SAP makes Biz Intelligence an affordable tool

20th March 2010
SAP makes Biz Intelligence  an affordable tool
SAP India execs Manesh Sharma and Peter Gartenberg, announcing the BI On Demand solution at a media event in Bangalore, March 18 ( INDIATECHONLINE photo)

Unveils Bi-On-Demand – in three sizes from from free to Rs 500 a month.Key elements of tool, future extensions to mobile phones, flowing from SAP’s India-based engineers.Enterprise software leader SAP has announced a new solution that enables enterprises, from the very small to the mega sized, to harness Business Intelligence tools that help them leverage skills, processes, technologies, applications and practices used to support decision making. Available in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, the solution called Business Intelligence on Demand, grows out of SAP’s acquisition of Business Objects in 2006.
“For the first time, non-geeks ( like me!) can use these powerful but accessible and very usable tools, said Peter Gartenberg, Managing Director, SAP India at the launch event last week. The On-demand offerings from the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio currently have more than 260,000 subscribers worldwide, he added.
Key features are:
-SAP BusinessObjects Explorer software, which is built for powerful data exploration and visualization capabilities.
-Guide to product usage for people with no prior BI experience through the processes of accessing, exploring, visualizing and sharing data – without needing to switch between applications.
-The ability to access all on-demand and on-premise data – including SAP data and data from the Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) application. Users can easily upload data to create dashboards, reports or interactive visualizations.
-An on-demand solution for creating ad-hoc reports, conducting what-if analyses and securely sharing this information inside or outside the company. Business users can provide customers, partners and employees across all lines of business with immediate, anytime access to the most current data.
Maneesh Sharma, Head Business User and Platform Group, SAP India, explained that the BIOnDemand tool was free for small users but was priced at an affordable Euro 20 to Euro 60 per month for larger users. It could be accessed at www.biondemand.com  
He also added that key elements of the solution like Explorer – and future extensions to mobile phone platforms were flowing from the Indian R&D teams of SAP.
March 21 2010