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Power BI vs SAP BO

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Choosing the Right Business Intelligence Solution with Simplement’s Integration


Executive Summary:

  1. Power BI vs SAP Business Objects (BOBJ) is almost a trick question.  BOBJ is a legacy tool tightly coupled to SAP’s Business Warehouse (BW).  SAP BW is being rebranded as BW/4HANA but is still based on the same old legacy structures.  BOBJ and BW were both created in the 1990’s and have reached the end of the road.  The real question is twofold:  How do I migrate away from BOBJ/BW, and what should I migrate to?
  2. Only Simplement Roundhouse provides business answers with out of the box Report Ready Information™.  Roundhouse solves business problems both today and tomorrow because it works with both ECC and S/4.  The Roundhouse solution eliminates vendor lock in, reduces complexity, and lets you choose Power BI, Tableau, or any other modern reporting tool.

Full Post:

SAP recognizes that the legacy combination of BOBJ/BW must be replaced.  Business Objects was originally released in 1990, and SAP Business Warehouse was first released in 1998.  Business Objects was once a strong player in the independent business intelligence space but was purchased by SAP in 2007. In the last 17 years both BOBJ and Business Warehouse have become more complex while falling behind competing products.  SAP proposes that customers migrate to S/4 and use SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytic Cloud (SAC).

Everyone agrees that you’re going to replace BOBJ and BW, so it’s a great time to optimize your replacement strategy.  The best strategy solves your business problems right now and prepares you for the future.  If you’re concerned that SAP Datasphere and SAC will just be the start of another BOBJ/BW cycle, you now have an alternative.   With Simplement Roundhouse, you avoid vendor lock-in, solve your problems today, and stake out a clear roadmap for the future. 

Business is intricate enough without adding complexity to your software environment.  The software you use should simplify and automatically manage the technology so you can focus on running your business.  Regardless of your migration plans for S/4, Simplement delivers a modern Business Intelligence solution today.  If you migrate to S/4 in the future, we’ve got you covered too. Roundhouse works beautifully with S/4 and will insulate your reporting environment from any migration related disruptions.

Business Intelligence is described by a simple formula:  Data + Logic = Information.  Solving business problems requires information, not merely raw data.  The Simplement Roundhouse solution delivers ECC and S/4 SAP data to all major targets like Snowflake, Databricks, Azure SQL, Fabric, on prem and cloud managed instance SQL Server, Postgres etc.  Just as importantly, Roundhouse solves business problems by delivering the logic that turns the data into information. 

Unique among integration tools, Roundhouse is the only solution certified for S/4 HANA, and it also supports SAP systems running on Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase ASE, etc. We built Roundhouse from the ground up with a modern message-based architecture and intuitive browser-based user interface, so it’s simple to install, simple to use, and simple to integrate into your environment.  You can have Roundhouse running and providing business answers while you’re still reading the installation guide for Datasphere!

The Roundhouse replication engine is the best way to get your SAP data into the modern target of your choice, but we don’t stop there.  Roundhouse provides the crucial logic that gives you actionable information.  Roundhouse does automatic transformations to make hierarchies, currency conversions, factory calendars, general ledger account classification, security model inheritance etc, immediately available and reportable in your chosen target environment. 

Simplement goes even further by providing Report Ready Information™, pre-built data models that solve your toughest business challenges.  Simplement Report Ready Information (RRI) solutions cover many business areas, including General Ledger, Inventory, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Sales Orders, Overhead, etc.  Roundhouse automatically populates your chosen target with RRI information that is ready to consume in any modern tool reporting tool like Power BI or Tableau.

If you’re already using Power BI, your life just became easier still.  Every Simplement RRI solution has a ready-to-deploy Power BI model that creates end user reports out of the box.

Final Thoughts:

There isn’t much to compare between Power BI (or other modern tools like Tableau) and SAP Business Objects.  The real question is how to smoothly migrate to a new solution that lets you escape the confines and complexities of BOBJ and BW, answer business questions today, and future-proof your reporting environment.  Simplement Roundhouse is the answer.

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