Years in the Making: SAP Spotlights BusinessObjects Overhaul

SAP showcased the first sweeping updates in three years to its business analytics portfolio BusinessObjects, including enhanced mobile and social capabilities, an in-memory addition and increased analytics for specific industries.

The new version of BusinessObjects 4.0 contains full integration with SAP’s enterprise information management and governance, risk and compliance products, as well as updates that coincide with the company’s revamp of its BI offerings. Enhancements to BusinessObjects 4.0 include in-memory computing, mobile BI on any device, and deepened business and social data text analysis capabilities in the new release, according to an SAP news release. In addition, SAP released related BusinessObjects software for data source consolidation, end-user data analysis and insight into the data surrounding specific events.

SAP obtained the company BusinessObjects SA and its flagship namesake BI and analytics platform through a nearly $7 billion acquisition in 2008. Outside of minor updates and the addition of industry-specific analytics applications last year, SAP has not made a major updated release of Business Objects since the acquisition. SAP rolled out the changes and announced the immediate availability of BusinessObjects 4.0 at a press event Wednesday in New York City.  

As part of the release, SAP updated applications for SAP StreamWork, SAP Crystal Reports, SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards and SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence. The German BI and analytics vendor also added six more industry-specific applications for Business Objects as part of Wednesday’s announcement, including fields such as media, energy, health care, risk management and financial planning.

Carl W. Olofson, IDC application development and deployment research vice president, said in a news release that BusinessObjects updates should enhance capabilities for bringing together BI projects and make a “responsive” enterprise information management environment.

"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,” said Olofson.

This story has been reprinted with permission from Information Management.