SAP readies 'huge' BI upgrade
Business Objects 4.0 features a rash of improvements, but some users are upset the suite's well-liked DeskI tool is being retired
SAP is gearing up to launch Business Objects 4.0, its biggest BI (business intelligence) release in roughly three years, later this month at an event in New York.
"This release is huge," said Dave Weisbeck, senior vice president of BI and EIM solution management. "Every single tool has had some major upgrades. There's not a single place we haven't touched."
[ Meanwhile, Oracle is aiming a new BI app at SAP customers. | Discover what's new in business applications with InfoWorld's Technology: Applications newsletter and Killer Apps blog. ]
But the release is a milestone in another way as well, as it spells the retirement of the suite's well-liked Desktop Intelligence component, also known as DeskI. That decision is not going over well with some customers.
However, those who upgrade to Business Objects 4.0 will get tighter integration of SAP's BI tools with its EIM (enterprise information management) product line. The release's goal is to cut down on the amount of time and effort customers spend on the process of assembling, transforming, modeling and ultimately delivering information to users, Weisbeck said.
SAP is also introducing a module called Information Steward that will enable employees with particularly keen perspectives on certain types of information -- such as a sales manager who keeps tabs on customers' contact records -- to monitor and rate data quality on an ongoing basis.
Another new module, Event Insight, takes advantage of the CEP (complex event processing) technology SAP gained through its acquisition of Sybase last year.
CEP software sifts through the slew of transactional "events" that occur in a company's systems each day in real time, looking for patterns and correlations and possibly triggering actions based on what it finds. It's commonly used for purposes such as fraud detection or fast stock trading, although additional use cases, such as logistics, are emerging. Event Insight will enable customers to build CEP models and deliver the information through dashboards and alerts.
Other new features in the 4.0 release include a "common query design experience across all data sources"; improved scalability, including native 64-bit support; and better access to unstructured information, according to an SAP document.
However, along with those new innovations, comes the DeskI retirement. Users who upgrade to 4.0 will have to migrate their DeskI assets to the Web Intelligence (WebI) tool.
DeskI's fate has drawn much attention on the unofficial Business Objects Board, with many posters lamenting the tool's retirement.
SAP's decision to drop DeskI reportedly even contributed to one company's decision to jettison Business Objects altogether.
