SAP BusinessObjects BI and EIM 4.0 Make a BIG Splash

The New York stop of the SAP “Run Better Tour” hosted the launch of SAP BusinessObjects BI and EIM 4.0 this week.

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The New York stop of the SAP “Run Better Tour” hosted the launch of SAP BusinessObjects BI and EIM 4.0 this week. Click here to view a recording of the event: Keynote with Steve Lucas, Dave Weisbeck and Geoffrey Moore.

Industry reactions were extremely positive – here’s a selection of quotes and links to articles (many thanks to Nic Smith for this list)

Community Reactions

“There’s not much that hasn’t been unified, upgraded or left unchanged in SAP BusinessObjects 4.0”

– Doug Henschen, InformationWeek

“Overall, version 4 is a great step forward… The good news is that our benchmark research confirms that many of the new technologies SAP is bringing to market are just what users are asking for”

– Mark Smith, Ventana Research

“In some areas, SAP is delivering improvements customers have long been asking for, clearing up inconsistencies and overlaps lingering from the BusinessObjects acquisition in 2007. In other respects, SAP is delivering solid, forward-looking enhancements that set customers up for an era that demands real-time access to and insight into ever-larger data stores.”

– Doug Henschen, InformationWeek

“SAP is betting big on HANA, rolling out a series of specialized applications that will sit on top of the software, which puts data into RAM for faster performance compared to reading off disks. For now, SAP is not positioning HANA as something that could replace databases such as Oracle’s, which underpins many SAP installations, but that could change as the product matures.”

– Chris Kanaracus, IDG News

“SAP’s newest software not only lets the user monitor Tweets in real-time, but also extract more granular information about the Tweets and their creators, presumably for later data-mining. In addition to this merging of business intelligence with social-media streams, the software’s other new features include real-time in-memory computing, which can rapidly crunch high volumes of data for business insights.”

– Nicholas Kolakowski, eWEEK

“The technical challenges in an SAP BusinessObjects project have been a chief concern for SAP BW customers…But in SAP BusinessObjects 4.0, the next-generation BI platform SAP’s been crafting for three years and will release this week, BW customers should see significant improvements in ease of integration, scalability and performance.”

– Courtney Bjorlin, ASUGNews

“SAP’s overall focus is to help companies “run smarter” and obviously the work on BI 4.0 has to be part of this overall environment – how do analytics help companies run more effectively, more consistently, more efficiently.”

– James Taylor, Smart Data Collective

“Being able to engage people, and react instantly to a problem or opportunity, is what we’re here to talk about. You want information now, immediately, as it happens.”

– Steve Lucas, SAP, in eWeek

“There’s a lot of pent-up demand,” said Dave Weisbeck, senior vice president for SAP’s solution management, business intelligence and enterprise-information management. The software can run on smart phones and tablet computers, opening it to new users who want to analyze data from their own operations or from social media comments on the Web, he said.

– Dave Weisbeck, SAP, in Bloomberg BusinessWeek

“In-memory plus mobility is the killer app from [SAP].”

– Steve Lucas, SAP, in IDG News

“I think [CEP] is going to be a game changer for many industries. Since discussions began with SAP, users have contributed an ‘explosion of ideas for how we could use this environment.”

– Alan Capes, Canadian National Railways in IDG News

“CN has been working on a real-time BI project for some time, and in the course of doing so evaluated a number of CEP engines, Capes said. Last year, the company met with SAP officials, who came back eight weeks later with a proof-of-concept that ‘blew our socks off.’”

– Alan Capes, Canadian National Railways in IDG News

Film distributor Lionsgate is dealing with “profound change” in the movie industry thanks to the advent of digital video and newer companies such as Netflix, said Leo Collins , executive vice president and CIO, during a panel discussion. “We’re working to understand what that means. [Business Objects 4.0] is a big part of that picture.”

– Leo Collins, Lionsgate, in IDG News

“When SAP used to say, ‘We have the best integration to SAP,’ my opinion was: No you don’t. You have what everyone else has. Now, they can correctly claim that.”

– Cindi Howson, BI Scorecard, in ASUGNews

“The latest BI and EIM solutions from SAP are designed to help tackle big data, integrating structured and unstructured data and even information from social networks. New capabilities for event insight and information stewardship bring the benefits of data trustworthiness and process timeliness to customers.”

– Carl Olofson, IDC, in Information Management

“In addition, Business Objects 4.0 delivers a more common look and feel across the modules, as well as better integration between them”

– Boris Evelson, Forrester, in IDG News