tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35074152.post2851774196146756398..comments2024-01-20T17:11:09.519+11:00Comments on Monash University Business Intelligence Blog: SAP & Business ObjectsRob Meredithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16384888139743754730noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35074152.post-77265072186594068872008-09-05T17:48:00.000+10:002008-09-05T17:48:00.000+10:00Hi RobI am sorry there a couple of incorrect assum...Hi Rob<BR/>I am sorry there a couple of incorrect assumptions. firtsly the SAP market in Australia and the world is far from saturated. This is reinforced in Australia by the recent new customers so far in 2008; CBA, Olex, Reject Shop, Corporate Express, HarrisScarfe, BBQ;s Galore, Ballance, Westnet, Rays Outdoors.<BR/><BR/>Secondly by industry and SAP estimates there are a 30,000 to 50,000 skill shortage worldwide. this is certainly not an indication of a non growing market.<BR/><BR/>In terms of SAP BI and BOBJ; they are build on completely different architectures. BOBJ does not have a data warehouse layer and therefore has to extract data everytime a report is run. The MD admitted to me the otherday thet the product was never designed to be an enterprise wide BI tool due to the impact on performance of having to load large volumes of data. secondly the lack of a data warehouse layer makes it difficult to compre historiacl data especially if data is changed in the source systems.<BR/><BR/>30% of BOBJ customers use SAP. There is no doubt that BOBJ presntation layer tools are far better than SAP's. So these customers used BOBJ tools on top of their SAP platform. The new BOBJ/SAP BI roadmap reinforces this concept with a lot of empahsis on the incorporation of SAP master data quality tools. <BR/><BR/>The main problem with SAP BI implementations they developed at a business unit level and thus no enetreprise wide strategy which many companies are now addressing. This was not as big an issue for BOBJ customers because as mentioned previously it was never intended to be entreprise wide.<BR/><BR/>The reason SAP is keeping much BOBJ as a separate entity is that 70% of the customers do not use SAP. This means a different mechanism for dealing with many of these customers especially the smaller ones. SAP uses a similioar approach with their SME customers by using partners and resellers and the realtionship managers.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35074152.post-67730074494621990072007-10-23T08:55:00.000+10:002007-10-23T08:55:00.000+10:00I'm sure a fair bit of the decision to purchase, o...I'm sure a fair bit of the decision to purchase, on the part of SAP, was driven by the saturation of the ERP market and the ongoing growth in BI. I'm also sure a fair bit of it was driven by Oracle doing exactly the same thing.<BR/><BR/>Cheers,<BR/><BR/>Rob.Rob Meredithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16384888139743754730noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35074152.post-48987013438988993162007-10-23T08:53:00.000+10:002007-10-23T08:53:00.000+10:00Hi Bruce,Great to hear from you again. Hope all i...Hi Bruce,<BR/><BR/>Great to hear from you again. Hope all is well.<BR/><BR/>It really is like a collective amnesia. It's partly due to the training many of our IT professionals get at University - very few have specialised programs in decision support or business intelligence. The same goes for a lot of our academics too! It's also partly due to the poor message put out there by vendors (technology is the solution!).<BR/><BR/>It's also partly the expected approach to IT project governance: boards, executive sponsors, etc., all expect a certain pattern to a development project - specific deliverables with specific milestones. It's very difficult to launch into an evolutionary development process which is something of an unknown journey. The developers don't know exactly where they're going (because the client doesn't either), and that makes businesses very nervous.Rob Meredithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16384888139743754730noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35074152.post-2998970833064048162007-10-22T20:38:00.000+10:002007-10-22T20:38:00.000+10:00Given the available research and the growing body ...Given the available research and the growing body of knowledge that exists in this area, how is it that such fundamental failures in project management and approach continue to occur?<BR/><BR/>How much of this acquisition is strategic positioning by Business Objects in response to the diminishing market share to competing products?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com