The very first printing press revolutionized information access in the 1400s. By 1500 A.D, 13 million books were in circulation among 100 million people. Humankind has been innovating ever since - the industrial revolution, the first microchip, the emergence of internet, and now with the prevalence of social media, we have come a long way. The world has transformed into a series of loosely connected economies where the local events can be felt across the world instantaneously. Hence there is an increasing volatility, uncertainty and risk in the market. Organizations have to become nimble and respond to changing markets quicker than ever before. Organizations and decision makers within these organizations are under constant pressure – “what is the best decision that I can make right now?” And you need to make enough optimal decisions, so that the overall direction is always good.
These changes have impacted businesses in many other ways as well. Inside any organization, there is a newer generation of knowledge workers who have been raised with the internet and social media. First of all they expect instant answers to their questions, secondly they expect everything to be simplified –they want to start and end their information journey with few clicks. And with growing number of mobile devices blurring the workspaces, it has become a necessity to deliver information on employee owned devices (BYOD).
Organizations need improved, updated BI solutions that will equip themselves to meet these ever changing demands. At SAP BusinessObjects, we are continuously innovating and have aligned our innovations to meet these needs and beyond. The very first release of SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.0 and subsequent FP3 and support pack releases delivered several breakthrough innovations around BI platform, self-service BI and mobile BI.
SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.1 is the culmination of new innovations and incremental product advances since 4.0, enabling all our existing XI R2 and XI 3 customers to confidently move to the updated platform.
Here is a high level summary of the innovations since XI 3.1:
- Leverage your existing BI investments in mobile devices. Customers who have invested in Web Intelligence documents, Dashboards (formerly Xcelsius), Crystal Reports and Explorer can now deliver these assets on tablets and smart phones. This will expand BI adoption in your organization and provide insight to your business users instantly. In addition, you can customize the Mobile BI app with your branding to better integrate and extend all aspects of BI into your existing ecosystem.
- Self-service BI with SAP Visual Intelligence and SAP BusinessObjects Explorer offer the flexibility, power and instant insight to your analysts and decision makers. SAP Visual Intelligence enables business analysts to dynamically access data from both personal and corporate sources, synthesize and transform the data and discover answers by building visualizations. With SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, managers and decision makers can explore information and get answers quickly. These remove dependency on expert users to provide information and get answers to unanticipated questions.
- Expanded support of new and updated data sources. BI 4.1 brings to customers official support for both net new and updated versions of key platforms and database technologies. This is an especially big improvement for customers with diverse data sources and landscapes and can be taken advantage of with our improved semantic layer and information design tool. New Semantic Layer SDKs allow you to automate universe deployment and lifecycle management. You can programmatically create and update universes without needing to manually open each universe in the Information Design Tool. This is particularly helpful for 3.x to 4.x migrations, and customers planning to convert their 3.x universes (UNV) to 4.x universes (UNX).
- Unified user experience and improved look and feel across the suite. This makes transition from one BI solution to another easier, means a more productive experience with less clicking and time spent navigating menus. And across the BI suite, users will discover a new and very sophisticated charting experience. Customers using SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence and SAP Crystal Reports will see major productivity improvements with these enhancements.
- Consumption of DeskI content in BI 4.1 using Desktop Intelligence 3.1 client. Buys you more time to move your end users to Web Intelligence or move them to SAP Visual Intelligence
- Lower TCO with the updated platform – Hot back-up, auditing, monitoring, collaboration and many others. The enhanced scalability with virtualization and 64-bit support and multilingual BI delivery will help you to turn BI system into a global, mission critical application in your organization.
- Developer Solution Kit - The extensive set of SAP BusinessObjects business intelligence SDKS enables you to create, customize, and extend your solution. With the help of extensive documentation and code samples, developers can jumpstart their application development. They can use SDKs to access and share BI content including integration with portals, mobile, or other third party applications.
The printing press revolutionized the access to information in the 1400s. With the latest innovations from SAP BusinessObjects BI 4 you can revolutionize the decision making in your organization today.
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