We use this SAP solution for designing reports. This is a purely analytic application for designing reports to cater to higher management and specific business use cases.
SAP BusinessObjects 10 Concurrent (CSBL) and 10 Named Users - PREMIUM
Protiviti, Inc. | BI 2025 SP0 on Windows 2022 Jul 25Windows, Windows Server 2022 Base 2022 - 64-bit Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
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Has features that can be leveraged to scale out and up; unfortunately lacks sufficient documentation
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
There are features within Business Objects that can be leveraged to scale out, and scale up. All SAP products are scalable these days.
What needs improvement?
Some configurations related to business objects are a little tricky. Integrations with things like Active Directory and LDAP tend to be a little complex. There's not enough documentation available on the net.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using this solution for almost 10 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability can be affected by configurations related to business objects which tend to be somewhat complex. It's not a very widely used product and that in itself is a problem.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is scalable. There are features that can be leveraged to scale.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support is pretty good.
How was the initial setup?
The installation can take anywhere from three to five days. The solution has installers that are directly available for download from the SAP download center. There are certain prerequisites that have to be carried out on the server. The host has to be prepared, there's a runtime environment and a database that needs to be pre-installed. We use two to three admin people per deployment.
What was our ROI?
The ROI depends on whether there's a significant volume. If there's not enough volume there might not be a return.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The SAP model for licensing is quite complex and they generally don't deal with service providers.
What other advice do I have?
There are mixed reviews on this product from our customers. You won't find as many companies use it as you'd find with HANA. It's not widely used.
I rate this solution seven out of 10.
Helps with decision making, reliable, and make information gathering simple
What is our primary use case?
We primarily use the solution for business intelligence as more people ask for that.
How has it helped my organization?
We're a financial business, and this has helped us make important decisions.
What is most valuable?
This is the easiest way to gather information and have everything together. We have manipulated the information effectively in the way we want.
It is a stable product.
The solution can scale.
What needs improvement?
The platform should be a bit more user-friendly. There should be an easier way to use the solution.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used the solution for about a year. I have not used it for that long just yet.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I'd rate stability ten out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is good. I'd rate scalability eight out of ten.
We have around 50 users using the solution at this time.
Likely, we will increase usage in the future.
How are customer service and support?
I've never contacted technical support. I do not know how helpful or responsive they are in general.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I was not part of the process of selection.
How was the initial setup?
I'm not sure about the initial setup. I wasn't a part of the deployment process.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I am not familiar with the pricing of the solution.
What other advice do I have?
We have used the latest version of the solution. However, I don't know the exact version number.
New users need to understand a bit about business intelligence in order to prove the usefulness of the solution. You also need to have an idea of what you'd like to get out of the solution, and that should be decided at the outset.
I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Easy to set up, good reporting, and very efficient
What is our primary use case?
The primary use case for BusinessObjects today is for comprehensive Business Intelligence reporting. Most organizations using BusinessObjects today primarily use Web Intelligence or Crystal Reports or both for critical enterprise reporting and ad-hoc query and analysis.
We managed multiple BO deployments for multiple organizations, from the local and federal government to healthcare providers and from insurance to manufacturing.
In all these organizations, timely and accurate reporting is essential, and BusinessObjects is solid, reliable, and versatile. You can produce professional drillable formatted reports quickly and either interact with them or publish and distribute them in commodity formats like PDF and Excel.
How has it helped my organization?
They've made it more efficient and able to respond to both report and ad-hoc requests in a timely fashion.
The world still runs on reports. Reports are needed for financial statements, compliance, auditing, and dozens of other areas.
BusinessObjects has proven to be a report engine powerhouse where we can quickly create these reports and get them to the right destination in the right format.
The speed of turning around report requests has really had the most impact on the organizations we manage.
What is most valuable?
The semantic layer or BusinessObjects universe behind the Web Intelligence report provides the ability to create contexts and calculations that can be easily shared across multiple reports.
The ability to merge dimensions in a report is great.
The new features in BI 4.3 that allow you to use a Web Intelligence report as a data source have helped to create "master" reports that can be delivered to casual users, who can then create their own derived reports from this "master" report.
Shared Elements allow commonly used charts, tables, and graphs to be saved and re-used in other reports.
What needs improvement?
We would like to see the semantic layer opened up to other popular BI tools like Tableau and PowerBI. This integration makes a lot of sense for most organizations.
We would also like to see a native version of BusinessObjects and Web Intelligence created for the cloud.
It would be nice to see some native integration with Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and capabilities to really take Web Intelligence to the next level of Business Intelligence. This could be integrated with existing popular AI tools instead of new development.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using BusinessObjects almost as long as the product has existed - 30 years, believe it or not. The most current version BI 4.3 has been out for just over 18 months and is currently at Service Pack 4 (SP4) which was released in December 2023.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is very good. After 30+ years of development, this is a very solid platform.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
BusinessObjects scales all the way from one or two users to global enterprises with hundreds of thousands of users.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support is not bad. Sometimes the responsiveness could be better. Once someone is assigned to the call, it is handled well.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
The setup is straightforward after you have done it at least once. You would need some hand-holding the first time.
What about the implementation team?
We are the vendor team that helps with implementation.
What was our ROI?
We saw an ROI within six to 12 months.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
Using Xcelsius dashboard instead of Qlikview
When I first started presenting Xcelsius dashboards back in 2006, I said that it should carry a warning sign stating “May Cause Xtreme Xcitement”!
Despite all the advances in technology and tools over the last decade that statement not only remains true today, but maybe should be changed to “Will Cause Xtreme Xcitement”.
In the last month, I have both seen and heard stories from companies singing the praises of Xcelsius and hailing it as the savior of BI user adoption in their organizations.
A company specializing in reporting and analysis of employee business travel was looking for a client facing BI application that would help sell their solution. The client showed me their current solution running in Qlikview bemoaning how rigid, limiting and unexciting it was to use. They then showed me an example of something they found on the web that was an animated PowerPoint dashboard much closer to what they were looking for. Of course, I recognized it as an Xcelsius dashboard embedded in PowerPoint immediately. It had been developed over seven years ago, but it still sizzled. So, we mocked up a new prototype in Xcelsius for the client and to say they loved it would be an understatement. The VP of Marketing came up with the best quote of the day when he said, “It’s alive!”
A multi-national vehicle leasing company developed a super cool Xcelsius dashboard for improving their vendor management with built-in location intelligence using the GMaps plug-in and the InfoBurst XML Data Caching for high data volume performance. They presented it at their annual sales meeting last month and it stole the show. The excitement generated was so contagious, the VP and Director responsible spent the evening at the bar designing the next dashboard together! (I can’t wait to see that one!).
A new finance director of a global software company needed a way to provide better visibility to their financial statements and reports. She remembered using Xcelsius many years ago and said it really helped then. We put a prototype together for her in a day and everyone loved it, so they are buying it next week.
So why is Xcelsius so amazing and still slaying the BI data visualization competition everywhere? There are dozens of reasons from its ease of use, animations, ability to embed in everything, fast prototyping to its “what if” scenarios and cool components. But it goes deeper than all these features which you can also find in other BI visualization tools. The real secret to the success of Xcelsius is that it was initially designed and developed by computer gamers. To develop a winning computer game, you need to engage your audience visually, make it cool and fun to use and have limitless possibilities. You can find all these elements in Xcelsius dashboards allowing you to create killer BI applications.
That is why Xcelsius dashboards is still the best show in town. Xcelsius lives!
Update Nov 2015 : Lots of activity around Xcelsius HTML5 for deployment on mobile and on desktop with dCode add-on (www.getdcode.com). Now that Xcelsius generates HTML5 output, I see it being around for many, many more years
Update April 2016 : Xcelsius continues to thrive with many organizations using and deploying it for the first time in 2016. SAP provided updates to it with latest BI 4.2 release including full support for Excel 2013
Update Sept. 2016 : Xcelsius HTML5 definitely seems to be the dashboard solution of choice and many new add-on HTML5 components are becoming available including D3 charts, flat components and query drag and drop discover.
Update Sept 2018 : Adobe announced end of life for Flash for Dec 31, 2020 and SAP announced it would no longer support Xcelsius after this date since the development client uses Flash. While some Xcelsius users are looking for a viable alternative solution, others vow to continue to use the tool regardless. There are some new Xcelsius compatible solutions in development so let's see what materializes in the coming months.
Update Feb 2019 : Xcelsius still heavily in use. Some companies looking to replace with Tableau or PowerBI but just not the same. Web Intelligence dashboards may be a viable alternative for simple dashboards .
Update July 2019 : SAP has announced it will no longer support Xcelsius after Dec. 31, 2020 to coincide with Adobe no longer supporting Flash in the browser. However, most Xcelsius users have been generating HTML5 dashboards for a number of years now and are continuing to do so and their Xcelsius HTML5 dashboards should not be affected. SAP has no equivalent follow-on product and is recommending customers move to SAC (cloud only) and rewrite their dashboards - this will require programming skills . An alternative to Xcelsius, called Squirrel, that requires no training for an existing Xcelsius developer and has a built-in XLF migration utility is due for beta release by InfoSol in October and will be GA in December.
Update Dec 2019 : Squirrel has been in beta for the last few weeks with multiple organizations and is scheduled for general release on Dec 31. Initial feedback is very positive with Xcelsius users who require no re-training to use it. They have been able to both migrate or recreate existing Xcelsius dashboards. This is great news for the Xcelsius community who now have another option when Flash goes away and SAP stops supporting Xcelsius in 2021.
Update May 2020 : Squirrel is now at version 1.3 with multiple Xcelsius customers having converted their dashboards and running with the Squirrel HTML5 versions in production. This appears to be a very viable path forward for those customers left with Xcelsius Flash dashboards that will probably no longer work starting in 2021.
Update Nov 2020 : Squirrel 1.6 which has a cloud based version and allows you to embed dashboards in PPT was just released last week. More and more Xcelsius customers have now successfully moved to Squirrel and companies like Salesforce are using it too. Xcelsius has about a month to go before Adobe and SAP stop all support.
Update June 2022 : Squirrel365 has now replaced hundreds of Xcelsius dashboards and has become the de facto follow-on solution for Xcelsius
Update May 2024 : Squirrel 365 can now be embedded in BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, Tableau and PowerBI bringing "What If" scenarios and write back capability to these traditional BI solutions
Disclaimer: My company is partners with several vendors including SAP BO.
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