SAP TechEd video: Ingo Hilgefort interview

In this short TechEd ’09 video Ingo Hilgefort is being interviewed on integrating BusinessObjects with the SAP world, covering the SAP BusinessObjects/SDN community and his book on this subject.

Thoughts on Xcelsius 2008 SP3

Santa Claus arrived early this year, with SAP BusinessObjects delivering the third servicepack for Xcelsius 2008. Great! The Xcelsius community seems to be extremely excited about this release according to all the positive tweets and blogs. You can download Xcelsius 2008 here and find all the information on what’s fixed and what’s new here.

But hey, wait a minute. Those Sparklines, Bullet-charts, Scorecards, the Chart Slider, Advanced Labeling which all comes with SP3, I have seen all of this before somewhere. Actually, I already had a lot of this functionality in my Xcelsius SP2 installation, due to some excellent third-party Xcelsius add-ons. See some examples below. On the left side the ‘new’ Xcelsius components, on the right side the ‘old’ third-party add-ons.

So what is the message that SAP gives us – and more important: the small group of Xcelsius add-on developers – with this release? Looking at this free ‘service pack’ I don’t see why anyone would consider investing a lot of time, effort and money in developing Xcelsius add-ons, knowing that SAP maybe will integrate your ideas or solutions in their own product, and give it away for free. I remember the case where Apple introduced its ‘innovative’ Dashboard, while third-party app Konfabulator already did the same thing years before. Maybe I’m just whining about nothing and is this just what big companies do all the time, but with the very limited number of active developers for Xcelsius add-ons, I think this approach maybe not the best way to go.

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Webinar: SAP BW/BO integration best practices

Last night SAP presented a webinar on integration SAP BusinessObjects BI with SAP Netweaver BW. The webinar included best practices on tool selection, report development approach, architectural choices and performance optimization. The upcoming enhancements in the BOE/BW stack were discussed and an overview of successful scenarios was given.

You can now rewatch the webinar here and download the presentation here. In the remainder of this post I dropped the webinar agenda and some interesting slides.

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SAP Constellation/12Sprints and Kona

Wow, seems like SAP is going to launch some very cool stuff in 2010: Constellation/12Sprints and Koda (all codenames). What can we tell about these two tools? Well, not very much yet. There are some articles on the internet and a short demonstration video which gives us some clues. You can watch the video below.

Constellation seems to be some sort of collaborative workspace, that allows its users to share data, discuss it and make decisions together. To me this idea looks a bit like Google Wave, but now tailored to the decision making processes within enterprises.

This is what SAP says about Constellation:

Imagine a virtual war room
It’s not just a place where things get discussed. It’s where things get done. 
Invite the right people. Bring in the pertinent data. And choose the most informed course of action with the help of pre-defined, interactive decision-making tools. It’s all built in. Everything you need to get everyone on the same page — finally under one roof.

At 12Sprints.com you can sign-up to get access to the beta.

Kona is a web-based business intelligence platform/tool, which gives you access to dashboards and reports with drill-down functionality. Also the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer will be a part of Kona. Data and graphs from Kona can be exported to Constellation.

This leaves me with a some questions:
– Why introduce two separate platforms and not one integrated platform?
– How open will these platforms be? Can we make our own Robots/Gadgets?
– What about Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence, Xcelsius and Pioneer? Will they also be integrated in Kona?
– And hey, what about the BusinessObjects InfoView portal environment? Will it be ditched?

New books on SAP BusinessObjects

SAP Press shows us that two new books on SAP BusinessObjects are to be released early 2010, covering the positioning of the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio in the SAP landscape and describing the SAP BusinessObjects toolset.

Sure, nice subjects, but I wonder if these books will give us some really new views and insights and I hope they are not just are a collection of information that is already available online or in other books (see my overview on recommended books and links). But we will see next year.

Discover SAP BusinessObjects (Thierry Audas)

“This much anticipated book answers the many questions you may have as a decision maker or current SAP and BusinessObjects customer who needs to understand SAP’s BI strategy. In clarifying the business value of the new SAP BusinessObjects solutions it also explains how to hit the ground running. Significant focus is put on describing and positioning all of the key solutions in the new SAP BusinessObjects portfolio, and the author clearly explains how they fit together and into existing SAP customer landscapes. Real-world examples are used throughout to describe the capabilities and their value propositions, along with numerous screen shots, examples, tips, and case studies. This is the one book that will give you full clarity into SAP BusinessObjects.”

Reporting and Analytics with SAP BusinessObjects (Ingo Hilgefort)

“This book provides comprehensive coverage of the major business intelligence tools in the SAP/BO toolset with a practical focus on the user experience and integration with SAP. Coverage includes detailed application features and functionality, as well as practical, how-to content geared toward end users hoping to maximize the benefits of their BI investment by creating actionable, easy to read reports, analysis and other business process metrics. The author uses robust, real world case studies to place into context and present the content in an easy to read, step-by-step manner.”