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2 SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 in SAP Environments

BARC – Business Application Research Center

Table of Contents

Overview: BI with SAP BusinessObjects solutions ............................................................ 3

Brandwidth of BI: Typical requirements ............................................................................... 4

End-user roles in BI environments ....................................................................................... 6

SAP BusinessObjetcs BI 4.0: Modern, integrated BI suite .................................................. 8

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0: Tool overview ....................................................................... 9

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 for SAP NetWeaver BW ...................................................... 10

Improved access to SAP NetWeaver BS data with BICS .................................................. 11

Access to heterogeneous data sources ............................................................................. 11

Interoperability in the new SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 suite ........................................... 12

Integration with the SAP NetWeaver technology platform ................................................. 13

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 embedded in the SAP Business Suite .............................. 14

Step-by-step guideline for SAP customers ....................................................................... 15

Transition screnarios for BI tool categories ....................................................................... 15

Dashboards and cockpits ................................................................................................ 15

Standard reporting .......................................................................................................... 16

Ad hoc reporting .............................................................................................................. 16

Exploration (search and guided analysis) ....................................................................... 17

Analysis ........................................................................................................................... 17

Planning .......................................................................................................................... 17

Outlook on SAP product strategy ...................................................................................... 18

In-memory computing ..................................................................................................... 18

Mobility ............................................................................................................................ 18

Collaboration ................................................................................................................... 19

Summary ............................................................................................................................... 20

3 SAP BusinesObjects BI 4.0 in SAP Environments


Overview: BI with SAP BusinessObjects solutions

Business Intelligence (BI) supports companies by delivering important information for deci-

sion-making and management processes. To ensure a successful implementation, compa-

nies need to address a range of technical and business concerns as well as create a sup-

porting organization. For more than 10 years SAP has delivered BI technology to provide

relevant decision-making information to a broad range of users.

SAP BW: In 1998 SAP launched SAP BW, a complete packaged business intelligence (BI)

solution designed to complement SAP ERP applications. The package contains connectors

to SAP ERP modules, a data warehouse for storing source data, subject-oriented data marts,

predefined content as well as tools for reporting, analysis, and planning. The goal was to

provide a plug-and-play BI solution that would make it fast and easy for SAP customers to

enjoy the benefits of business intelligence.

Since then, SAP has expanded the package in response to customer requirements and im-

proved its quality, reliability, and performance. Version 7, which came out in 2006, offered

new tools for planning and standard reporting as well as enhanced usability for its front-end

reporting and analysis tools.

Business Objects: In 2007, SAP took a major leap towards delivering a world-class BI solu-

tion when it acquired Business Objects, the leading BI player by market share at the time.

The acquisition brought SAP a bevy of best-of-breed BI tools and applications as well as new

and more open data management capabilities.

Several months after the acquisition, SAP announced a strategic roadmap for BI that outlined

how it would combine BI products from the two companies, rationalize overlapping products,

and integrate technologies. In short, SAP decided to focus future development on the Busi-

ness Objects BI product line, move legacy SAP Business Explorer (BEx) query and reporting

products to maintenance, and improve the interfaces between Business Objects products

and SAP BW to optimize performance and usability.

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0: In April 2011, SAP launched the first major release for SAP

BusinessObjects BI solutions following the acquisition. The SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0

suite delivers new features, functions, and an improved integration with SAP NetWeaver BW

and the SAP Business Suite.



SAP BusinessObjects Portfolio

The current SAP BusinessObjects portfolio of solutions is divided into five groups: Business

Intelligence, Enterprise Information Management, Enterprise Performance Management,

Analytic Applications as well as Governance, Risk, and Compliance. This document focuses

on its BI solutions.

BI solutions: The suite of BI solutions encompasses all reporting, analysis, and

dashboarding functionality.

Enterprise Information Management (EIM) solutions: The SAP BusinessObjects

portfolio gives customers a data services platform that covers many data integration

scenarios, provides robust access to heterogeneous data sources along with data

quality management functionality, and tightly integrates with the SAP BusinessOb-

jects suite of BI and planning tools.

Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) solutions: These solutions leverage the

BI suite. These include Profitability and Cost Management, Strategy Management,

and Planning and Consolidation.

Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) solutions: These applications, which also

run with the BI suite, help companies manage risk and compliance.

Analytic Applications: SAP offers a set of predefined applications for specific indus-

tries and business scenarios within the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio. These appli-

cations are built upon SAP BusinessObjects solutions.

This research paper is designed to help existing SAP customers plan their BI strategies in

line with the new SAP BusinessObjects environment. The guide will describe the new report-

ing, analysis, and dashboarding products in the portfolio and recommend how and when to

implement them based on their existing SAP environments.

Brandwidth of BI: Typical requirements

Different requirements for BI solutions can be observed in companies. They start with easy-

to-use dashboards for everyone and end with complex data mining workbenches that can

only be used by experts. Chart 1 depicts the major tool categories for BI and Performance

Management (PM) and plots them by end-user flexibility and development complexity.

The main categories are:

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Ad hoc reporting and exploration

In many cases, users want more interactivity than they can get with standard reports. Ad hoc

reporting tools are geared to non-professional report developers and provide basic filtering

and navigation features, such as drill down, ranking, and conditional formatting. Users can

start their analysis by opening a predefined report or selecting query objects from a semantic

layer. Compared with analysis tools, ad hoc reporting tools have fewer analytical functions

and less robust navigational features.

Exploration tools allow casual users to search for relevant data and reports using a keyword

interface. In an exploration process after a final search, users often use filters and a simple,

set-oriented navigation.

Analysis

Analysis tools, also known as online analytical processing (OLAP) tools, provide dimensional

views of data (versus reporting views) and make it easy for users to drill down, drill across,

and pivot dimensions as well as apply sophisticated calculations without scripting. Users can

also define new sets and apply calculations to them. Analysis tools can run against dimen-

sional or relational databases.

End-user roles in BI environments

SAP BW offers two tools for reporting, analysis, and planning: BEx Analyzer (including the

Web edition) and Web Application Designer. The new SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 suite now

offers different tools, which allow customers to better tailor reporting, analysis, and planning

to user roles and requirements. Although the new portfolio should improve adoption and us-

age, it requires SAP customers to spend more time upfront understanding user require-

ments.

User categories: To select the right tools, companies must first segment users into catego-

ries based on their analytical habits and requirements. These profiles make it easier to as-

sign the right BI tool to each category of user.

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Dashboards with drill-down features. These tools generally provide a Web interface to

promote ubiquitous access and minimize administration.

SAP BusinessObjetcs BI 4.0: Modern, integrated BI suite

With the new major release of SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0, SAP now offers reporting, dash-

boarding, and analysis tools in a BI suite for all categories and user roles in a modern, inte-

grated architecture. The new suite can be categorized as:

Comprehensive: SAP’s new BI suite contains tools for standard reporting, ad hoc

reporting, analysis, dashboards, and guided exploration. This is one of the most com-

prehensive BI platforms in the industry.

Open: Business users need to access information stored in multiple systems and lo-

cations to make effective decisions. The universe concept used with most SAP Busi-

nessObjects tools enables business users to access a variety of data sources. For

example, users can query SAP NetWeaver BW as well as third-party relational and

multidimensional data sources and combine the result sets in a single report. With the

new BI 4.0 suite, this process is now even easier thanks to multi-source universes.

Self-service: The new SAP BusinessObjects BI environment makes it easier to cre-

ate and deploy new applications. Rather than having developers build applications or

reports from scratch to meet each new request, business users can now create their

own reports in a self-service manner by selecting predefined metrics, dimensions,

and other objects from a semantic layer. In addition to easing the backlog of reports

and requests, this improves user satisfaction and adoption while saving time and

money.

Performance: SAP’s new BI offering contains a new concept using in-memory com-

puting technologies, which improve query performance for large data volumes. Query

performance is one of the most important factors to obtain higher levels of user satis-

faction.



Mobile: SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 now delivers native support for mobile devices.

This mobile support makes it faster and easier to create and deploy new applications

to all relevant recipients.

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0: Tool overview

The SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 suite addresses different BI tool classes to provide BI for

every user type:

Product Category Strategic Products Legacy Products

Dashboarding SAP BusinessObejcts Dashboards

(formerly known as Xcelsius)

SAP BEx Web Application

Designer

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Ad hoc reporting SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelli-

gence

n/a

Analysis SAP BusinessObjects Analysis SAP BEx Analyzer

Search and exploration SAP BusinessObjects Explorer n/a

Figure 3: Strategic and legacy BI products from SAP



SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 for SAP NetWeaver BW

The new BI suite provides many new features that will significantly enhance the quality and

adoption of customers’ BI and performance management solutions. For SAP NetWeaver BW

customers, the new SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 provides significant new features compared

to the legacy SAP BEx front-end tools:

Common architecture: The new SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 tools work within a

common architecture that simplifies administration, reduces costs, and enhances us-

ability. For example, most tools in the suite share a semantic layer, portal, security

model as well as look and feel. With the new release, SAP delivers this architecture,

providing shared services for querying, charting, metadata, prompting, and data ac-

cess.

Semantic layer: The new products leverage a common semantic layer that promotes

reuse and self-service on top of SAP NetWeaver BW. The semantic layer defines a

set of objects in business terms that shield users from the complexity of back-end da-

tabases. Developers and casual business users then drag and drop these objects in-

to a panel to create reports, dashboards, and analyses.

Role-based: SAP now gives customers the ability to tailor their solution to specific

roles (e.g. IT report creator, business report creator, business analyst, report viewer,

business explorer). Each role corresponds to a different tool in the SAP portfolio. In

addition, administrators can restrict access to data within each tool based on groups.

Role-based applications tailor the information and views to individual groups of users.

Heterogeneous data access: The new tools enable users to easily access many re-

lational or multidimensional data sources via the semantic layer. Consequently, users

can combine data from multiple sources in the same report or even the same table.

With the new BI 4.0 suite, this process is now even easier thanks to multi-source uni-

verses.

Ease of use: The broader tool portfolio provides a more user-friendly, Web-based in-

terface which can increase the use of data in SAP NetWeaver BW systems and,

therefore, generate more value from existing SAP NetWeaver BW data warehouse

investments.



Pervasive: SAP’s new BI suite provides better alignment for power users in the busi-

ness units. The self-service concepts are clearly more efficient compared to the lega-

cy SAP BEx front-end tools.

Improved access to SAP NetWeaver BS data with BICS

Before using SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0, SAP customers have to decide how they want to

access SAP NetWeaver BW content. With the native BICS (BI Consumer Services) access

to existing and new SAP BW/BEx queries, SAP delivers an SAP-exclusive way to connect to

SAP NetWeaver BW content. Additionally, there are several other options to leverage infor-

mation in SAP environments.

BI Consumer Services (BICS): BICS is the data-access layer for SAP NetWeaver

BW front-end tools and can now be leveraged by SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0. BICS

is built upon native SAP API calls and allows SAP NetWeaver BW users to reuse

their BEx query definitions. The new data access architecture allows a TCO reduction

by reusing existing query definitions. In addition, it supports better query performance

using the native API as well as the consumption of OLAP metadata (e.g. hierarchies

and variables) in SAP NetWeaver BW.

Direct access to InfoProviders: With the new architecture, SAP offers customers di-

rect access to SAP NetWeaver BW data without using the OLAP processor. This ap-

proach allows high-performance access to the DSO layer in SAP NetWeaver BW im-

plementations.

Legacy OLAP universes: SAP BusinessObjects universes that are already imple-

mented with SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1 are still supported on the new SAP Busi-

nessObjects BI 4.0 platform. Customers can run legacy universes parallel to BICS

access.

Access to heterogeneous data sources

SAP BusinessObjects offers good possibilities for merging SAP BW and third-party data.

SAP customers can choose from and implement several different options to deliver a flexible,

comprehensive architecture.

Multi-source universes with the new semantic layer: SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0

now offers a new semantic layer that enables customers to join different sources in

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SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 embedded in the SAP Business Suite

Customers using SAP NetWeaver BW as well as SAP Business Suite can benefit from this

enhanced integration. Besides the integration into SAP Solution Manager and the other as-

pects mentioned above, the SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 suite is also deeply integrated in

the SAP Business Suite. The new integration delivers a modern user experience and com-

pelling, actionable analytics directly embedded in the SAP Business Suite workflows with no

need to switch to another environment to access BI.

With these new embedded analytics SAP Business Suite customers can:

Improve the efficiency of their business processes

Enable pervasive BI from the boardroom to the shop floor

Close the gap between strategy and execution

The integration leverages investments in the SAP Business Suite to help a broader range of

users gain deeper insight and allow them to act immediately in the context of the transac-

tions. For instance, users can now consume ALV as SAP Crystal Reports, run role-based

analytics via the SAP launch pad, and mash up transactions with interactive visualizations.

SAP also delivers predefined dashboards and reports to provide customers with out-of-the-

box content that leverages best practices and improves the time to value. Through the

unique integration, they can easily extend and customize this content to meet specific needs.

The new embedded analytic capabilities support different scenarios including:

Scenarios Description Value

Display lists with SAP

Crystal Reports

Operational reports Layout for SAP ALV

Leverage ALV invest-ment

High layout control Real-time scenarios

Deploy as SAP

NetWeaver BW content

Reports and dashboards deployed as BW content

IIntegration with SAP roles and launch pad

Leverage BW invest-ments

Interactive reports and dashboards

Real-time scenarios

Mash-ups Integrated mash-ups Read and write options

Easy-to-use, interactive visualizations

Real-time scenarios

Figure 6: Overview of new scenarios for embedded analytics



Step-by-step guideline for SAP customers

As an SAP customer, you should evaluate your current and future BI strategies in light of the

new SAP BusinessObjects environment. To ensure a smooth transition, your company

should:

Start thinking about it now. Now is the time to start the process of transitioning your

existing BI tools to the new environment. This is especially true if you have multiple

applications and reports written in the original SAP NetWeaver BW environment. SAP

BusinessObjects BI 4.0 offers options to reuse existing developments and secure ex-

isting investments.

Define a BI strategy first. Using a project-by-project approach without an overall BI

strategy is one of the main reasons why companies do not achieve the desired level

of success in their projects or obtain optimal benefits from their BI systems. This

strategy should cover technical, business as well as organizational aspects.

Create a roadmap. The first step in transitioning to the new environment is to devel-

op a roadmap that defines 1.) which tools you will implement from the portfolio, 2.)

which timeline is planned for building new applications and converting existing ones

to the new environment, and 3.) which applications can be converted in their current

state and which need to be adapted to meet new requirements.

Act soon. Creating a roadmap takes time and effort. You need to list and prioritize

existing applications and reports, gather user requirements, understand and select

the new tools from the SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 suite, and create timetables for

the complete transition. For this reason, it is imperative that you start developing your

roadmap as soon as possible.

Transition screnarios for BI tool categories

The following scenarios provide additional insight on how SAP customers can migrate to the

new SAP reporting, analysis, and planning environment. Each scenario looks at how SAP

customers create various types of reports and analytic output today and makes recommen-

dations on how to evolve this content with the new SAP BusinessObjects reporting, analysis,

and planning tools.

Dashboards and cockpits

Scenario: Your team uses SAP BEx Analyzer or SAP Web Application Designer to build

dashboards. SAP BEx Analyzer’s Excel client, however, doesn’t provide adequate layout



controls and building dashboards with SAP Web Application Designer is often too costly and

time-consuming.

Recommendation: Use SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards to build new dashboards. Dash-

board offers a state-of-the-art user interface (i.e. Flash), fast response times (once the data

is downloaded), and what-if modeling. SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards can use the new

BI Consumer Interface to SAP BW or the access via universes.

Use BI workspaces in BI 4.0 when the dashboard needs to contain output from numerous

SAP BusinessObjects tools (e.g. tables from reports, charts from analyses, and what-if mod-

els from a dashboard). With BI workspaces, users have self-service options to build up their

own dashboards.

Standard reporting

Scenario: Your team uses SAP BEx Analyzer or SAP Web Application Designer to build

standard reports but these tools aren’t geared to deliver highly formatted, page-oriented, pix-

el-perfect reports that publish content in a variety of formats (e.g. PDF, HTML, CSV, Word,

XML).

Recommendation: Use SAP Crystal Reports to build all new standard reports and convert

existing ones. If users don’t require highly complex reports, you can implement SAP Busi-

nessObjects Web Intelligence for reporting. You can use Web Intelligence as a tool for ad

hoc reporting, page-oriented reports, and easy-to-use analysis.

Ad hoc reporting

Scenario: Some business users who want to create their own reports struggle with the Que-

ry Designer in BEx Analyzer because they find that it is too difficult to use and doesn’t con-

tain the functions they need. As a result, some only use BEx Analyzer to export the data to

Excel where they create a report or perform an analysis. Others ask IT to create a custom

report or simply make decisions based on gut feelings.

Recommendation: Deploy SAP BusinessObjects WebIntelligence to users who want an

easy-to-use interface and semantic layer to access data and create reports. WebIntelligence

is ideal for super users who need a flexible way to gain insight on their data or create ad hoc

reports for colleagues in their departments. Alternatively, SAP BusinessObjects Analysis for

OLAP / Office also provides additional analysis features.

Another, albeit less flexible, option is to use SAP Crystal Reports to create predefined. inter-

active reports tailored to each department. This gives users interactive reports but not the

ability to create their own from scratch. This might be a suitable option for companies that



already plan to use Crystal Reports and only have small-scale ad hoc reporting requirements

in their business units.

Exploration (search and guided analysis)

Scenario: Your casual users don’t explore information because there is no way for them to

do so. At best, they request a power/super user or IT developer to create a custom report for

them using BEx Analyzer or Web Application Designer.

Recommendation: Deploy SAP BusinessObjects Explorer to get a quick win with casual

users who want to search for relevant data and reports using a keyword interface. Explorer

also lets users search result sets using filters and simple set-oriented navigation. The tool

also provides excellent performance because it embeds SAP Business Warehouse Accelera-

tor or an alternative database which processes queries in memory.

Analysis

Scenario: Some power users can use BEx Analyzer effectively and some cannot. Those

who struggle with BEx Analyzer find that BEx Query Designer is too complex to use due to

its vast functions and missing semantic layer.

Recommendation: Deploy SAP BusinessObjects Analysis for OLAP or Office. SAP Busi-

nessObjects Analysis uses the new BI Consumer Interface to SAP BW and supports compa-

rable functions to SAP BEx Analyzer.

Planning

Scenario: You use SAP SEM BPS or SAP BI Integrated Planning (IP) but many business

users find these tools inflexible since they generally require an IT developer to build models,

processes, and forms.

Recommendation: Convert SAP SEM BPS applications to SAP BusinessObjects Plan-

ning and Consolidation (BPC), which is SAP’s strategic planning solution from here onward.

If users are happy with SAP BW Integrated Planning (IP), however, stay with the product for

now since it is not being discontinued. Just keep in mind that SAP will convert BW IP to an

IT-based planning framework for BW and encourage customers to use SAP BPC in the long

term.

Please note that if you are a European company with complex consolidation requirements,

SAP BPC may not support your short-term needs because the product was originally de-

signed to support less complex scenarios. SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation

might be a better fit to such requirements. Also, SAP BPC has run on Microsoft SQL Server

since it was launched in 1999 and was only recently ported to SAP BW. Therefore, the SQL



Server edition may contain additional features and functions that are not currently available

in the SAP BW version. Both BPC versions are strategic for SAP.

Outlook on SAP product strategy

In-memory computing

One of the most important developments over the last months is SAP HANA – an in-memory,

columnar database. In-memory technology can process mass quantities of real-time data in

the main memory of the server to provide immediate results from analyses and transactions.

The most obvious reason for in-memory BI is that it is extremely fast, which is a big plus for

users. The biggest performance bottleneck in typical BI applications is slow disk or even

slower database access, which is hundreds of times slower than RAM access. Since disk

access is not the only bottleneck, however, in-memory tools are not hundreds of times faster

than disk-based tools in general.

SAP HANA will try to deliver solutions to process massive quantities of real-time and analyti-

cal data to provide immediate results from analyses and transactions. SAP will distribute

HANA as both an application and platform for delivering the next generation of business ap-

plications built by SAP as well as its partners and customers.

HANA is an interesting analytical database engine for both SAP customers and non-SAP

customers. The first versions of HANA have already showed good performance and allows

SAPs customers to implement new business cases.

HANA can be used in different scenarios:

Operational data marts for real-time analytics for SAP ERP systems Agile data marts for stand-alone analytic solutions Application accelerators for analytic applications or SAP BW systems

The first release supports the stand-alone data mart; all other scenarios will be supported

over time.

Mobility

As more and more decision-makers need to operate beyond the boundaries of their desks

and offices, mobility has emerged as a key trend in the BI sector and the IT industry in gen-

eral. Decisions are made all the time – and processes need to be completed and recorded

no matter where those decision-makers are. SAP has addressed this increased demand in



the market through its acquisition of Sybase and the Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP). SAP’s

product strategy for mobile BI is to deliver a set of mobile BI applications that can enable the

transformation to mobile enterprises. Solutions for Apple and BlackBerry devices are already

available. With SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, mobile users can access full tool functions

via mobile devices.

Collaboration

The consumerization of IT and the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies have been driving busi-

ness empowerment and the demand for an easy user experience. Massive increases in in-

formation have made it more difficult for business professionals to find pertinent information

and, therefore, often resulted in fragmented, poorly informed decision-making processes.

SAP’s product strategy is to address these challenges by delivering business intelligence

solutions that bring collaborative and social capabilities from SAP StreamWork to SAP Busi-

nessObjects BI. SAP intends to further enhance the collaboration features in its new BI suite

as well as its performance management products in the future.



Summary

SAP’s acquisition of Business Objects has given SAP customers many more options for ar-

chitecting their BI and DW environments. With the new SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 suite,

SAP NetWeaver BW customers will especially benefit from:

Native access to SAP NetWeaver BW through a common semantic layer

Combination of relational, multidimensional, and SAP NetWeaver BW data in one re-

port

BI front-end integration and interoperability across the suite components

More self-service options for power users and report consumers

Mobile device support

Query performance improvements on top of SAP NetWeaver BW

Deeper system integration in the SAP NetWeaver technology platform

SAP customers who are initiating new BI projects in the short term should convert to the new

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 portfolio immediately. Eventually, all SAP NetWeaver BW cus-

tomers will need to undertake this transition since SAP has moved the suite of SAP BEx

front-end tools to maintenance.

Before an organization can switch to the new BI environment, it will need to create a migra-

tion roadmap, understand user roles, gather reporting requirements, and select the proper

tools. Following this process will ensure a greater degree of success throughout the transi-

tion.

With SAP HANA, SAP has taken a new direction with regards to in-memory computing. This

new engine can address the issue of query performance, one of the biggest challenges in BI

projects. In particular, the upcoming HANA release will show the potential of SAP’s new da-

tabase.

SAP Business Objects BI 4 0 in SAP Environments

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