BI Accelerator SAP Licensing

[Former Member]

Hello all,

Just wondering if any of you can comment on this.

We've been looking into implementing the BI accelerator here and the quote we got from SAP is in the six figures for EACH blade we put in our system. In our case, since we were planning to go for 7 blades it brings our total close to a 7 figures number when including harware...

How have any of you been able to justify such costs? Even if we hired a person to take care of aggegates full-time we would be saving a whole bunch compared to the accelerator. I heard some of you have implemented 25 blades systems, did you really pay close to 3 millions for such a system (including hardware)?

I have some trouble understanding the business logic of selling a tool that fixes one of the major flaws of BI at such a steep price... In a sense we're getting an incomplete product and then are told that if we want it to be efficient, we need to cash out even more...

We're still on 3.5, the main objective of the upgrade for us was performance... But without BIA I wonder how much performance gain we'll actually get.

All comments welcome.

Eric

[Vitaliy-R · Accepted solution]

Hello Eric,

Did you get 6digits quote for licence per blade? Sounds too much. In what currency is it?

At the end, this is a business world, so you have to negotiate.

When I first heard about the product, I was sceptic myself. But it does work, and business love it.

The comparison to aggregates is valid, but not complete:

1) you usually do not have aggregates for all possible selections, while BIA gives users quite predictable response time independent of the selection (of course with few things in mind)

2) with BIA you do not have such a big data latency as with aggregagates (depending on amount of data)

3) BIA reduce the load on DB, especially important in global implementations

Hope this helps,

-Vitaliy

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your answer, but yes I got a quote in the low 6-digits (Can$) per license (and I was told we need one license per blade). I realize these prices are made to be negociated, but even by cutting it in half it does amount to some havy licensing fees for something that is technically transparent to the user... When building our original business plan on this we kept in mind a quote by Shai Agassi that mentionned engine costs at below 200K (+ hardware).. But based on the quote we got, it seems like engine means one blade... I don't think anyone would implement only one blade, so this was quite misleading...

[former_member93896 · Accepted solution]

Hello Eric,

to be precise, pricing for BI Accelerator is by memory (not by blade). Anyway, please contact you SAP Account Executive and ask him/her to get the BIA TCO Calculator. This will help you justify the investment into a BIA appliance.

Regards,

Marc

SAP NetWeaver RIG

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks, we just sent a request for that BIA TCO Calculator. It was never mentionned.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

You know what's funny? Our account executive tells us that no, the business model is by blade, not by memory...

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Anyway, had a look at what the TCO calculator looks like and there's no way we'd cash out that much. The savings are nice on paper, but we all know that user time savings don't automatically translate 1 to 1 in actual savings.

Thanks for your help.

[Vitaliy-R · Accepted solution]

Hi Eric,

As far as I know as well the pricing is still per blade, not per memory.

I must say, that we have not seen customers, who would be dissapointed with the Accelerator. But if you do not think to go with BIA now, you might be still interested to review it once NW BI 7.1 is available and more features are introduced, including BIA support for RTDA (as per SAP's plans).

So, for now you decided to hire additional person to generate aggregates?

Regards,

-Vitaliy

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

For now we'll plan our upgrade without BIA and see where that brings us. Never know, maybe licensing fees will go down...:) Maybe for huge implementations it's easier to justify (we're approaching the 1TB right now) but for now we can target the type of usage upper management has and build aggregates accordingly. Analysts will just have to wait as they currently do...

Thanks for all your help.

Eric

[former_member319467 · Accepted solution]

Hi Eric,

SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator is priced per 16 GB memory increments. The price only applies to productive use of SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator. There is no additional license for non-productive (development, test, and fail-over in stand-by mode only). A license charge does apply however in case that stand-by blades are also used to cover peaks in demand.

Due to the fact, that most of the currently used blades are 16 GB blades, it looks like the license is per blade. There is also an offering of 8 GB blades, where two blades fit into one license and in the future 32 GB blades will be supported as well.

The 8 GB offering is especially for smaller installations or for a start installation. Some of our HW partners also offer a test and buy approach, where you get the HW rolled into your DC for a testing period, if you are not fine with the results, you pay a fee and they take the HW back. Due to the free of charge of non productive installations on the software side, you start paying for BIA not before you put the BIA in production.

Going for the upgrade and then rechecking the BIA topic again is a valid approach, but there are some reasons why it could also be interesting to have a closer look on an upgrade together with BIA in one step. For Example: Different need of HW after the upgrade (so if you have to invest into new HW, the sizing could look different with BIA).

We are currently putting together a Value Calculator that shows all different areas where BIA could bring you cost savings or additional value. Based on that, it could get a little easier to bring together your business case. But for now, I wish you all the best with your upgrade and enough patience for your End-user.

Regards

Mathias

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Mathias, would obviously love to see that Value Calculator once available.