I've logged quite a few air miles in the past 6 months and met numerous SAP customers, partners, colleagues, and mentors. Most of my time was spent talking about SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 and answering related questions. If I were to pick the question that I've heard the most it would have to be: "Hey Pierre, I've heard about your upcoming 4.0 release, but tell me what's new in 4.0 over the release I am currently running?"
We have already published lots of great material covering the 4.0 release in various communities, but in an effort to summarize what's new in 4.0 for SAP Partners, we've decided to publish the top 4.0 innovations as a summary table. In this post, I will cover the BI innovations and in the upcoming weeks, each 4.0 innovation found in this table will be the topic of a separate post so stay tuned!
Focus Area | What Does It Do? | What Is the Value? |
Innovations in 4.0: The New Semantic Layer | - Brings all relevant data (incl. multi-dimensional) in a self-service way
- Offers a single query design experience based on business terms across the BI suite
- Provides native multi-source universes
| - Greater range of information accessible by business users
- Increased user self-sufficiency and reduced IT backlog
- Reduced cost of deploying universes
|
Innovations in 4.0: Unified User Experience | - Extends modern styling and unified look and feel across the BI Suite
- Delivers refined interactivity and new charting capabilities
- Delivers BI suite interoperability
| - Increased user adoption of BI solutions across lines of business
- Greater understanding of available information
- Increased business user’s productivity
|
Innovations in 4.0: Next-Generation OLAP Analysis | - Consumes multi-dimensional data
- Runs with existing SAP BW cubes and BEx queries
- Provides Microsoft Excel-based analytical capabilities
| - Increased business user autonomy and self-service usage
- Maximized existing SAP investments – BW and BEx queries
- Minimized deployment, training, and support costs
|
Innovations in 4.0: Personalized, Self-Service Access to Information | - Offers enhanced content filtering, navigation, and search options (BI launch pad)
- Personalizes information consumption
(BI workspace) - Works with multiple documents simultaneously (BI workspace)
| - Increased speed in delivering relevant information to users
- Greater number of employees actively using information for decisions
- Increased visibility of information to users
|
Innovations in 4.0: BI Platform Administration | - Provides intelligent platform monitoring and diagnosis - dashboard, watches, and probes
- Delivers complete and consistent audit of all BI platform events
- Controls content deployment with lifecycle management console
| - Simplified BI deployment and maintenance
- Improved usage analysis and compliance
- Accelerated BI content deployment to people, teams, and business networks
|
Integration with SAP Landscape | - Expands native connectivity options to SAP NetWeaver BW
- Unites system monitoring through SAP Solution Manager
- Provides lifecycle management through SAP Change and Transport System
| - Simplified access to existing SAP NetWeaver and BEx queries assets
- Reduced support costs across the SAP environment landscape
- Unified change and transport management
|
Innovations in 4.0: Alerting | - Notifies business users in real-time with context-specific information
- Provides simple subscription-based alerting workflow
- Delivers unified alerting
framework
| - Faster decisions as events unfold
- Reduced information browsing and increased management by exception
- Consistent alert workflow for any data source including real-time events
|
Links to additional information and content:
Innovations in SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 Presentation
