Odds and Ends

A Glimpse of SAP BusinessObjects BI 5.0

Even though SAP customers are just now seeing a glimpse of SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1 through SAP’s customer validation program, a select few customers and partners are getting an early preview of SAP BusinessObjects BI 5.0.

“One of the major goals of BI 5.0 is simplicity,” according to April Erste, SAP spokesperson for business analytics. “Our research shows that CIO’s are purchasing alternate solutions like QlikView, Tableau, and Tibco Spotfire because those organizations’ sales reps show fewer blocks on architecture diagrams. The current BI4 platform contains 19 discrete servers and an even greater number of services within them, which on a Microsoft PowerPoint slide can be perceived as difficult to manage”.

SAP_BusinessObjects_Architecture_BI4_FP3

By applying design thinking, SAP has been able to radically simplify the BI platform architecture. Over the past few releases, SAP has been moving functionality from discrete servers to the Adaptive Job Server and Adaptive Processing Server. SAP BusinessObjects BI 5.0 will take this approach to the next level of simplicity, moving all Crystal Reports, Dashboards, Explorer and Web Intelligence processing to those two servers. The BI 5.0 architecture currently in the SAP test labs only has six discrete servers: CMS, Input File Repository Server, Output File Repository Server, Adaptive Job Server, Adaptive Processing Server, and Connection Server.

SAP_BusinessObjects_Architecture_BI5

“BI administrators often complain about splitting and sizing the two adaptive servers,” continued Ms. Erste. “However, CIOs really appreciate having a simplified architecture.” With BI 4.1 going into general availability later this year and BI 4.2 already planned for 2014, no release date has been set for BI 5.0.

Dallas Marks

Dallas Marks

I am an analytics and cloud architect, author, and trainer. An AWS certified blogger, SAP Mentor Alumni and co-author of the SAP Press book SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence: The Comprehensive Guide, I prefer piano keyboards over computer keyboards when not blogging or tweeting.

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14 thoughts on “A Glimpse of SAP BusinessObjects BI 5.0”

  1. I welcome this simplistic approach as long as their product works as promised during marketing sessions.

  4. Did you forget the part that BO Admins will need to break the APS and AJS into the 19 parts to romove BI 5 from its perpetually hung state?

  6. I’m guessing version 5 won’t be branded under the “BusinessObjects” banner. I’m also guessing it’ll be released after SkyNet becomes self-aware, so it’ll probably be a moot point.

  9. Who really cares about number of servers (or services really) when the real problem is the large number of BI applications: Crystal, Webi, Webi rich client, LiveOffice, Analysis for OLAP, Widgets, Explorer, Visual Intelligence, Predictive Analytics, Dashboards etc. Just to name a few that I have installed. Who can manage and fully leverage the whole stack?

    1. Pekka,

      Thanks for writing. I agree that there are a lot of client tools. You can see some signs of convergence in the product roadmap and I’ll be curious to see how aggressively SAP pushes convergence in BI 4.1 later this year. I agree with SAP solution management director Ingo Hilgefort, who frequently mentions you don’t need all the tools but you most likely need more than one. I’ll have more to say on this topic as BI 4.1 gets closer to general availability later this year.

      Regards,
      Dallas

  10. Dallas,

    I was told by SAP that they will also be combining all of the client tools into the SAP GUI 8.0 as well. This should further simplify the installation of client tools. I can’t wait to launch Webi with the BIWIZ75 transaction code. Dashboard 5.0 will also be completely encapsulated into the Microsoft Siverlight platform to better support mobile devices. Finally a single 1 TB installation package will be provided to support the installation of both the server and client components. Good times an great posting. 🙂

  11. Hi Dallas,

    Thanks for the blog. It is a relief to know that SAP is realizing that since Business Objects acquisition things have been over complicated. I miss the old days when you could create a report as soon as the cube was built. Nowadays is just about connections, integration and tools’ limitations.

    Looking forward to simpler architectures. Hopefully HANA Analytics Foundation plus a converged tools set will do the trick. Simpler architectures tend to be cheaper to implement and maintain.

    Regards,
    Carlos

  12. Pingback: Thoughts on BI 5.0

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