SAP Business Intelligence (BI) RoadMap : BusinessObjects BI 4.3, BusinessObjects BI 2025 & SAC

SAP Business Intelligence (BI) Roadmap: SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.3, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 2025 & SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC)

SAP Analytics Cloud is SAP’s strategic analytics & planning offering and is changing the way SAP BI customers run business, by allowing analysis of data in context to make better and faster decisions. The integration of business Intelligence, planning and predictive in one native cloud solution allows quick insight to action, brings analytics closer to the point of decision, and provides trusted insights from customers’ most valuable data.

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3, enables seamlessly fulfillment of on-premises needs while leveraging the strengths of the cloud adoption and accelerating digital transformation to Fastrack the delivery of the intelligent enterprise.

This blog is to connect the SAP Business Intelligence journey so far to the future with emphasis on the capabilities and relationship among SAP BusinessObjects 4.3, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 2025 & SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC)

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.3

SAP BusinessObjects 4.3 introduces a number of new capabilities to enable hybrid analytics implementation with SAP Analytics Cloud where both can work together.

Version 4.3 available since December 2022 brings a modern user experience for the BI Launchpad and Web Intelligence, using HTML5, with no Java required, and many long-awaited improvements.

Major innovations introduced with BusinessObjects BI 4.3

(1) Hybrid Connectivity: Enhanced SAP Analytics Cloud live connectivity, Simplified SSO configuration and Analytics Hub Integration

(2) User Experience

• New Fiori like BI LaunchPad: The new BI Fiori like Launch Pad offers a modernized user experience compatible with existing content, authorizations, and full functional parity.

(3) Enterprise Readiness

• Security Enhancements: Use Data Source References and save multiple sets of Database credentials, Avoiding Kerberos SSO due to the inability to schedule with SSO2DB 

• Administrator Tools: New BI Admin Studio, Version Management & GIT Support and Promotion Management Improvements

• Improved Audit Functionalities: Auditing Enhancements for Login Events, Alert when the Audit system is OFF, Capture user details and Alert Admin group.

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 maintenance will be extended to at least 2027.

Note :

Functionality not shipped with 4.3 includes.

• Classic BI Launchpad

• WebI Java Applet Viewer

• DeskI Compatibility Pack

• Crystal Presentation Design

• Upgrade Manager

• PeopleSoft Authentication

• Report Conversion Tool

• JD Edwards Authentication

• Discussion

• Siebel Authentication

• SAP Steamworks

• Oracle EBS Authentication

• Dashboards (Xcelsius)

• Explorer

• BI Widgets

Functionality included in BusinessObjects BI 4.3

• Lumira Discovery

• Lumira Designer

• Crystal Reports

• Analysis for Office

• Analysis for OLAP

• Universe Design Tool (.unv)

• Live Office

• Web Intelligence

• Information Design Tool (.unx)

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 2025

SAP BusinessObjects BI suite equips thousands of customers across the globe with reliable, robust and scalable solution for enterprise reporting scenarios. SAP is proud of this heritage and is committed to support every customer throughout the transition journey, and with version 2025, your current investments are safe beyond 2030.

The successor of SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 will be SAP BusinessObjects BI 2025 with core features below:

• Enhanced to ease core workflows: report creation, access to information and integration with ever more complex landscapes,

• Focused on SAP BI core strengths and most widely adopted solutions: SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, single source .unx universes, SAP Crystal Reports, SAP Analysis for Microsoft Office and the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform,

• Supported on Windows and Linux platforms.

SAP will provide alternatives for the components not supported after 4.3.

With SAP BusinessObjects BI 2025 the value from ongoing BusinessObjects BI solutions investments is maximized for customers.

Below are some of the most-widely used products:

• SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform,

• SAP BusinessObjects Information Design Tool and single source .unx universes,

• SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence: Powerful business intelligence tool that enables organizations to make informed decisions based on actionable insights derived from data

• SAP Crystal Reports: Proven world standard of pixel-perfect reporting

Also, to ease the transition through SAP BI & Analytics, SAP will also provide:

• Simplify the upgrade to new versions so that the whole process is quicker and safer.

• Improve the BI Launchpad,

• Review notifications to facilitate monitoring,

• Provide better control on scheduling and user management

• Certify the latest versions of supported platforms, security standards, new data sources

• Single source .unx universes and direct data connectivity

SAP plan to remove the following components from SAP BusinessObjects BI 2025 :

• SAP Lumira,

• SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise,

• SAP BusinessObjects Universe Design Tool and .unv universes,

• Multi-source universes and associated connectivity,

• SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for OLAP,

• SAP BusinessObjects Live Office,

• SAP BusinessObjects Mobile

Also, SAP plan to discontinue support for AIX and Solaris after version BI 4.3 and focus on preferred operating systems: Windows and Linux.

SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 is planned to be supported until end of 2027, with mainstream maintenance ending at the end of 2025, followed by two years of priority one support.

Below are some recommended alternatives for some use cases:

• SAP Lumira 2.4 will receive mainstream maintenance until end of 2025, followed by two years of priority one support until end of 2027, after which support for Discovery, Designer & Server for BI Platform will stop. SAP strongly recommend transition of analysis applications and data discovery use cases to SAP Analytics Cloud stories.

• Support for SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise will stop, it is recommended that customers either use SAP Crystal Reports, or Web Intelligence. Note: To help customers move to SAP Crystal Reports, SAP will start to support .unx universes with Crystal Reports 4.3 SP4.

• .unx universes authored with Information Design Tool already cover all Universe Design Tool and .unv universe use cases and SAP strongly recommend their use. Migration from .unv to .unx is fully supported by SAP tools.

• Different SAP solutions can be used to achieve same data federation use cases, from Information Design Tool to Datasphere.

• For SAP data sources BW and HANA, SAP recommend transitioning your AOLAP analysis to SAP Analytic Cloud Stories or Data Analyzer. For other OLAP data sources, an OLAP .unx universe can be an alternative, in conjunction with Web Intelligence.

• Microsoft Excel in combination with Web Intelligence OData access or SAP Crystal Reports OData access and Analysis for Microsoft Office can be strong alternatives for SAP BusinessObjects Live Office use cases.

• For report consumption on Mobile devices, we will improve the BI LaunchPad and report viewers responsiveness on smaller screens and recommend accessing reports through a mobile web browser interface.

SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC)

SAP Analytics Cloud is a new generation of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) that redefines analytics in the cloud by providing all analytics capabilities for all users in one product.

This platform represents the roadmap for a combined SAP Business Intelligence visualizations, dashboards, planning, predictive analytics, advanced analytics and cloud adoption capabilities.

SAP Analytics Cloud is the strategic analytics offering from SAP, the integration of BI, planning and augmented analytics in a native cloud solution that enables faster insight to action, brings analytics closer to the point of decision, and provides trusted insights from their most valuable data.

SAC is a public Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) enabling access to on-premises and cloud data sources. Furthermore, SAP Analytics Cloud provides live connection (online) and data acquisition (batch) connectivity – two ways for accessing your data located anywhere in your information-system landscape:

• You can create models from data sources in on-premises or cloud systems, build stories based on those models, and perform online analysis without any data replication. This feature allows SAP Analytics Cloud to be used in scenarios where data cannot be moved into the cloud for security or privacy reasons, or your data already exists on a different cloud system.

• You can also create connections to remote systems to allow data acquisition. Data is imported (copied) to SAP Analytics Cloud HANA in-memory Database, and changes made to the data in the source system don't affect the imported data.

• Furthermore, SAP Analytics Cloud provides SAML 2 capabilities to enable Single Sign-on, simplifying not only authentication to SAP Analytics Cloud but also to connected data sources from your landscape.

At a high level, we have three main investments areas:

• Enterprise Analytics

SAP Analytics Cloud allows every employee to consume critical information in their preferred way.

SAP Analytics Cloud addresses common enterprise reporting scenarios, by allowing the creation of formatted stories, the ability to schedule and distribute stories, and the export of large tables and stories to multiple-page documents, burst personalized reports to multiple people and extend calculation capabilities to allow for more powerful reporting.

• One solution for BI, Planning and Predictive

SAP Analytics Cloud provides a full closed-loop solution from insight to action allowing customers to identify challenges, analyze options, execute decisions then monitor and evaluate results from one solution.

Use SAP Analytics Cloud to modernize your analytics ecosystem by going beyond visualization using machine learning and simulation. Enable information consumers to answer many different business questions interactively from a single story on top of live data.

• SAP Integration

SAP Analytics Cloud provides live connectivity to SAP data sources like SAP HANA, SAP BW, SAP S/4HANA, SAP Datasphere and SAP BusinessObjects universes. As we bring SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Datasphere closer together, you will benefit from additional live data connectivity, cloud semantic layer, cross source modelling, and storage/compute elasticity.

More than 150 prebuilt business content packages, leveraging industry best practices, are included for many business processes and allow customers to accelerate their time to value, from a few months to a few weeks.

SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise, private cloud edition

With SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise, private cloud edition, SAP offer a predefined package operated by SAP on the main hyperscalers , including software, support, technical managed services, and infrastructure. This is a great opportunity to shift from a maintenance contract to a subscription model while leveraging your existing investments in SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions.

Some of the key benefits:

• The latest version of SAP BusinessObjects BI is always available, thanks to yearly upgrades,

• 2-tier landscape: development/test and production by default, with optional additional tiers,

• Pre-configured hardware landscapes optimized for performance,

• Choice of hyperscaler infrastructure includes AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure,

• End-to-end SLA 99.7%, backup and restore included within standard service scope,

• Opportunity to modernize the SAP BusinessObjects BI deployment, such as consolidate into one global instance, rationalize unused resources, simplify lifecycle management, and adjust license mix.

For customers ready to move to the cloud, SAP offers a conversion program called the Cloud Extension Policy that allows for a partial (or full) termination of SAP BusinessObjects BI on-premises maintenance when replaced with a new SAP Analytics Cloud contract or SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise PCE contract. In conjunction with a less expensive Web Intelligence focused license, the savings can be used to start moving your BI use cases to the cloud, and benefit from all the innovations in SAP Analytics Cloud.

SAP Analytics Cloud solution helps jump-start a transition into an intelligent enterprise with a single user experience. In the boardroom, at the office, or during a customer meeting, with SAC you can discover, analyze, predict, plan, and report information needed to make complete and contextual decisions. This enables you to turn formerly hidden insights into well-advised actions that enhance your business outcomes.

• Comprehensive in-memory data management and analytics

• Contextual delivery of smart insights through natural-language processing

• Faster, more-confident decision-making without expert intervention

• Affordable, available, and scalable analytics

• Connect live to on-premises applications to avoid uploading data to the cloud.

• Harness machine learning to augment the analytics you need in one solution.

Work with us at TAIBASH TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS LIMITED to tailor the solution to your exact needs.

As SAP focus on the future with SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP will not leave any customer behind, especially thousands of you that trust SAP BusinessObjects BI suite to reliably manage enterprise reporting use cases at scale: with version 2025 following 4.3, your investments are safe beyond 2030.

SAP plan to release the first version in Q4 2024, followed by Support Packages every year. As per SAP standard maintenance policy, SAP BusinessObjects BI 2025 will be supported until at least end of 2029 for mainstream maintenance, and 2031 for priority 1 support.

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