SAP BusinessObjects Explorer and SAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius End of Life. Considerations as your plan next steps using SAP Analytics Cloud

Amazing how quickly time passes, isn’t it?  On July 25, 2017, Adobe posted their official announcement that they would end-of-life Adobe Flash at the end of 2020.  At that time, they urged everyone to plan to migrate to new solutions on or before they stopped updating and distributing Adobe Flash.

Users worldwide have benefited from SAP BusinessObjects Explorer and SAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius (Dashboards).  Based on Adobe Flash, these two products will be going end-of-life on December 31, 2020. Existing installations may continue to work, but will no longer be supported by SAP.

SAP Analytics Cloud Data Discovery and Analytics Designer are your “go-to” solutions
SAP Analytics Cloud is a terrific alternative for custom dashboards and data discovery. It offers data visualization and SMART data discovery, BI reporting, dashboarding and analytic application design (Analytics Designer) and leverages predictive analytics, machine learning, and nature language query.

Leverage your existing SAP BusinessObjects on premise investment while extending and expanding your analytics in the cloud using real-time data with our Hybrid capabilities.  Keep sensitive data behind your firewall using direct (Live) connectivity to SAP BusinessObjects universes, SAP BW, SAP HANA, and SAP S/4 HANA, SAP S/4 HANA Cloud Platform, HANA Cloud Platform plus a number of other standard industry 3rd party database.

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer – do even more with data exploration in SAP Analytics Cloud
SAP Analytics Cloud Data Discovery provides a faceted view of your data. It’s the same type of user experience that you have with SAP BusinessObjects Explorer.

Advantages of SAP Analytics Cloud Data Discovery

• Infospaces / Exploration – SAP Analytics Cloud provides ad-hoc capabilities out of the box with no significant configuration investment needed. Supports key capabilities for creating and exploring as well as charting capabilities. Updates can be scheduled and all stories based on the model will reflect the latest data. This will ensure minimal calls to back-end systems.
• Data Sources – In addition to what Explorer supports today, SAC offers a host of other data connectivity options including (S/4HANA, BW/4HANA and other cloud sources) as well as Live connectivity to real-time data.
• Live Data Connectivity – SAP Analytics Cloud provides direct (Live) connectivity to SAP BusinessObjects universes enabling the users to see the latest data without needing to replicate/schedule the data import, allowing data to remain behind your firewall.
• Easy data exploration – SAP Analytics Cloud provides exploratory analysis enabling you to examine any dimension, slice, dice and embed – and utilize auto-charting configuration in your story.
• Security – Security can be applied on Model level and hence is respected in all the stories. The need of personalization on individual info spaces can be eliminated.
• Search – SAP Analytics Cloud supports a search by facet and global search at the level of the home page called “Search to Insight” allowing search for data without opening a story in SAP Analytics Cloud.

Fore more detailed and technical information, please check this article.

Also definitely study this blog

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards / Xcelsius – Analytics Designer moves custom dashboards forward
SAP Analytics Cloud empowers analysts to create dynamic visual stories based on your key business areas with trusted data. SAP Analytics Cloud Analytics Designer enables the creation of custom professional dashboards through widgets that leverage smart functionality, ranging from simple static dashboards to highly customized applications with more possibilities of visualization and interactions.

Advantages of SAP Analytics Cloud Analytics Designer

• Data Sources – Support for the data sources used with SAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius plus connections including SQL databases, SAP ERP, SAP S/4 HANA, SAP HANA, Odata, and a growing set of cloud data sources.

• Charting and Maps – Supports the 21 chart types from SAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius and more powerful charts in a structured way (including standard charts) to conform with IBCS. Offers chart extensions with scripting capabilities to realize sophisticated requirements. Esri maps as base map supporting 12 frequent maps allowing multiple layers to be added on the top of the map. Scripting used to fulfill other custom map requirements.
• “What-If” Analysis – Calculate measures using restricted measures in slider bar to manage variables or the ultimate What-if Analysis using Value Driver Tree (Planning License required), that can be added to stories for analysis and perform calculations on model data directly.
• Trend Analyzer– Time Series Forecast is available using historical data to predict future values plus Automatic forecasting, Triple Exponential Smoothing, and Linear Regression.

• Excel Modeling – Enhanced data wrangling process suggests smart transformations and automating repetitive workflows. Planning models can also be used as data sources in SAP Analysis for Microsoft Office (edition for SAP Analytics Cloud) allowing users to work in the Microsoft Excel environment and connect directly to SAP Analytics Cloud.

• Dynamic Dashboards – Analytic Designer allows “show” and “hide” components for dynamic visibility, using APIs to script the behavior of widgets.

For more detailed and technical information, please check this article.

Get the most value out of SAP BusinessObjects with SAP Analytics Cloud
SAP is offering a new licensing opportunity for our SAP BusinessObjects customers designed to help you right-size your licenses and maintenance and apply that which you are not using towards SAP Analytics Cloud subscriptions.  This is a great way to get you started with SAP Analytics Cloud licensing.

Get Started On Your Next Step Planning

• Give it a try for free with the SAP Analytics Cloud 30-Day Trial Version
• Explore more about SAP Analytics Cloud
• Visit this wiki for details on SAP BusinessObjects Explorer and Xcelsius and SAP Analytics Cloud
• Register for the SAP Analytics Cloud, Analytics Designer webinar
• Register for the SAP Analytics Cloud Augmented BI webinar and Data Discovery
• Pose a question or request at sapaskanalytics@sap.com

Iver van de Zand is Vice President Product Strategy Augmented BI for SAP