Is there a future for SAP Business Objects BI?
September 2019Yes, dispite all the marketing noise from SAP about SAC. In H1 2020 version 4.3 will become GA, meaning it will be sustained till 2027
Some of the planned enhancements at the moment of writing this:
- More improvements in the integration with SAC. The future may be cloudy, the present is hybrid: just partially cloudy. It will include a new version for the Live Universe Connector 3.0
- SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management) APIs, meaning that on-premise users will be easily on-boarded to the Cloud.
- Improved integration with SAP Analytics Hub.
- Fiori BI Launchad (already available in 4.2 SP4)
- One Web Intelligence Client. Finally no more headaches with Java Applet or Rich client!! And guess what. The new UI is going to look pretty much like SAC.
- Also a WebI document will include a Data Model, that could be exposed as a web service and shared. This helps Self-Service for the business as they will not have to take care of the query definition.
- The interface to business users can be customized to add/restrict options like exporting data, editing options and so on. Intearctive analysis mode).
- New version of Crysatl Reports (will also be "Fiori-ed").
- More improvement for administrators (installation, audit capabilities).
- Excelsius/Dashboards (move to SAC) and BO Explorer (move to Lumira) will not be deployed any more (Flash Player will be terminated at the end of 2020)