SAP have announced they are committed to continued investment in the on-premise BusinessObjects suite of tools, and will be releasing SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 at the end of 2019 for early access – general availability will follow in mid 2020. Following a presentation from Gregory Botticchio (BI Product Manager at SAP) we have a great insight into what BI 4.3 will look like and what new features it will have.
The headlines for BI 4.3 are:
- greater hybridisation with SAP’s Cloud Analytics platform,
- embracing of the Fiori end-user experience,
- and back-end improvements to support new technologies and standards.
Holistic Hybridisation
Already SAC can consume data from your on-premise universes, in BI 4.3 this service will be improved and streamlined. End users will experience better performance, administrators will find their task-load eased.
The Analytics Hub tool and user management processes have been further developed so integration between cloud and on-premise content and accounts is much easier.
With universes, data-level security rules will work in SAC, and more data-sources will be supported. As well as consuming data vis universes, SAC will also have access to the new Web Intelligence ‘data-model’ concept (more of which later).
Fiori Freedom
Fiori is SAP’s programming and UI design interface. There has been a Fiori-style BI Launchpad available in on-premise BusinessObjects since BI 4.2 SP4. In look and feel this Launchpad is similar to SAC, featuring tiles for accessing content and the now-familiar ‘burger’ menu icon.
Above is the Fiori BI Launchpad from 4.2 SP6
In BI 4.3 this Fiori Launchpad will be the only end-user interface shipped with the platform. It will have feature parity with the current Java Launchpad.
There will be new Fiori-styled Web Intelligence client, which will be mirrored in the browser and in the new Rich Client version. This too has visual similarities with SAC.
Above is the current Fiori Web Intelligence viewer from 4.2 SP6 – the new version in 4.3 will have feature parity with the HTML viewer and allow for editing and more interactivity.
As well as this there is a new level of ‘interactive viewing’ available, which eases the task of giving some users the ability to change report structure without exposing them to complex querying or report design concepts.
Distributing Data
A whole new data-modelling concept is being introduced to Web Intelligence in BI 4.3. A power user will be able to create a Web Intelligence report from multiple queries from multiple sources, merge them, create some variables, and then publish all or part of this new ‘data model’ as a data source in itself. This data model can be consumed by users in new Web Intelligence reports, as web services, or even in SAC.
This new concept enables non-technical users to access the power of Web Intelligence for visualising data, without having to know how to manipulate data or create queries. If used well this method could truly free-up the ability for end users to interact with and unlock insights in their data.
Enterprise Enhancements
As well as exciting updates to the pretty bits of BusinessObjects, BI 4.3 introduces improvements to the administration console, security enhancements, better auditing functionality, and more support for data sources such as Snowflake and Google BigQuery.
On Premise On-The-Up
There is a whole lot more in BI 4.3 than we’ve covered here, and we’ll continue to update you about new functions and tools as we get closer to its release. It’s exciting to anticipate what developments we’ll see and how we at DSCallards will be able to help you get more from your data.
