Business Objects Extends Market Leadership in On-Demand Business Intelligence With New Release

New Capabilities in BusinessObjects™ Business Intelligence OnDemand Enable Faster Reporting from Both On-Demand and On-Premise Data Sources

SAN JOSE, Calif. and PARIS . - Extending its leadership in the software as a service (SaaS) business intelligence (BI) market, Business Objects, an SAP company (NYSE: SAP) and the world’s leading provider of solutions that optimize business performance, today announced the next version of BusinessObjects™ BI OnDemand software. BI OnDemand is a complete suite of business intelligence (BI) capabilities, including a data warehouse, delivered on-demand. Two key innovations in BI OnDemand help customers create and manage data warehouses in the cloud more quickly and flexibly, making sure business users receive the most current reporting and analytics information. First, the new content creation and development capabilities help customers to ensure that data from both on-demand and “on-premise” applications is quickly available to business users. Second, the BI OnDemand accelerator for Salesforce CRM enables customers to build a data warehouse with massive amounts of Salesforce data and prepare it for reporting and analytics-reducing the implementation time from weeks to days.

Organizations today, particularly large enterprises, typically have a hybrid of on-premise and on-demand applications for use across their organization and externally with their network of partners and customers. However, achieving holistic, accurate insight across these various sources is an ongoing challenge for these companies. BI OnDemand enables customers to share reports and dashboards that include both on-premise and on-demand data, giving a more complete view of their entire enterprise. The solution also lets customers bring their SAP and non-SAP data together to provide any business user with access to all data. In keeping with its commitment to support customer choice, Business Objects’ on-demand offerings make it easy for customers to use the market-leading BI solutions with their preferred software delivery method and existing business applications.

Improved Delivery of Business Data With Simplified Data Warehouse Creation and Management
In the current economic climate, it is critical that all people have insight into business data across the entire enterprise. The new content creation and development environment capability makes it easier for customers to support business users’ demands for reports that are both tailored to their role and include data from both on-premise and on-demand sources. With unique data exploration technology from Business Objects, business users can now simply type in a keyword to find the data required for a particular report and make it immediately available within the data warehouse for inclusion in reports.

Many companies complain of having limited visibility into their sales pipeline. Using data exploration in the new version of BI OnDemand allows customers to search both on-premise and on-demand data sources to create the reports needed to see the entire pipeline. This new capability saves time, reduces administration costs and helps customers keep pace with the constant demand for new types of content.

“We are excited about the content creation and development environment capability because it will give us the speed and agility we need to create dynamic reports with the most current information,” said Michael Leinweber, head of Digital for Americas, Schroder Investment Management North America Inc. “The on-demand BI software from Business Objects can help us to quickly and easily consolidate all of our various types of data in the cloud and make sure we give our business users access to the data they need to make better business decisions.”

Faster Deployment of BusinessObjects BI OnDemand
With the new Business Objects BI OnDemand accelerator for Salesforce CRM, customers can quickly create a data warehouse for their Salesforce data in the cloud that can then be combined with data from other on-demand and on-premise sources. The enhancements allow customers to move large amounts of data and prepare it for operational reports, ad hoc reporting and dashboards-all within days.

“Today we are giving customers a powerful solution to make all information accessible to all people on-demand, regardless of where it comes from, giving people the insight they need to thrive during the economic downturn,” said Mani Gill, vice president, OnDemand Solutions, Business Objects. “This is a significant step forward for Business Objects’ market leadership in on-demand BI and for our commitment to supporting our customers’ heterogeneous computing systems. With our new offering, we are targeting the large enterprise on-demand market, enhancing those companies’ ability to deliver full insight to decision-makers.”