Differences between SAP BI and OBIEE ?

	SAP BI	Oracle BI
Introduction	Ø  Ø  For businesses that require a full, detailed picture of every company process, SAP Net Weaver BI steps in. Ø  Ø  This full-function tool is designed to cater to a diverse set of needs, satisfying the requirements of everyone in your organization – IT professionals, senior management, and end users included. The tool’s robust infrastructure hosts wide-ranging functionality in one integrated platform.	Ø  Ø  For businesses with serious BI needs, OBIEE is an incredibly powerful business intelligence tool. Ø  Ø  The Enterprise Edition integrates many of Oracle’s most useful components, including BI Server, BI Answers, BI Interactive Dashboards, BI Delivers, BI Publisher, the MS Office Plug-in, Hyperion Interactive Reporting, Hyperion SQR Production Reporting, Hyperion Financial Reporting, and Hyperion Web Analysis. In other words, for almost any conceivable data measurement, visualization, reporting, or information manipulation, OBIEE has a solution.
Features	Ø  Ø  A single, integrated platform pulls together   applications and reporting to provide a detailed snapshot of your organization. Ø  Ø  Visualization makes it easy to understand your data. Ø  Ø  Improve your company’s collective IQ by giving all collaborators insights into data and performance indictors Ø  Cost: Free Trial; contact for pricing	Ø  Ø  Comprehensive BI tools inform and inspire better decisions across your organization Ø  Ø  OBIEE allows for full collaboration within an organization Ø  Ø  Interactive dashboards make reporting and data visualization simple Ø  Cost: Contact for pricing
BI	SAP offers Business Objects and SAP AP Net Weaver Business Intelligence.	Oracle Offers DBI (Daily Business Intelligence). OBIEE, BI Apps and Oracle Hyperion.
Data Integration	Business Objects Data Integrator	Warehouse Builder (OWB).
Data Aggregation OLAP  Cube	Aggregate tables or 3rd party (Eg: SSAS) Microsoft SQL Server Analysis, Services Hyperion, Essbase, IBM DB2 OLAP, SAP BW	Essbase, OLAP option in DBMS.
Data Abstraction Modeling	Universe Designer.	BI Server Modeler, Essbase Modeler.
Report Authoring	Crystal , Web Intelligence	BI Publisher, Financial Reporting.
Analysis Tool	Web Intelligence, Voyager	BI Answers, Essbase.
Adhoc Query / Report	Web Intelligence	BI Answers
Dashboard Authoring	Xcelsius, Dashboard Builder	BI Interactive Dashboards
Scorecard Authoring	Xcelsius, Dashboard Builder	BI Interactive Dashboards
Portal	Business Objects Enterprise Portal	BI Portal
Data Mining	Predictive Analysis	No Data Mining
Advantage	High Visualization Customer Friendly	All in One portal implementing BI Concept
Disadvantage	No Cube	Ordinary Visualization many versions (compatibility issues)
Performance	Slow Performance	Need High Machine for Good Performance
Usability	8	7
Product Bundling	Only core modules are offered. Database would be extra.	Oracle 11g database and to some extent on Microsoft SQL
Middle ware	Its middleware is called as Net weaver.	The middleware is called as Fusion Middleware.
Implementation	Major implementation solutions to the discrete Manufacturing Industries	Major implementation done in Services Industries, BFSI (Banking, Financial services and Insurance).
Open / Proprietary standards	SAP is based on ABAP (current version mix of ABAP and Java). It is difficult to Get/ maintain and retain a ABAP resource	Oracle follows open standards Java. There are lot many resources available who know java than ABAP. Hence TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is lower here.
Product Architecture	There is a architectural changes in R/3. Business One and All in one. The up gradation from either of the above versions is not possible. In case of migration the customer needs to buy new   licenses and reimplement again	There is only one version available to all the customers. I t is Oracle ebusiness Suite.
Product Upgrades	Upgrade from 4.7 to 6.0 is not free. Customer needs pay for the license and implementation. The ATS is 22% of the license amount	Product upgrades are free. They are covered in the 22% ATS fee paid to Oracle Split- 15% Updates and 7% Upgrades. Customer needs to pay only for the upgrades (Consultant fees only).
Future Product	-	Oracle Fusion
Database Support	SAP supports Oracle, DB2, Max-DB, MS SQL and other database versions	Oracle works on Oracle database and to some extent on Microsoft SQL.
Complex Reports	It is difficult to create complex reports.	Excellent and comprehensive to create complex reports (Data mining easy tool).

OLTP Answers versus BI Publisher

(Benefits/Relevance of OLTP Answers)

• Oracle Discoverer to Answers Utility (for rapid dev of addl reports)
• Better empowerment: Users can build their own reports
• (Future) Oracle delivered OLTP reports on the horizon
• Integrated support for real time reports against OLTP (views/tables) as well as Analytic reports against OBIA (Data warehouse)
• Reports will need “pseudo-stars” in RPD (addl. complexity)
• Concerns around “cluttering” of RPD
• Integrated, role-based security with OBIA
• Better flexibility in terms of parameter control etc.
• Supports standard drill-down capabilities
• Better report organization (Dashboard and pages)
• Support for frequency-based scheduler
• Support for business-driven notifications
• Mobile BI experience

(Benefits/Relevance of BI Publisher)

• Simpler process (reports run directly against EBS views)
• Ability to bypass RPD (potential for better performance)
• Support for interactive Excel worksheets & Pivots
• Support for multiple formats (HTML, PDF, RTF, Excel etc.)
• EBS R12 has significant BI Publisher reports (non-OBI)
• Capability to build “pixel perfect” reports (Allows control over the content on each pixel on the report page)
• Parameter control limited to the query run time only
• No drill-down capabilities
• Purely based on a “scheduler” concept
• Role-based content delivery (Bursting)

What is Business analytics?

Analytics is the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data. Especially valuable in areas rich with recorded information, analytics relies on the simultaneous application of statistics, computer programming and operations research to quantify performance. Business analytics (BA) is the practice of iterative, methodical exploration of an organization’s data with emphasis on statistical analysis. Business analytics is used by companies committed to data-driven decision making

CHALLANGES FOR BUSINESS ANALYITCS

  This means the storage space for all that data must react extremely fast to provide the necessary data in real-time. When a specific customer type is considering a purchase, an analytics-enabled enterprise can modify the sales pitch to appeal to that consumer. Now business analytics is becoming a tool that can influence the outcome of customer interactions. This type of data warehousing required a lot more storage space than it did speed.  Analytics was considered a type of after-the-fact method of forecasting consumer behavior by examining the number of units sold in the last quarter or the last year.  The difficulty in ensuring data quality is integrating and reconciling data across different systems, and then deciding what subsets of data to make available. Business analytics depends on sufficient volumes of high quality data

ADVANTAGES OF BUSINESS ANALYITCS

Get key business metrics reports when and where you need them, identify cross selling and up selling opportunities , get insight into customer behavior , get faster answer to your question , eliminate guesswork

TYPES OF BUSINESS ANALYITCS

1.      Prescriptive analytics recommend decisions using optimization, simulation etc.
2.     Predictive analytics (predictive modelling using statistical and machine learning  techniques).
3.   Descriptive Analytics: Gain insight from historical data with reporting, scorecards,    clustering etc.
4.     Decisive analytics: supports human decisions with visual analytics the user models to    reflect reasoning.

      USERS OF BUSINESS ANALYITCS

1.      Auditors

2.       Small firm

3.      Group of industries

4.      Companies

5.       Organization

6.      Accountants

7.      Business man

8.      Students

     MAIN SOFTWARE USED FOR BUSINESS ANALYITCS

       

      MS-EXCEL- Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications. SPSS- SPSS Statistics is a software package used for statistical analysis. Long produced by SPSS Inc., it was acquired by IBM in 2009. The current versions (2014) are officially named IBM SPSS Statistic

SAP Business Objects Enterprise XI 3.0 Vs XI 4.0? and Is Crystal Reports compatible with Business Objects?

Crystal Report Versions:

1.      Two versions of SAP Crystal Reports is available in SAP Business Objects Enterprise XI 4.0.

2.      Crystal Reports 2008 is compatible with Business Objects Enterprise XI 3.0 and XI 3.1.

SNo	BO 3.1	BI 4.0
1.	Business Objects Enterprise	Business Objects Business Intelligence Platform
2.	Infoview	BI Launch Pad
3.	Business Objects Xcelsius Platform	SAP Business Objects Dashboard Design
4.	Universe Designer	Information Design Tools and Universe Design Tool
5.	Crystal Reports 2008	Crystal Reports for Enterprise, Crystal Reports 2011
6.	Business Objects Voyager	Business Objects Analysis, Edition for OLAP
7.	Dashboard Builder	BI Workspaces
8.	Web Intelligence	SAP Business Objects Interactive Analysis
9.	Translation Manager	Translation Management Tool

Advantages of using SAP Crystal Reports ?

Crystal Reports is a Business Intelligence application, currently marketed to small businesses by SAP SE. It is used to design and generate reports from a wide range of data sources. SAP Crystal Reports application provides the facility for generating and designing the reports that customers needs. Its graphical interface provides the features for formatting the report and selecting the data from wide range of sources. User can easily select the data sources and can generate the reports in his desired language. It will be helpful for taking the strategic decisions for an organization from the pixel perfect day to day reports.

Advantages of using SAP Crystal Reports:

1. Easy customization
2. Report generating in our preferred language
3. Graphical interface to format the report
4. Graphical interface to select the data sources
5. support Wide variety data sources like Excel from Oracle
6. easy to use
7. Don’t need that much technical expertisation to use
8. Can generate any type of crystal clear reports
9. Helping the organizations in taking decisions based on the generated reports

Functionality:

1.      Report publishing and scheduling.

2.      Save reports direct to Business Objects Enterprise.    

3.      HTML Preview Pane.     

4.      Business Views and Universe support.        

5.       Hyper linking Wizard. 

6.       Repository Explorer.

Features:

1.  The User Interface has been completely re-designed on top of a Java framework with emphasis placed on usability.
2.  Harmonization across SAP Business Objects clients to reduce time to value.
3.  Improved Semantic Layer support such that Crystal Reports is not hindered by consuming data from the Semantic Layer.
4. Improved SAP BW support such that Crystal Reports can consume both basic and advanced functionality offered by Info Cubes and Info Queries
5. Focus on adding new multi-lingual support for Crystal Reports metadata.
6. New alerting mechanism introduced at the platform level for Crystal Reports content.
7. New 64-bit native processing servers.
8. Interoperability between Crystal Reports and the new SAP Business Objects OLAP Client.
9. Support for SAP Standards.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

SAP BO WEBI Reports Vs SAP Crystal Reports(CR) Vs SAP Dashboards(Xcelsius)?

The Datasource for Xcelsius is not limited to excel, it can fetch data through some data connectivity components like Web service, Live Office connection, SAP connection, many more…

1.   Webi & CR are reporting tools .Dashboard is Presentation tool. Generally Webi reports used for historical data and CR for live data.WebI is end user tool.CR is completely Developer tool. Dashboard is Developer Tool.
2.  Webi and CR are reporting tools and Xcelsius is a Dynamic Dashboard tool where we can provide a What-If scenario to the end-user.
3.  The output of the reports in Webi and CR are limited to pdf, word etc. But Xcelsius gives output as all the above mentioned formats and a unique format .swf (a flash file).
4.   In Webi and CR we can find the page refresh rate where as in Xcelsius we have buffered data. The advantage with this is unnecessary hits to the server may be reduced.
5.    Both Webi and CR cant competate Xcelsius in Look and Feel. Xcelsius has some rich features and some color blends.
6.     Webi and CR can hold huge data, but Xcelsius cannot hold bulk data. At runtime it shows the performance degrades and sometimes throws action script errors.
7.    There will be no ground work in Webi and CR in making data for charts but where as in Xcelsius we have to do lots and lots of ground work in the Excel sheet.
8.      Webi reports the source file has to be universe, where in crystal reportsource file can be anything, like universe, views, excel sheet etc, and for xcelsius the source file has to be only Excel sheet, and it also can take data live by using live office and query as a web service. 
9.      Through Xcelsius we can import data from Webi and CR through Live Office connector.