DNS - SAP Designs Suite for BI Casual

SAP (News - Alert) is staking out a claim in on-demand business intelligence, announcing “a new suite that combines all of SAP’s software as a service BI products, aimed at “casual users who are underserved by other products.”

 

IDG News Service adds that the suite has built-in guides to walk users through the various processes, supposedly eliminating the need for costly training.

 

Industry observer Jeff Moad characterized it as a “new cloud-based offering that replaces two existing SaaS (News - Alert) BI products. The company’s new SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand offering is targeted at line-of-business users who may perform data analysis using personal spreadsheets rather than secure BI tools, company officials said.”

 

SAP claims the BusinessObjects Explorer data-visualization and exploration tool “allows inexperienced users to search through and analyze business data from a variety of sources,” according to IDG:

 

“Users can also create reports and share them with people inside or outside their company in a secure manner. The vendor also said the suite will be able to tap data from Salesforce.com (News - Alert).”

Moad says BusinessObjects BI OnDemand “replaces both SAP’s CrystalReports.com SaaS offering and the company’s first-generation cloud-based BI product, also named BI OnDemand.”

SAP wants partners to play “a key role” in selling it, IDG reports, saying “SaaS BI vendor Oco will offer versions tuned for various industries and lines of business to large enterprises and upper-midmarket companies.”

 

Industry observer Jeff Kelly says users “can also make suggestions for – and vote on – new features they’d like to see developed. SAP plans to add new capabilities to the suite on a monthly basis.” The suite will also be sold via SAP’s PartnerEdge program later this year.

 

Analyst firm IDC (News - Alert) “recently predicted the SaaS BI market will grow much more quickly in coming years than on-premises BI and analytics software sales,” IDG noted, “although it will remain fairly small.”