Waiting for SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.2
Timehop is a popular mobile app that bills itself as “a time capsule of you.” It allows you to review your historical social media activity from “this exact day in history” and re-share. The app is so popular, Facebook decided to copy the idea into its own “On This Day” feature. Today, September 2, was the last day of ASUG’s SAP Analytics and BusinessObjects User Conference, or #SABOUC as we call it on social media. And on this day four years ago in 2011 (see what I just did there?), I wrote a blog entitled “Waiting on SAP BusinessObjects BI4“ expressing both excitement and frustration at waiting for the general availability of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.0. SAP BI 4.0 would go GA just a few short days later on Friday, September 16, 2011.
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.2, the eagerly awaited update to the BI4 platform, quietly went into beta this week (see related SCN article, “SAP BusinessObjects BI4.2 Announced by Steve Lucas”). But there was barely a word of it breathed during SABOUC conference sessions. And not one word during conference keynotes. With mainstream support for SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.1 and SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 ending on December 31, 2015 (see related SCN article, “New Maintenance Dates for SAP BusinessObjects BI4.1”), all roads lead to the currently available BI 4.1 and its Support Pack 6. SAP will provide BI 4.1 Support Pack 7 near the end of 2015. But customers wishing to meet the deadline (and that’s all of you, right?) will most likely use the current release.
Quite simply, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.2 will not go GA in 2015 and is therefore not an appropriate upgrade path for organizations still using XI 3.1 or BI 4.0. Sadly, SAP reinforced that logic this week by not dangling any tempting carrots of BI 4.2 goodness in front of eager conference goers. As frustrating as the BI4 installer’s “WaitForCMSForTheFirstTime” message can be, no doubt folks at SAP are experiencing a little frustration watching the “WaitForCustomersToUpgradeToBI41” message on their screens.
It’s possible that SAP may have more to show and tell at the upcoming TechEd conference next month. Or possibly even the upcoming SAP Insider Reporting & Analytics conference. But it’s also entirely possible that we’ll be waiting until 2016. Instead of our usual New Year’s Eve routine of watching Ryan Seacrest and the ball dropping in Times Square, SAP analytics customers may have to switch channels and watch Steve Lucas, President of SAP Platform Solutions, and a giant XI 3.1 logo dropping in Walldorf.
I will be watching.
Are you eagerly awaiting the arrival of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.2? Share your thoughts below.
Thats true Dallas Marks. People who are upgrading to BI 4.1 by end of this year might need to go for a another upgrade in another 6-12 months in order to utilize BI 4.2 features though the mainstream support for BI 4.1 is available till End of 2018.
Thanks
Mani
True Eagerly waiting to hear about it. I Know customers who are not upgrading from XI 3.1 to current 4.x because of Linked universe and when i told that it will be available in 4.2, now they are asking when it will be released 😏
BI4.2 GA is planned for Q1 2016.
Gregory :
Then SAP should have extended 3.1 & 4.0 Support for 6-8 months (eg. July 31, 2016) to allow Customers the option of moving directly to 4.2 from their Current Platform.
I expect a number of Customers will do that anyway - to avoid two Version Upgrades within a year...depending on how much 'Faith' they have in SAP's Q1 - 2016 plan - and how comfortable they are with moving PRODUCTION to a SP00 version of any Vendors tools.
Extending 3.1 & 4.0 Support for 6-8 months (eg. July 31, 2016) would have been a Marginal-Cost to SAP, but would have won them a considerable amount of "Goodwill" from Customers who could then move directly to 4.2.
It's still not "too late" for Steve Lucas to announce that at TechEd in Vegas. 😉
Mark
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Hi Mark,
i totally agree with you. Luckily we are already on 4.1, but we won't update to 4.2 before at least 4.2 SP3 is available and SAP proved that this announcement was right:
BR,
Michael
"I don't care when it gets here so long as it works with IE 8."
James,
I really don't thing that's gonna happen, IE 8 is NOT support by Microsoft so it definitely won't be support by a new release of BI 4.2. The new release will support application that are currently supported by other vendors (Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle, Google,. . . ) only.
IE 8 & 9 - Support end Jan 12th 2016 (See link)
Internet Explorer Support Lifecycle Policy FAQ</title> <!-- integration code for PDF --> <link href=&…
Ajay
I laughed at this post, thinking "this would be something Jamie Oswald would say", then looked at who posted it, and laughed more. 😎
Some info is out: SAP BusinessObjects BI4.2 What's New L2