I have attended some very interesting SAP and Business Objects presentations over the past few weeks, and what was startling but refreshing, considering I have seen a number of software company acquisitions, was that just day’s after the ink was drying on the contracts, key executives from both SAP and Business Objects were announcing a product roadmap, joint plans for their users and partner communities, and not surprisingly, packages from SAP and Business Objects which they say will leverage the expertise of these two leaders of the software industry to produce offerings unrivalled in making employees more self-sufficient.
Some of the key changes I can see include the launch of Financial Performance Management, which is the toolset that addresses business challenges facing corporate finance or operational decision makers. Their decision to wind-down some of the acquired technologies and opt for a best-of-breed approach is admirable and will make the offering very clear. However, if you just bought one of the modules which may become obsolete, some work may need to be done to ensure the migration path is a comfortable one.
Strategy Management will be the Pilot technology, Business Planning will be Outlooksoft, Financial Consolidation will be the tools from Cartesis, and the Costing and Profitability module is from ALG.
There is no sign of the SRC product which became Planning Edge.
SAP and Business Objects have broken the other offerings into manageable parts, with the SME or mid-size company focus gaining the attention of the SAP Business All-in-One with BusinessObjects Edge Standard, which they claim will meet the needs of these companies focused on enhancing operational excellence, business agility and customer intimacy.
Master Data Services provides a central view of master data to help decision makers, and Data Integration and Data Quality Management tools help to build an agile and trustworthy data foundation.
At the front end, Enterprise Query, Reporting, and Analysis are the traditional tools which now will be able to help SAP users get at their business data, and I think we will see the demise over time of the BEx products, which we understand will not receive on-going development. This could be a welcome relief for some SAP users.
Good old Crystal remains as the Visualization and Reporting technology.
The key value for SAP customers now, as mentioned in their recent company interviews, is the ability to go beyond and outside of the SAP NetWeaver platform, in a good way. SAP customers that have a NetWeaver strategy will possibly discover that in order to now get simple reporting and analytics to replace BEx, it will require them to make an investment which could be equal to the investment they already made in deploying NetWeaver.