New business intelligence innovations for Asia Pacific and Japan revealed

Thanks to the feature pack 3 for the 4.0 release of SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions.

In a release, SAP AG announced new business intelligence (BI) innovations designed to bring customers richer business insights through powerful analytics tools that are easy to use.

Now generally available in Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), feature pack 3 for the 4.0 release of SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions – including SAP BusinessObjects BI, and Edge edition – and the 1.0.1 release of SAP Visual Intelligence software helps organizations unlock the power of their data.

Extending the core with new features
Feature pack 3 for the 4.0 release of SAP BusinessObjects BI solution, which includes SAP BusinessObjects BI, Edge edition for small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) provides updates in a number of key areas:

• Mobile: By giving workers direct access to critical reports and metrics on their mobile devices, organizations can mobilize information assets in a collaborative, self-service environment. New support for Android devices and mobile BI for iPhone also means greater choice.
• Big data: Support for Apache Hadoop and deeper support for the SAP HANA platform enable high-performance analytics on petabyte-scale data, uncovering more data value and improving business velocity.
• Insights: SAP BusinessObjects Explorer software offers users a simple, intuitive experience for gaining immediate, interactive access to data to create visualizations and answer business questions on the fly.
• Social: Integration between the SAP StreamWork® application and BI documents increases social collaboration by bringing together people, information and business methods for fast, meaningful results.
• Integration: Deeper SAP application integration enables customers to run operational reporting off of the SAP ERP application and multi-source universes. Access to the SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (SAP NetWeaver BW) application across all clients reduces total cost of ownership (TCO) and complexity.

Collaborate with multiple data sources
Bringing creative, self-service BI directly to the desktop, the 1.0.1 release of SAP Visual Intelligence lets people use personal data sources such as Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and CSV files, in addition to data from SAP HANA. It also features SAP StreamWork connectivity for collaborative BI.

SAP Visual Intelligence is a desktop BI solution that works with SAP BusinessObjects Explorer and has unique read and write integration with SAP HANA. The software helps lines of business, departments and individuals discover and analyze information to find the answers they are looking for, regardless of technical skill level.

It also enables them to easily visualize data and apply key findings to decision-making processes without having to rely on IT.

“As the market share leader in BI, SAP is committed to helping customers run their businesses like never before by maximizing their analytics investments,” said Adam Binnie, global vice president and general manager, Business Intelligence Solutions, SAP.

“With the most complete BI portfolio available today, SAP is also working hard on the service and support front to make our five-pillar BI vision a reality for any sized business, industry or line of business.”

Also announcing the Analytics Plus Program in APJ
Along with the launch of feature pack 3 for the 4.0 release of SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions, SAP also today announced the launch of its Analytics Plus Program in APJ. Intended to improve communication between SAP and its APJ customers, it will enable SAP customers to run business better.

Through the Analytics Plus Program, SAP helps customers add value to their investment by addressing more business needs with increased insight and analysis into data sources, including Dimensional Universe, Multi-source Universes, new Analysis Client, Exploration Views, Hadoop and SAP HANA.

For customers to remain satisfied and productive, SAP ensures its offerings stay relevant, enabling business users to work in an environment of simple, flexible and user-friendly technology. BI 4.0 delivers a unified and modern user experience, beautiful charts and largely expanded mobile capabilities.

With a 64 bit platform, better lifecycle management, Information Design Tool, server monitoring, hot backups and many more improvements, users not only improve productivity but also lower their cost of ownership compared with their existing deployment.

Also, through the Analytics Plus Program, SAP helps customers leverage their current BusinessObjects investment by ‘trading in’ their existing licenses for the latest release of SAP BusinessObject Business Intelligence 4.0 Suite. This is an efficient and highly effective way to move to the complete suite of business intelligence tools on a single, scalable platform to meet the needs of business users and decision-makers.

“In line with our increased focus on analytics and the re-dedication of our efforts to our customers of SAP Business Objects solutions in the region, we are more committed than ever before, to help our customers maximize their investments and help them run their businesses better,” said Kurt J. Bilafer, regional vice president, Analytics, SAP Asia Pacific Japan.

“We offer our customers the most complete business intelligence suite in the market, with continuous innovations, in the core platform and tools, plus the latest in mobile, social, predictive analysis and analyzing big data.”