Morning, we are being pushed to use SSRS on 2005 but i have a number of concerns including the ease of non tech staff being able to create reports easily. i would much rather use BO and need to show those above me why. does anyone know of any documentation that compares BO to SSRS? i have looked on the site but no help
jql 
(BOB member since 2005-05-31)
It really comes down to throughput of change and controllership.
I’m not aware of any studies but I’ve used both and there are times you don’t want the users developing reports.
Damocles (BOB member since 2006-10-05)
Cheers. there would only be the information and finance depts creating reports but my main concern is that we have 9 different systems and i have been told that i cannot create one report that can use data from each database in the warehouse using ssrs unlike bo where i can join the cubes in a single report. to have to create 9 separate reports then manually merge in excel is unacceptable
jql (BOB member since 2005-05-31)
I’m guessing this has arisen because of the exhorbitant costs of BO licensing.
Perhaps you should cost the following scenarios:
There may be the answers there.
Damocles (BOB member since 2006-10-05)
You can find some information in the latest Gartner’s quadrant
http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/sas/vol5/article8/article8.html
Personally, I don’t have access to SAP parter portal anymore, but I strongly believe that there is a PDF file which compares Ms versus BOE… Maybe some SAP partner can help you out with this…
Antremons (BOB member since 2006-03-21)
BO is free to us as part of the NHS so the cost is any problem.
i just don’t think SSRS will be as user friendly but thanks for your help
jql (BOB member since 2005-05-31)
The NHS get BO free?
Then why go through an expensive retool at cost to the taxpayer?
Damocles (BOB member since 2006-10-05)
Yes as part of the national IT project.
SSRS is also free to the NHS. the only cost involved is the server to sit either on. cost has nothing to do with the decision of which tool to use.
we currently have no reporting tool in use. just basic sql code in management studio.
jql (BOB member since 2005-05-31)
Right … push for BO, we could all use the work, it’s a better tool and more accessible to the wider user community. You say that it’s for the finance and information departments but it’ll grow and it’s a much more scalable solution.
Damocles (BOB member since 2006-10-05)
XI is the better option from an end-user point of view.
Plus you can buy the product suitable to the skills of the user - ie, refresh-only right up to full interactive WebIntelligence for the user who can develop their own reports.
We have 2008 Reporting Services running alongside XI. RS has its advantages, and we can create basic queries that are then uploaded to our company intranet that a select band of users can user to run very basic reports by simply adding a menu-driven selection of constraints.
However we still prefer XI for its overall user-friendliness.
Having said that, if SAP continue with ramping up their license and support costs we will almost certainly abandon XI and move to the next release of SSRS wholesale
Diane1969 (BOB member since 2007-01-18)
Ramping up? As a SAP and BO partner, we find that SAP is actually reducing license costs rather than increasing them. Less functionality has to be licensed seperately and the new pricing strategy for the BusinessObjects Edge XI product line is very aggressive - the pricing is good, the package has received increased functionality and overall pickup in the small to mid market has been great.
The question on justification of BO’s price can be explained with a proper presentation that highlights the benefits of BO Universes and semantic layers as a whole - introducing concepts of increased security, data governance, self service reporting and utilizing a single view of the corporate data for enterprise reports, instead of inconsistent manual queries.
While I fully appreciate Microsoft’s SQL Server 2005/2008 product as a RDMS, my experience with SSRS (and SSIS) is that it is far too “tech focussed” with very little regard for end-user experience. SSRS just isn’t very intuitive for BA / Power Users to use … let alone the average business person.
While SSRS is “cheap”, the lack of a self service ability willl put greater strain on already underresourced IT departments. The cost of employing additional resources to meet business reporting demands should not be underestimated.
And even when business users are creating their reports, how much time is being wasted because of a lack of user friendliness? Business people are paid to do business, not to write reports and wrestle with a system to get their data out.
While BO XI isn’t perfect - it is one of the most user friendly reporting tools out there. I have coached many BA’s in using BO XI and with little instruction they’re off creating their own well formatted enterprise reports - which gain high readership within the business.
ErikR 
(BOB member since 2007-01-10)
There you go jql.
A cut and paste session on that previous post should be useful.
Yes, should do the trick. Thank you all very much
jql (BOB member since 2005-05-31)
I take on board what you’re saying with regards licensing costs, clearly thne we’re getting stiffed by our 3rd partner SAP partner, because we received a reminder that our support and license costs are going up by 21% for 2010!
That’s just too much for us in terms of justification and VFM. Fortunately we have inhouse SSRS developers that can utilise and develop SSRS 2008 into a workable frontend query tool on our secure intranet. This will mean cutting back on our XI licenses by 30% to begin with.
Admittedly for more complex queries XI leads the way for relative ease of use. That said I’ll be interested what MS offer in there 2010 release of Management Studio due to be rolled out in the first half of next year.
Diane1969 (BOB member since 2007-01-18)