SAP BI product name shake-up: the 2017 edition

Another year, another set of product names for our beloved SAP BI tools. Seemingly out of nowhere a list of new names were presented last week at the SAPPHIRENOW event in Orlando FL. Even after all the name changes we had in the past 10 years (‘member Xcelsius?), this still came a bit as a surprise for me.

When @SAP acknowledged name-changes across #businessintelligence & #analytics, I didn't realize it was quite this extensive! @SAPPHIRENOW pic.twitter.com/Fa5W5fjdGh

— Doug Henschen (@DHenschen) May 18, 2017

So let’s have a look at what happened here. First it seems like the whole BI portfolio is now recognized as SAP Analytics. Apparently it was named SAP BusinessObjects Analytics before (I always thought it was ‘SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence’, but that could be because I’m mostly focussing on the BI part of the tools), but this makes sense. The old BI terminology is probably seen as too limited, as the current and future analytics will go way beyond only internal data and usage scenarios. Of course the bigger change is that SAP continues to ditch the BusinessObjects brand: SAP BusinessObjects Cloud becomes SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP BusinessObjects Lumira will be SAP Lumira and SAP BusinessObjects Roambi just SAP Roambi.

Meanwhile, some of the more classic BusinessObjects tools keep their BusinessObjects brand: SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise. Analysis for Office loses the ‘for Office’ specification: SAP BusinessObjects Analysis. Following the conversion strategy this makes sense, as Analysis OLAP hasn’t been improved for a while and should be replaced by the Design Studio generic analysis template. Talking about Design Studio, which is not in the above photo, it is now labeled as SAP Analytics Design Studio (!!!) on SAP.com. Which, is a pretty insane name change at this point in time as the upcoming edition of the tool (only weeks away) will merge into Lumira 2.0 anyway. Talking about insane stuff, when I was browsing SAP.com I also saw that SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (Xcelsius) is still actively advertised. Madness.

Anyway, what I don’t understand is why SAP is keeping this BusinessObjects brand alive at all. Does it still have a value if all your major (new) tools are not using it? Maybe it’s for the non-SAPBW/HANA legacy customer base? But come on, it has been 10 years now since the acquisition and this is again (or still) a mess. Some tools have SAP Analytics in the name, some SAP BusinessObjects and some only SAP. I can’t wait for next year’s edition!

SAP BusinessObjects BI4 is (almost) here!

Finally SAP has come up with a date on the BI4 release: February 23, 2011. SAP is announcing a Virtual Launch Event for BI4 and EIM4 on this date, so make sure you register for it.

Below I put another weird video I found somewhere on the web covering the upcoming BI4 release. Also check out the SlideShare presentation for an overview of BI4.
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LOLvid: Fun with SAP BusinessObjects naming conventions

Hahaha check this video on the recent SAP BusinessObjects name changes.

I lol’d.

SAP: “BEx Analyzer sucks”

When I first got into SAP BI a few years ago I followed this course on SAP BW 3.5 which took like 10 days or maybe even more. I do remember the first time I saw and used BEx Analyzer, the MS Excel plugin to view and analyze data from SAP BW. I was just shocked to see such a terrible user interface design and a tool that was not intuitive to use at all! And people were supposed to use this app for their daily work? OMG.

SAP now released a video that basically says that BEx Analyzer sucks. Too complex, too much end-user training needed, to much complaints, too expensive and so on. The solution? SAP BusinessObjects Analysis edition for Microsoft Office.

Have fun watching it.

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 Platform reference guide

So do you know all the tools/components that are in the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.0 Platform (wow that’s a pretty long name)? And what about all those new product names? Have a look at this link and bookmark it. It gives you a quick reference guide on all components that are part of the SAP BI landscape. Unfortunately it does not have any external links for more detailed information about each component. Too bad, but luckily we have Google!