Business Objects Strengthens SAP Ties
By Madan Sheina
April 2005
Excerpted from ComputerWire
French business intelligence software maker Business Objects SA underscored its own "entente cordiale" with German business applications giant SAP AG by launching a new version of its BI suite geared for SAP applications.
BusinessObjects XI for SAP is a SAP-focused version of Business Objects' latest BI platform which provides integration with the Crystal product line.
"[We have] the largest number of BI customers running SAP solutions," said Bernard Liautaud, CEO of Business Objects in statement. "And [we're] the only reporting tool embedded within SAP BW."
The new version bundles in pre-packaged data drivers and report templates that speed up query, reporting and analysis of SAP R/3 transactional data and SAP's Business Information Warehouse (BW).
"We've now updated these drivers and templates for XI which allows customers to take advantage of XI capabilities like grid analysis and performance management," said James Thomas, director of product marketing at Business Objects. "It'll give SAP customers more opportunities to do newer things with our BI suite."
Thomas said that the majority of the updated report templates (in the dozens) are geared towards BW while the updated data drivers are targeted across more broadly across BW and key R/3 modules.
The move doesn't impact Business Object's existing OEM deal with SAP's BW component. This agreement allows SAP to OEM a special version of Crystal Reports, custom data drivers and report templates and portal integration.
Thomas said BusinessObjects is the only third-party reporting product sold "out-of-the-box" with SAP. "We like to treat SAP as a market rather than solving a specific reporting problem for an application," he said.
"We're aiming to provide a complete solution for SAP – from data integration, through query, analysis and reporting, and up to performance management. We're finding that reporting is a good place to start."
Thomas also sees a broader opportunity to leverage Business Objects' Data Integrator ETL product, included as part of BusinessObjects XI platform, in SAP environments.
"Customers can use [Data Integrator] to build custom data warehouses that blend SAP data with non-SAP data….or even help source a SAP BW warehouse with non-SAP data," he said.
Business Objects claims it has over 1,400 joint SAP customers worldwide including AirBus, DVB Bank AG, Italtel and NVIDIA. The announcement came at SAP's SAPPHIRE user conference in Copenhagen, Denmark this week.
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