SAP BW/BI space is buzzing with new solutions to name a few...SAP BO4, Advanced Analysis, BW730, Industry specific analytics solutions, In-Memory analytics (HANA) and each one these shall find out its own space or niche.
And the solution which really caught my fancy is ‘SAP Business Object Advanced Analysis', I believe the first one justifying the SAP BW-BO Roadmap (published by SAP couple of years back) and covers SAP BEx (Analyzer) and SAP BO Voyager. It was code named by SAP as Pioneer.
[It is available with BOE 3.1 and is also part of BOE 4.0.]
Those of you want to pick up initial bits please have a look at these -
Demo - http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/elearn?rid=/library/uuid/205c3736-466b-2d10-f6b2-88628c021a41
Or have look at the SAP Press Book, by none other than Ingo
SAP PRESS - Advanced Analysis, Edition for Microsoft Office - former Project Pioneer
SAP is projecting this solution as road-ahead for SAP BEx, do not worry SAP BEx is going to go away (for time being) and as of now SAP is talking about ‘Coexistence of BEx Analyzer and Advanced Analysis, edition for MS Office' see more details:
http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/bex
PREREQUISITES -
For release 1 of ‘BO Advanced Analysis', following are the prerequisites as suggest by SAP -
- MS Office 2003, MS Office 2007 or MS Office 2010 (on MS Windows XP and higher)
- - PowerPoint Add-in only available for MS Office 2007 and MS Office 2010
- SAP NetWeaver BW 7.0 or higher**
- - Recommendation: use BW 7.0 EHP1 or even SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3 as there are significant TCO and integration improvements between Business Objects Enterprise and NetWeaver
- - Queries defined in SAP BEx Query Designer 3.5 (within SAP NetWeaver 7.0!) or 7.0+ ; also: direct access to SAP NetWeaver BW InfoProviders and query views
- - No need to migrate queries, no change in BW data models necessary
- - The SAP BEx Query Designer stays as it is and can continue to be the semantic modeling level for SAP NetWeaver BW data.
- SAP Business Objects Enterprise (BOE) XI 3.1 (can run side-by side with SAP NetWeaver BW)
CONCERNS I HAVE -
As it is being considered Road-Ahead for SAP BEX, I have got following concerns -
- - Though it can work directly with SAP BW (don't jump yet...like I did), But SAP does not recommend that (other than testing purposes) and suggest using BOE.
- - It shall be part of BOE (3.1 / 4.0), considering that I am not sure how much will cost additional to pure SAP BW customers (who are using BEx now and would like to explore this solution). I am sure there are lot many out there
- - Good idea (technical feasibility is to be evaluated), having a version on this solution exclusively for SAP BW customers so that it could be implemented with lowest possible TCO
- - Are there any benchmarks available to compare BEx performance with Advanced Analysis performance?
- - W here does BWA / HANA shall fit into whole architecture?
I look forward to feedback on my concerns from all you experts, many thanks in anticipation.
