Antivia s roadmap for SAP Dashboards customers January 2014 v1.1
Where now for SAP Dashboards customers? SAP s recent R&D efforts around SAP Dashboards have primarily focused around HTML5 output. And, yet, SAP is now saying that for mobile dashboards, you should really get your coding hat on and start using Design Studio. It s a confusing message and perhaps one that supports the sentiment we hear in the market that SAP is winding down its investment in SAP Dashboards as it encourages customers to transition to Design Studio. So, you could be forgiven for questioning if Design Studio is the right choice for you and your organization and wondering if there is are alternative roadmaps available to you that fixes pressing issues you have with Flashbased SAP Dashboards today and that provides you with a code-free route to mobile dashboard delivery. Antivia has that alternative roadmap for you and it is described in this document. The problem with SAP Dashboards: multi-dimensional data SAP Dashboards (Xcelsius, as it was known then) was born into a world of static, at-a-glance dashboards, where it excelled. Today, this is not enough. Human nature being what it is, users want to investigate anomalies in their data by drilling down, drilling across, and pivoting their data and, crucially, they want their dashboards to answer multiple business questions. To do this dashboards need to handle multi-dimensional data. The problem is all of the native SAP Dashboards connectivity types (e.g. Query as a Web Service (QaaWS), Live Office, BI Web Services, BI4 Query, etc.) only support 2-dimensional data. To simulate the multi-dimensional world of end-users business questions, dashboard designers have to go to great lengths to create their own plumbing, which inevitably requires large numbers of queries supported by a myriad of Excel formulas. The result is complex dashboards that are difficult to maintain, take far too long to create and often perform poorly. This complexity is the reason why so many SAP Dashboard projects built with any of the standard connectivity types fail. This is why SAP wants you to move to Design Studio Not only was Design Studio conceived for the mobile world, but it also fixes the data management challenge that has dogged SAP Dashboard projects for years. Design Studio 1.2, launched at the end of 2013 and introduced UNX Universe connectivity for the first time, making it a viable proposition for traditional BusinessObjects customers.
SAP S ROADMAP 3 STEP TRANSITION TO DESIGN STUDIO SOURCE: HTTPS://TWITTER.COM/KBGRAMM/STATUS/397785099246514176 SAP s roadmap, presented at TechEd last fall, suggests that Agnostic SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise customers should start adopting Design Studio now for their dashboard projects and accelerate adoption during the second half of 2014, following the release of Design Studio 1.3. Should you have concerns with SAP s roadmap? Antivia has been an active partner in the SAP Dashboards ecosystem for the past 5 years and many of SAP s largest customers trust us to help them extract greater value from their dashboard projects. Some of the concerns we are hearing from traditional BusinessObjects customers about SAP s roadmap, include: We don t want to be forced to upgrade our SAP BusinessObjects platform to use Design Studio We don t want to have to replace the existing skillset in our BI team with JavaScript developers (the technology Design Studio is based on)
It takes as long to build connected dashboards with Design Studio as it does with SAP Dashboards this is too long for our business, we need an agile dashboard design tool This long development time, coupled to the lack of migration tools from SAP, means the transition from SAP Dashboards to Design Studio is likely to be prolonged, painful, expensive and divert resources from other higher value BI projects Antivia can offer you an alternative roadmap In all of these cases, Antivia can offer you a better, alternative roadmap. How exactly we can help you hinges on how you intend to deploy your dashboards to your end-users: 1) You only need to deliver desktop (Flash-based) dashboards If you plan to stick with the SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards in the short to medium term and to continue to deliver Flash-based dashboards, we can help you address many of the weaknesses criticized in the areas of enterprise deployment, performance and design complexity by giving you access to the best connectivity, productivity and performance enhancement to SAP Dashboards. And, best of all, it s free and will work with the current version of your SAP BusinessObjects BI platform.
2) You need to deliver dashboards to mobile devices, too If you need to deploy to mobile devices, we don t think the HTML output introduced to SAP Dashboards in BI4 Service Pack 5, which limits you to 4,000 embedded cells of data (around 400 rows) is a viable approach. And, if you want to develop your dashboards without coding using skills you already have within your BI team, then we don t think Design Studio fits the bill, either. Instead, we can help you move to a highly productive, no-coding dashboard tool that works with real-world data volumes, leverages your BusinessObjects investment and supports mobile and desktop delivery. In short, we can help you move to a next-generation BI tool which embodies the spirit of all that is good about SAP Dashboards. Roadmap for customers deploying SAP Dashboards to the desktop only Solve the data management challenge without upgrading If you want to stay on the current version of your BusinessObjects BI platform, but would like to turn SAP Dashboards into a more agile tool that allows you to develop dashboards more quickly in line with business needs, then we suggest that you take a look at XWIS Advantage Express Edition, a popular extension to SAP Dashboards, which solves the data management challenge by implementing an OLAP-like micro-cube into your dashboards, eliminating swathes of queries, formulas and complexity. Deliver dashboard projects 10-20 times faster For the past 5 years, savvy organizations have chosen XWIS Advantage to help them for some of the following reasons: Dramatically reduce the need for Excel formulas Remove the need for many data connections Smash the 100s of rows data limitation of the spreadsheet Add unique end-user functionality Embed multi-dimensional data in the dashboard As a result, you deliver the dashboards your business users want in terms of
1. Functionality 2. Data load performance 3. Click-to-click performance with a hugely reduced development effort, whilst freeing up network bandwidth and BI server resources. The best connectivity, productivity and performance extension for SAP Dashboards is now free With XWIS Advantage Express Edition, these benefits are now available free of charge for all SAP Dashboards users. And, for extra peace of mind, Antivia offer optional support plans starting from under $700 per month. Recommended roadmap 1) Stay on the current version of your SAP BusinessObjects platform 2) Leverage your existing WebIntelligence reports 3) Create new SAP Dashboards with XWIS Advantage Express Edition 4) Re-engineer existing high maintenance or poorly performing dashboards using XWIS Advantage Express Edition (this will take a fraction of the time of creating dashboards using any of the out-ofthe-box connectivity types) And, when you are ready to move away from legacy, Flash-based dashboards to a modern BI tool, you will enjoy a smooth transition to DecisionPoint, Antivia s end-user BI tool that enables you to build stunning interactive dashboards for mobile devices and the desktop, with no-coding. DecisionPoint is built on the same, proven back-end technology as XWIS Advantage: they co-exist happily on the same server and share the same metadata, connections, security, etc., and both leverage your existing investment in the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform. Next Steps Find out more about XWIS Advantage Express Edition
Roadmap for customers who need dashboards on mobile devices and the desktop Do you want your dashboards to be built by developers? SAP has been clear that Design Studio is aimed at developers, so requires an understanding of coding. However, if you come from an SAP Dashboards or a WebIntelligence background then you probably want to build your dashboards without coding, and without having to upgrade to SAP BusinessObjects 4.1 (if you haven t done so already). For these reasons, we do not believe that Design Studio is the best way forward for existing SAP Dashboards customers. Instead, we believe DecisionPoint offers you a better option because, as almost all BI professionals would expect, it is aimed at dashboard designers who are not programmers. So, just like SAP Dashboard, it is really easy to get started with DecisionPoint and deliver great looking dashboards, with the interactivity your end-users need, without writing any code. DecisionPoint offers a natural evolution from SAP Dashboards Agile design without writing code Creating new dashboards with DecisionPoint is remarkably quick and easy and provides a far more agile design environment than either SAP Design Studio or SAP Dashboards. And, as designers become more experienced, so DecisionPoint provides access to more sophisticated functionality (e.g. calculated columns, dynamic visibility, alerts, multiple data sources) all without requiring any programming. Delivered in HTML5 for mobile devices and the desktop DecisionPoint enables you to design dashboards quickly and easily, and deliver them through HTML5. It is aimed at organizations who want to deliver stunning interactive dashboards, reports and BI Applications on mobile devices and the desktop, without writing any code.
Unique LivePreview for ease of cross device development and user collaboration With its unique, patent-pending LivePreview capability, DecisionPoint dramatically reduces the time it takes to deliver your dashboard projects, by enabling dashboard designers to see their dashboards live across a range of mobile devices and desktop browsers as they design them. With no time-consuming compile-publishsimulate-view loop, DecisionPoint allows you to see how your dashboards will look on all target devices, immediately, as you design them. This alone can cut huge amounts of time out of sophisticated dashboard projects. In addition, LivePreview allows unprecedented collaboration with end-users without having to worry about colocation. LivePreview allows end-users to preview live dashboards on their own tablet devices and desktops at design time, wherever they are in the world. This enables end-users to collaborate with designers in real-time, provide instant feedback, and then see the effect immediately as designers implement the required changes. Leverage your existing BusinessObjects investment to minimize total cost of ownership DecisionPoint is built on the same, proven XWIS Server platform as XWIS Advantage, and leverages your existing investment in the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, whether you are an XI3 or a BI4 customer.
Recommended Roadmap 1) Stay on your current SAP BusinessObjects platform 2) Leverage existing WebIntelligence reports 3) Create new dashboards with DecisionPoint 4) Re-create existing dashboards in DecisionPoint (driven by mobility demands) Next Steps Watch this 3 minute video, for a fast-paced introduction to DecisionPoint for SAP BusinessObjects customers Then, visit Antivia s web-site to learn more About Antivia Antivia is an international software company run by a team of seasoned BI experts, with backgrounds working at SAP, Business Objects and Crystal Decisions. Frustrated by the low adoption rates achieved by traditional BI tools, Antivia has a vision of Universal BI - where 100% of end-users within an organization have fingertip access to all of the information they need to do their jobs, in a format that works for them. This vision is realized through Antivia s next-generation BI tool, DecisionPoint, which makes creating interactive business intelligence as easy as PowerPoint and produces the tailored BI interfaces that end-users really need; interfaces that are simple enough to be used without training, yet sophisticated enough to allow users to interact with their data to answer all their questions. DecisionPoint eliminates reporting backlogs and avoids the need to overwhelm non-technical users with complex, ad-hoc, self-service tools which make them work too hard to access their information. And, when used to deliver to tablet devices, DecisionPoint has the potential to drive BI adoption towards 100% - towards Universal BI. DecisionPoint is based on the same proven back-end server technology as XWIS Advantage, which addresses performance, productivity and interactivity limitations in the SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards product.
Our customers span 4 continents and include: 3M, BlackBerry, Deutsche Bank, Fifth Third Bank, Honda, HP, Shell, Shire Pharmaceuticals, The Coca-Cola Company, Telenor, The NHS and Vodafone. We operate from offices in the United States and Europe.