3-tier system Report/Query Writers > Aggregated Models > Database

And the most important item to note is that one does not need to know SQL in order to generate the query.

I'd hate to see something with so much thought and investment that is understood by too little people with not a lot of insight .....simply looked over for just a few bells and wistles.

My personal belief is that they should "morph" the two worlds thereby "stiching" together robust platform with front-end beauty and flexibility.

The problem lies in that they service two worlds....the non-SAP world and the SAP world...and they want the same platform for both. That's going to be a difficult one to solve without quite a few players getting hurt along the way.

Hope this doesn't hurt anyone's feelings or action plans...I've tried to take my area of expertise as honestly, straightforwardly and competently as possible. Hopefully this takes the discussion into a larger context and puts it into the proper perspective.

I want to share my answer with my extended community....