SAP Workspaces On Demand

[tamasszirtes]

BI experts know how important it is to present the right information to the right people. Portal technologies have played a role in this for many years. Just 2-3 years ago I was consulting customers about using BEx in the SAP Portal, Visual Composer, BI Java, Federated Portal Network, etc. These technologies are now disappearing and new ones are in the spotlight. SAP Workspaces On Demand is one of the latest innovations in this BI/Portal space.

Yes, it’s an On Demand, in other words, a cloud solution. Of course, you could do the same On Premise, there are various ways to integrate BI4 and NetWeaver Portal (whether 7.0 or 7.3, with or without EWS, with or without BI workspaces, etc.) but now I am going to write about how to do it in the cloud.

Enterprise Workspaces is the latest new exciting development in the SAP Portal area. SAP Workspaces On Demand is the cloud edition, which is embedded into the BI OnDemand solution.

SAP Workspaces can be accessed under the top navigation item “Dashboards”.

Content can be added from the module gallery, just as in EWS.

Module Gallery in SAP Workspaces On Demand:

Module Gallery in EWS:

Using Explorer and Crystal Reports, I created some demo content in 10-15 minutes in BI OnDemand. Creating the below dashboard took only some seconds:

In terms of functionality, this OnDemand solution is simple, but very useful for business users. While EWS offers out-of-box modules and API for anyone to create custom modules, SAP Workspaces OnDemand in BI OnDemand can use only content available in BI OnDemand. In this respect it is similar to BI workspaces in the BI launchpad, which is the On Premise workspace solution in BI4. Its look&feel is very similar to EWS (see screenshots above), but not exactly the same. This can probably be explained by the underlying technology: while EWS is based on Adobe Flash, its cloud version uses HTML/JS.

All in all, I think it is an excellent addition to the BI OnDemand platform, which is already very impressive in terms of usability. Data and reports can be created and managed very easily and now, with SAP Workspaces On Demand, the reports can be presented to the end users more efficiently.