SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.2, the eagerly awaited update to the BI4 platform, quietly went into beta last week. Gregory Botticchio and Pascal Gaulin from the Web Intelligence product group in Paris, France (see related article, SAP Paris) were on hand to present “What’s New in SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence” (Session 2806). But otherwise, there was barely a word of BI 4.2 news breathed during the recent ASUG SAP BusinessObjects and Analytics User Conference in Austin, Texas.
Four years ago, I wrote a blog entitled “Waiting on SAP BusinessObjects BI4“ expressing both excitement and frustration at waiting for the general availability of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.0. Now I find myself eagerly Waiting on SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.2 and have shared this sentiment on the SAP Community Network. Check it out!
Read Waiting on SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.2 on the SAP Community Network.
SAP should have extended 3.1 & 4.0 Support for 6-8 months (eg. July 31, 2016) to allow Customers the option of moving directly to 4.2 from their Current Platform.
I expect a number of Customers will do that anyway – to avoid two Version Upgrades within a year…depending on how much ‘Faith’ they have in SAP’s Q1 – 2016 plan – and how comfortable they are with moving PRODUCTION to a SP00 version of any Vendors tools.
Extending 3.1 & 4.0 Support for 6-8 months (eg. July 31, 2016) would have been a Marginal-Cost to SAP, but would have won them a considerable amount of “Goodwill” from Customers who could then move directly to 4.2.
It’s still not “too late” for Steve Lucas to announce that at TechEd in Vegas.