Business Objects Product Line

Transcription

1 White Paper Business Objects Product Line Product Integration Roadmap Overview

2 Author: Contributor: Audience: Lance Walter James Thomas, Gene Villeneuve, Erin O Malley, Eric Powers, Cortney Claiborne Customers and prospects Business Objects Product Integration Roadmap Overview

3 Contents Contents Executive Summary Document Scope Background Licensing, Upgrades, and Migration Integration Roadmap Development Inputs Customers Industry Analysts Employees Findings Integration Roadmap Summary Integration Phase One: Integration Pack for BusinessObjects Enterprise 6.5 and Crystal Overview Phase One Upgrade Information Customer Recommendations Integration Phase One Integration Phase Two: Enhanced Information Infrastructure Common Infrastructure Customer Recommendations Integration Phase Two BusinessObjects Enterprise Major Release Integration Phase Three: Complete Integration Unified Business Intelligence Infrastructure Customer Recommendations Integration Phase Three Conclusion Business Objects Product Integration Roadmap Overview 3

4 Executive Summary On December 11, 2003, Business Objects completed its acquisition of Crystal Decisions. This acquisition brings together two established, successful organizations with complementary strengths to create the clear market leader in the business intelligence (BI) space. Together, the companies have a customer base in excess of 24,000 organizations and 16 million end users. Business Objects can now offer the industry s most complete BI solution, built on the leading products and technologies available in the market. Our goal is to maximize value for customers by providing: A strong and complete product line Customer flexibility through a network of world-class service and technology partners Rapid innovation leveraging the largest research and development team in the industry Unparalleled customer service driven by the largest global support and services team in the BI space Business Objects is deeply committed to customer satisfaction. We solicited significant customer input in developing our integration roadmap. Our customers told us to continue improving our current product line, continue as a technology innovator in the BI market, and gradually integrate the strengths of both the existing and new product lines to provide the broadest and deepest functionality at the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO). This centers our product roadmap philosophy on product improvement, technology innovation, and product line integration, while allowing our customers to address their full spectrum of BI needs on a common, standardized offering. Our product roadmap incorporates the proven strengths from Crystal Decisions in enterprise reporting and robust platform and infrastructure services along with the market-leading query and analysis capabilities and comprehensive portfolio of products for data integration, performance management, and analytic applications from Business Objects. Specifically in the reporting, and query and analysis areas, the products share similar reporting capabilities and infrastructure components (i.e., broadcasting and portal services, security, metadata, and administration). In situations where the product lines provide similar functionality, we ve chosen to leverage the best capability available, while ensuring customer continuity and investment protection. 4 Business Objects Product Integration Roadmap Overview

5 Document Scope This document focuses on product integration plans. As we integrate both product lines, they will continue their rapid pace of functional evolution. This document is not intended to provide a detailed functional roadmap for the full product line, but rather to provide clarity around philosophy and plans related to bringing together the two strongest product lines in business intelligence into an integrated offering. Where necessary for providing context for future integration, this paper will describe functional product enhancements. For detailed functional roadmaps for a given product, please see the appropriate product-specific statement of direction that is available from your Business Objects representative. Business Objects Product Integration Roadmap Overview 5

6 Background The business intelligence market stands out as one of the few healthy software markets of the last three to five years. BI has been successful because of its ability to deliver high return on investment (ROI) at low risk, as well as its ability to leverage and extend, rather than replace, existing technology investments. BI adds value to enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, homegrown applications, data warehouses, and data marts. It helps unlock valuable information assets stored in these systems to provide new insights, enable users to make better business decisions, and ultimately improve enterprise performance. While overall market penetration is still relatively low, nearly every organization uses BI in some capacity. At this point, BI has become such a critical part of the operations of many companies that it has established itself as a must-have, mission-critical system for running business. The BI market has also matured significantly. Like in other markets, maturity typically drives significant changes within the marketplace. In mature markets, technology remains a key selection criterion, while partnerships, services, and support also become increasingly important long-term differentiators. In December 2003, Business Objects, the world s leading provider of enterprise BI solutions, completed its acquisition of Crystal Decisions, the undisputed leader in enterprise reporting. This combination brings together two strong and growing companies with similarities and complementary strengths. Both companies demonstrated technology leadership, customer focus, and an exceptional ability to partner with other leaders. This acquisition is the largest in the history of the BI market. It creates tremendous opportunity for the combined company, as well as for our customers and partners. Product integration is an obvious priority. Given two strong and successful product lines and a large and growing customer base, the company has an opportunity to evolve the broadest and deepest product line in the industry in a way that generates maximum value for customers. The combined company has the largest research and development organization in the BI industry, and we can focus those resources on integration and innovation. Because we value our customers as business partners, we appreciate any opportunity to help contribute to their long-term success. Our goal for this paper is to outline our product integration plans so that customers may understand them and plan appropriately. This will also allow them to move forward with the confidence that their existing investments are protected and will only continue to evolve and improve by leveraging the technology and engineering strengths of the new Business Objects. 6 Business Objects Product Integration Roadmap Overview

7 Licensing, Upgrades, and Migration Going forward, those customers who are current on maintenance will be entitled to updates of the functionality and products that they already own without additional software license costs for new versions. We will not ask these customers to re-purchase functionality that they have already licensed. Business Objects will continue to make every effort to provide automated upgrades and smooth migrations wherever and whenever possible. Furthermore, we have developed the product roadmap to allow a high degree of customer flexibility, with multiple options and long timeframes, to allow customers to plan upgrades in a way that best fits their internal timeframes. Business Objects Product Integration Roadmap Overview 7

8 Integration Roadmap Development Inputs Customers Customer input formed the foundation of this integration roadmap. In the second half of 2003, key representatives from product management and marketing functions met with dozens of existing customers around the world to solicit guidance and feedback in the development of future product plans. Our long-term success depends on your continued success as our customer, so it was critical to ensure that your needs and priorities formed the basis of our plans. We spoke with a diverse group of customers across different industries with large and small deployments of Business Objects or Crystal Decisions products, as well as with many customers who had deployed both products. The common theme among these customers was that they all saw benefits from business intelligence and planned to make BI a continuing part of their evolving IT strategies. Industry Analysts We also spent time with leading industry analysts, leveraging their insights and experience from working with clients. This provided a balanced, vendor-neutral market view that indirectly represented the feedback and requirements of a broader market including organizations that had never used business intelligence products, and even those who had used competing or alternative products. Employees Finally, we leveraged the experience and creativity of two vibrant, successful companies. Business Objects and Crystal Decisions have always been keenly focused on the same market opportunity with a combined depth of customer requirements experience, creativity, and out-of-the-box thinking that is unmatched in the BI market. The new Business Objects has thousands of years of combined experience in addressing the evolving requirements of a challenging, dynamic, and technology-driven marketplace. Findings What we heard from our customers was that they weren t looking for the next big thing. Having been burned by over-hyped or misdirected applications in the past, they had a rational and sober focus on getting maximum real-world value from IT investments at the lowest overall cost. They told us that they want a business partner who understands this reality, who focuses on their needs, and whose innovation will provide tangible customer benefit. They told us not to start from scratch because that would force them to do the same. They want to build on the success they had already achieved with our products and for us to carry those core product strengths forward as a proven foundation for continued innovation. They told us that they want investment protection and continuity and that, in all aspects of information technology, they want to work with vendors who could meet current and future business requirements with the lowest total cost of ownership. 8 Business Objects Product Integration Roadmap Overview

9 Integration Roadmap Summary Integration Phase One: Integration Pack for BusinessObjects Enterprise 6.5 and Version10 Business Objects will deliver phase one integration as an add-in release for deployment on top of existing Version 10 and BusinessObjects Enterprise 6.5 products. Phase one is designed to: Provide incremental functionality to existing customers, leveraging additional functionality available from the combined company Reduce total cost of ownership by reducing maintenance, integration points, and skill sets required to deploy and maintain the products Overview Phase one will provide optional front-end and back-end interoperability including: A common end-user BI portal, based on BusinessObjects InfoView Use of Business Objects universes as an optional data source for Crystal Reports A new, supplemental set of web services APIs that provide a common interface to integrate report content from WebIntelligence and Crystal Reports with other applications Connectors that enable BusinessObjects Data Integrator to access data stored in Crystal reports for customers who want to build data warehouses or data marts using archived reports data Business Objects Product Integration Roadmap Overview 9

10 Phase One Upgrade Information Phase one integration will be deployed in conjunction with existing Version 10 and BusinessObjects Enterprise 6.5 installations. No upgrade or migration will be required to use phase one. Customer Recommendations Integration Phase One Business Objects will deliver phase one in the first half of Phase one is recommended for existing customers who: Use both products in their organization today Want to deliver content from both products to users within a common portal framework Want to leverage Business Objects universe metadata as a source for Crystal Reports End users will benefit from single sign-on capabilities and a common portal for access to all business intelligence resources. IT professionals and system administrators will benefit from common web services programmatic interfaces, the ability to reuse existing Business Objects metadata in Crystal Reports, and the ability to accelerate data warehouse deployment using archived Crystal reports. This integration pack is a production, supported release and will be available to customers under standard maintenance at no additional charge. Phase one integration will be limited to a subset of overall platforms and languages. Please consult online support for detailed configurations supported. Integration Phase Two: Enhanced Information Infrastructure 10 Business Objects Product Integration Roadmap Overview

11 Business Objects will deliver phase two integration as a complete software release with significant integration of front-end product capabilities as well as back-end technologies. Phase two will build upon the capabilities released in the prior phase and is designed to: Provide incremental functionality to existing customers, leveraging additional functionality available from the combined company Reduce total cost of ownership by reducing maintenance, integration points, and skill sets required to deploy and maintain the products Facilitate the expansion of BI deployments, delivering unique end-user capabilities while leveraging a centralized, common infrastructure Maximize end-user value { Minimize IT cost of ownership { Common Infrastructure This release will provide a common platform infrastructure to support all current Crystal enduser products including: Crystal Reports Crystal Analysis Crystal Enterprise and all associated modules This release will also support the following Business Objects end-user products: WebIntelligence (including OLAP access) BusinessObjects InfoView BusinessObjects Dashboard Manager BusinessObjects Performance Manager Business Objects Product Integration Roadmap Overview 11

12 All of these products will be able to share common infrastructure and management capabilities including: User administration Security Report scheduling Auditing of system and report usage Customer Recommendations Integration Phase Two Phase two integration will be delivered in the second half of It is a recommended upgrade for all existing Crystal deployments. Crystal Reports, Crystal Analysis, and Crystal Enterprise will all upgrade directly to this release. Phase two is recommended for existing Business Objects deployments where customers are primarily using: WebIntelligence (including OLAP) BusinessObjects InfoView BusinessObjects Dashboard Manager BusinessObjects Performance Manager IT professionals and system administrators will benefit from centralized, common administration and management. This will dramatically lower total cost of ownership for customers by eliminating the need for redundant skill sets, administration environments, repositories, back-up strategies, and more. Crystal customers will benefit from an enhanced infrastructure, an improved portal, and enhanced OLAP functionality. They will also be able to expand their deployments with rich performance management capabilities that integrate with their existing Crystal Reports and leverage a common platform with their reporting deployments. Business Objects customers will benefit from an enhanced platform infrastructure that provides increased scalability and reliability. They will also be able to deploy rich report authoring capabilities in Crystal Reports on a common platform. Phase two integration will be delivered on a superset of the existing platforms and languages supported by prior releases of the products. We will deliver specific details in the future as the release goes into the beta phase. 12 Business Objects Product Integration Roadmap Overview

13 BusinessObjects Enterprise Major Release In roughly the same timeframe as integration phase two, an additional release of BusinessObjects Enterprise products will be delivered. This release will leverage the technology of the current BusinessObjects Enterprise platform and is designed to: Provide functionality enhancements for all existing BusinessObjects Enterprise product modules Provide enhancements in performance and scalability Provide a smooth transition for customers to phase three integration when it becomes available This release is designed to offer a significant functional upgrade to existing Business Objects products, as well as to allow customers significant flexibility and a long timeframe in which to plan their upgrade to the next-generation Business Objects technology platform introduced in phase two. Additional product enhancement details are available in product-specific Statements of Direction. Contact your local Business Objects representative for more information. Business Objects Product Integration Roadmap Overview 13

14 Integration Phase Three: Complete Integration Phase three integration is designed to: Unify all remaining, underlying technology components Provide smooth and continuous transition from prior product lines Deliver the broadest range of BI functionality at the lowest cost of ownership, and leveraging the proven strengths of each product line on a common infrastructure Provide remaining functionality to deliver a superset of the features of BusinessObjects Enterprise 6.5 products, including: BusinessObjects Broadcast Agent Scheduler; BusinessObjects Broadcast Agent Publisher; BusinessObjects Auditor; BusinessObjects Analytics Applications; BusinessObjects Application Foundation; BusinessQuery; BusinessQuery MD. Unified Business Intelligence Infrastructure Phase three will complete the gradual integration of the underlying platform components. All end-user products including enterprise reporting, query and analysis, and performance management will leverage common components and services for: Performance and scalability Metadata management Programmatic interfaces/apis Security SQL generation Data integration and data access Scheduling and broadcasting Auditing BI content management Administration Analytic Services Installation and configuration 14 Business Objects Product Integration Roadmap Overview

15 Customer Recommendations Integration Phase Three Phase three integration will be delivered approximately 12 to 18 months after phase one, and is recommended for all customers. Phase three is the recommended upgrade for existing customers who have significant deployments of the following modules: BusinessObjects BusinessObjects Broadcast Agent Scheduler BusinessObjects Broadcast Agent Publisher BusinessObjects Enterprise Analytics. In most cases, products, repository information, and metadata will upgrade directly from the most recent prior release. Where necessary, Business Objects will provide tools to assist with migration to new versions. As stated previously, customers under maintenance will be entitled to equivalent functionality in new releases so that they may upgrade their existing deployment at no additional software license cost. IT professionals and system administrators will benefit from centralized, administration and management. This will dramatically lower total cost of ownership for customers by eliminating the need for redundant skill sets, administration environments, repositories, back-up strategies, and more. Customers that have been primarily invested in Crystal technology will benefit from dramatically enhanced publishing capabilities, integrated analytic applications, and an enhanced information infrastructure. They will be able to address any organizational BI need including reporting, query and analysis, and performance management on a common platform for the lowest TCO. Note again that numerous enhancements to existing functional capabilities will also be provided in future releases, but are not detailed in this document. Customers that have been primarily invested in Business Objects technology will benefit from an enhanced semantic layer and information infrastructure that provide increased performance, scalability, reliability, and programmability. Additionally, they will be able to address any organizational BI need including reporting, query and analysis, and performance management on a common platform for the lowest TCO. Phase three integration will be delivered on a superset of the existing platforms and languages supported by prior releases of the products. Business Objects will provide specific details in the future as the release goes into beta phase. Business Objects Product Integration Roadmap Overview 15

16 Conclusion Business Objects and Crystal Decisions have been successful in the marketplace because of a consistent ability to deliver customer success with business intelligence. The new company has a tremendous opportunity to benefit from the largest research and development staff, customer support and services, and partner network in the industry to deliver an unparalleled level of customer value. We are continuing our commitment to customer success through this acquisition. The new company will provide the broadest range of best-in-class capabilities on a common technology foundation to ensure the lowest total cost of ownership for our current and future customers. We will ensure continuity and migration for customers as we evolve and integrate our products and leverage our proven strengths. Current product and technology strengths, integration philosophy, and the future product roadmap make Business Objects products the safest investments in the BI industry. The new company has support and development resources that are unmatched in the industry. And the integration roadmap offers continuous upgrades for customers, dramatically enhanced functionality, significantly lower TCO, and long timeframes and significant flexibility to allow customers to evolve their deployments according to their own needs and schedules. 16 Business Objects Product Integration Roadmap Overview

17 All product roadmap and product integration plans are subject to change without notice. The product integration roadmap plan is the current plan for integrating the company s product lines. However, these plans may be refined, updated, or revised from time to time, based on customer input and market conditions. Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 for Business Objects: Various matters set forth in this document, such as statements describing the features and timing of the anticipated product roadmap and specifically the three phase approach to integration are forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, including without limitation, the price/performance requirements of customers, the ability to deliver the various product features in the anticipated timeframe, the impact and pricing of competing technologies, the company s ability to successfully integrate Crystal Decisions and Business Objects technologies in the anticipated timeframe, and other risks detailed from time to time in Business Objects SEC filings and reports. Business Objects undertakes no duty to update the forward-looking statements herein. Business Objects Product Integration Roadmap Overview 17

18 Americas Tel: Australia Tel: Belgium Tel: Brazil Tel: Canada Tel: China PRC Tel: France Tel: Germany Tel: Hong Kong Tel: / India Tel: Italy Tel: Japan Tel: Korea Tel: /81 Mexico Tel: Netherlands Tel: Singapore Tel: Spain Tel: Sweden Tel: Switzerland Tel: United Kingdom Tel: Distributed in: Albania Argentina Austria Bahrain Bulgaria Cameroon Chile Colombia Costa Rica Croatia Czech Republic Denmark Ecuador Egypt Estonia Finland Gabon Greece Hungary Iceland Indonesia Israel Ivory Coast Kuwait Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Malaysia Malta Mauritius Morocco Netherlands Antilles New Zealand Nigeria Norway Oman Pakistan Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Republic of Panama Romania Russia Saudi Arabia Senegal Slovak Republic Slovenia South Africa Taiwan Thailand Tunisia Turkey UAE Venezuela The Business Objects product and technology are protected by US patent numbers 5,555,403; 6,247,008; 6,578,027; 6,490,593; and 6,289,352. The Business Objects logo, the Business Objects tagline, BusinessObjects, BusinessObjects Broadcast Agent, BusinessQuery, Crystal Analysis, Crystal Analysis Holos, Crystal Applications, Crystal Enterprise, Crystal Info, Crystal Reports, Rapid Mart, and WebIntelligence are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects SA in the United States and/or other countries. Various product and service names referenced herein may be trademarks of Business Objects SA. All other company, product, or brand names mentioned herein, may be the trademarks of their respective owners. Specifications subject to change without notice. Not responsible for errors or omissions. Copyright 2003 Business Objects SA. All rights reserved. PT# WP2075-A Printed in France and the United States January 2004.