DSLayer: SAP Really Runs SAP BI

[Former Member]

In another edition of the Diversified Semantic Layer podcast, we were joined by david.poisson to discuss how SAP gets to use SAP BusinessObjects and SAP Analytics to run SAP (the podcast was a while ago, but the write-up is happening now).

Here is the embedded video, and below are the highlights.

00:20 Welcome back David Poisson!

02:50 Pleasantries are finally over, and it’s time to start. Apparently SAP has potentially 65,000 end users which runs on a single BI platform. The Sales organization has 5,000 people who regularly use an Explorer Sales Pipeline and several Web Intelligence reports.

05:00 HANA comes up by complete accident – apparently people love that they have zero latency in their reports.

05:45 David continues to rub it in – 4.1 has a higher degree of sustainability and so their internal platform support team plays a lot of tiddly winks.

07:00 SAP has around 40 servers on 4 different landscapes to serve up that – 10 VMs in Prod. (editors note: I must get to 4.1).

08:20 NO PHYSICAL MACHINES! 6 people manage it, and SkyNet is a far smaller threat.

09:44 More “Na-na na-na-na” from David.  Unlimited licensing. Apparently SAP folks are surprised when they get a WebI report anymore, just because of all the choices. RIGHT TOOL FOR THE JOB!

13:40 Every SAP IT person is supposed to meet with at least one customer each year. It doesn’t always work out, but a noble goal.

15:30 JUICY QUESTION ALERT – What impact does SAP IT (as a customer) have on the product direction?

17:55 SAP IT is a pretty decent utility for SAP Support – it’s a a place where they can help troubleshoot paying customers’ issues. #labmice

19:45 SAP used to have Qlikview. Sounds like nobody misses it.

22:15 Jamie gets subversive – “What can’t you deliver?”

24:40 Dashboards should explain to the end user.

27:30 Looking nice isn’t enough for a dashboard – I need great information to drive utilization.

29:00 timo.elliott is a great internal resource; others, less so.

32:20 Mobile is where it’s at.

35:25 ADVICE HOT TAKE: If you are new to BusinessObjects, start with 4.1. If you aren’t new, get there anyway.

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