by Adam Binnie, Global VP & GM, Business Intelligence, SAP
“Mobility first” is clearly the priority of SAP and nowhere is this more important than with SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards. Executives using our solutions rely more and more on having information at their fingertips anywhere, anytime to enable them to make better decisions, faster.
SAP has put significant energy into listening to our customers, and speaking with analysts and partners, to gain a clear understanding of how our customer’s expectations are evolving for their dashboarding solution.
We invite you to participate in this conversation by joining one of our customer groups (Influence Councils) , Idea Place or responding to this blog.
When we talk about dashboards, let’s focus on those that are professionally authored, not self-service, which are addressed by our SAP BusinessObjects Explorer solution and e-views functionality. Professionally authored or power/IT built dashboards, in particular, have high mobility expectations as these are frequently the source of KPIs for senior management and a single, trusted version of information used by them to make real-time decisions on the fly. Increasingly we see use cases of mobile dashboards driving sales and field service to better decision making on the road and improving company profitability. It’s crystal clear that we need to be innovating in this area with mobility first.
Current Situation and Issues
The SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 suite currently offers SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (formerly Xcelcius) for building highly visual, flash-based dashboards delivered on the Web. But Flash has become a huge barrier to getting content onto mobile devices. For customers that leverage SAP NetWeaver BW and employ SAP BEx Web application designer to create visual applications, mobile solutions are also not available today.
SAP’s Direction
For those customers that leverage SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, this technology will allow dashboards to be recompiled into HTML5, which can then run on an iPad, as well as many other mobile devices.
At the same time, and targeting customers that leverage SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse or SAP HANA, we plan to deliver a new technology solution (code named Zen), that is intended to provide rich, professionally authored, HTML5 applications and dashboards.
- HTML5 for rendering the “mobile first” experience and parity of experience between mobile devices and the desktop.
- Data access layer structured to support both big data (SAP HANA) and SAP NetWeaver BW data sources.
- Rich set of controls allowing both complex application development and quick easy dashboard production.
What does this mean for our customers?
It means choice and immediate value for both customer bases. Customers already employing SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (formerly Xcelsius) will be able to deliver rich dashboards on mobile devices. While customers looking to create more complex and sophisticated user experiences will have that control within project Zen.
Moving forward, the intent is for these two to slowly merge together, bringing the richness, diverse data source support, and dynamic “what-if” capabilities of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards to the Zen architecture; in addition to bringing the fine grained control and enhanced development experience to the dashboards world.
The intent is that both technologies, and their content and applications, will resolve onto a common tool within a few releases, and with minimal disruption for the customers using them.
Phase 1 (roughly end of 2012)
- SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards gains HTML5 output option to allow delivery to mobile devices.
- Zen’s initial release plans for HTML5 application development connected to SAP HANA and SAP NetWeaver BW.
- Both tools plan to leverage the SAP BusinessObjects Mobile app to manage them locally on the device and provide a single point of entry.
Phase 2
- The HTML5 component library of Zen is anticipated to expand to match current SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards offerings.
- Third party components support is planned for Zen so the large eco-system of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards can also start to reach out to new customers.
- We anticipate continuing to expand the range of charting and other visualization choices for designers, and include additional features like Write Back, Annotations, Scheduled Views, and Dashboard Bursting to name just a few.
Phase 3
- The plan is to unify the data access technologies allowing the new Zen runtime to access all types of data and converge the two design environments into one.
Conclusion
We’ve been listening to our customers and focusing on how best to deliver to their needs with both more robust solutions for dashboards that reflect the changing technology and implementation realities of our customers. Zen and SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards represent our solution that is intended to deliver innovation more quickly while minimizing customer disruption, and protecting investments in SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards.
Find the official SAP BusinessObjects Dashboarding Statement of Direction and Strategy HERE
Find the All Access SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards webinar slides HERE
VIEW THE RECORDED WEBINAR
Disclaimer: This article contains forward-looking statements and all information about future products only outlines possible developments that are subject to change.
The Future of Dashboards - Strategy and Direction,
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April 18th, 2012 at 6:45 am
My only worry is whether HTML5 rendered output will be able to match up to the instance response time of Flash based dashboards.
April 18th, 2012 at 10:03 am
Hi Adam
interesting article and it good to SAP listen to her customers ,until SAP will by in HTML 5 , why dont you do an OEM with products like MyMobile by Exxova or some other product similar?
Adir
April 18th, 2012 at 12:21 pm
This is great news, hopefully this sees outside of SAP’s labs. Moving out of the Flex framework is a wise decision.
April 23rd, 2012 at 1:27 pm
Skeptical about SAP ability to deliver… Once again, we will be sitting here waiting for yet another future SAP product with big promises. (BTW, it’s xcelsius, not “xcelcius”)
April 24th, 2012 at 12:26 am
I read in the SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards webinar:
“Customers of the Web application designer tool of SAP BEx
Should adopt Zen as their primary tool for creating dashboards and applications, both on the Web and on device”
This is our case. The question is:
Does it means, we must pay new license? Or is this Zen a follower tool of Dashboard (therefore contained in our contract).
We do not really have a big demand of any Dashboard. So it would plausible to cooperate with SAP testing the very first version of ZEN. Do you know, if SAP is looking for such a cooperation?
April 26th, 2012 at 2:11 am
The pricing for Zen has not yet been finalized as we are so early in the process. We will be looking for customes to go enter our ramp up process, I will get you the link as soon as it is live (probably within a week).
April 30th, 2012 at 11:56 am
I would be very interested in this process.
May 24th, 2012 at 6:21 am
Note the pre-registration for the Zen beta is now open.
http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-28529
Please be aware of the following points while registering:
•Unfortunately we can only accept a limited number of participants into the beta program, so pre-registration does not guarantee acceptance into the beta.
•A live implementation SAP HANA or SAP Netweaver BW is required to participate in the beta.
•The beta software can be used for test and evaluation purposes only, and cannot be used in production environments.
June 8th, 2012 at 2:19 am
Do I understand that right, for more interactive dashboards and less static dashboards, ZEN will be the product of choice?
BR, Daniel
June 8th, 2012 at 12:09 pm
Daniel,
No SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards is highly interactive as well. Project Zen is in beta and as of yet lacks some of the functionality of Dashboards. It’s more about how we are going to bring HTML5 technology to our dashboarding solution to better enable us on the mobility front. SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards will have some of the technology already in Q4 with the mobile release.
Best, Anita
June 10th, 2012 at 11:48 pm
Hi Anita,
OK thanks for your feedback.
Best regards, Daniel
January 25th, 2013 at 2:32 am
Hi,
When is Phase 2 scheduled for release?
Br,
Sonni
February 1st, 2013 at 5:09 am
Sonni,
Phase 2 has started but it is not tied to any specific release number. In order to get the new functionality into the hands of our customers as soon as possible, SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio will be releasing roughly every six months. Therefore the functionality described in phase 2 is coming out over several releases and at this point we aren’t able to forward communicate a date when we will expect to leave phase 2 enter into phase 3. We will have more details coming on the next release of Design Studio in a blog during the next weeks. In terms of Dashboards we expect to have extended mobile completeness in the 4.1 release including an SDK.
Best Regards,
Anita