Back in October, I wrote “SAP Should Join the Open Semantic Interchange (OSI).” The Open Semantic Interchange (OSI) was launched on January 27, 2026, to address one of the biggest barriers to trusted analytics and AI: the lack of a common, open standard for representing business definitions and semantic context across platforms. Since its formation, more organizations have joined the group, and the Open Semantic Interchange entered the Apache Incubator on June 22, 2026, as Apache Ossie.
“Apache Ossie (incubating) is an industry-wide specification effort to standardize how we exchange semantic metadata across analytics, AI, and BI platforms, providing a vendor-neutral single source of truth for semantic data. Ossie was previously known as Open Semantic Interchange (OSI).”
Apache Ossie’s Ecosystem page boasts 67 corporate logos and counting. Take a minute and have a look for yourself. It’s a remarkably diverse collection of companies from across the analytics ecosystem. First, there are companies with a clear stake in the analytics ecosystem, including Domo, GoodData, Hex, Lightdash, Metabase, Microsoft, Preset, Qlik, Saiku, Sigma, Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), and ThoughtSpot, with Google expected to join them soon given its investments in Looker and BigQuery. Ossie’s ecosystem also includes companies whose data sources connect to BusinessObjects, such as Cloudera, Databricks, Denodo, Microsoft, Oracle, and Snowflake.
One company logo is conspicuously missing: SAP.
SAP’s latest acquisition, Dremio, is participating in the project, which could be a good sign of things to come. However, regardless of SAP’s preference for SAP Analytics Cloud over SAP BusinessObjects, both the SAP Business Data Cloud team and the SAP BusinessObjects team have compelling reasons to participate in the Apache Ossie project. The motivations, however, are quite different.
SAP has consistently persuaded its customers to trust SAP with corporate data, both SAP and non-SAP. This was true of its BW strategy and continues with SAP Business Data Cloud. SAP Business Data Cloud demonstrates how dependent modern analytics ecosystems have become on interoperability, combining SAP’s Datasphere with tightly integrated Databricks and Snowflake technologies under a single data strategy.
In contrast, BusinessObjects never cared where your data actually resided, which is what made the platform and its powerful semantic layer so popular. Philosophically, the approach taken by BusinessObjects represented a significant shift for SAP. The crown jewel of BusinessObjects never was Crystal Reports or Web Intelligence. The crown jewel of BusinessObjects has always been its semantic layer: the universe. The BusinessObjects platform has a lot of technology to offer to the Apache Ossie project. At the same time, the BusinessObjects platform would greatly benefit from the infusion of Apache Ossie innovations. What needs to change is the perception of the universe as a proprietary competitive advantage (as it was in the early 2000s, competing with Cognos, MicroStrategy, and its future acquisition, Crystal Reports). What also needs to change is the perception that SAP Analytics Cloud is the successor to SAP BusinessObjects. For organizations that primarily rely on SAP applications, it frequently is. But for many organizations that invested in BusinessObjects because of its heterogeneous approach to data sources, SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP BusinessObjects are two different tools with two distinct user bases.
It’s time for SAP to allow both its Business Data Cloud and BusinessObjects teams to participate fully in Apache Ossie. It is also time to reconsider whether BusinessObjects would be better positioned as a standalone subsidiary, open source, or both. SAP has taken similar steps before, most notably with Qualtrics. Alternatively, BusinessObjects could be spun off entirely and allowed to combine with another like-minded analytics vendor that shares Apache Ossie’s vision for a universal semantic layer.
Does the BusinessObjects universe have a place in Apache Ossie’s future? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
