Good Bye Application Foundation Welcome Infommersion

other Performance Management
1

Business Objects to pay $40M for Infommersion

This looks like a better dashboard solution. Can create dashboards from spreadsheets! What an ephipany

I would not be supprised if much of the current af functionality is replaced with Infommersion.

RDTs_ROCK (BOB member since 2004-06-04)

2

I am not positive if sourcing metrics from a MS Excel spreadsheet is a viable enterprise solution though. Also, one cannot drill in MS Excel spreadsheets, or what about using 100s or 1000s of metrics (PKIs)?

On the other side it sure is a good thing to be able to visualize data coming from MS Excel in a dashboard like manner. I hope the aquisition turns out to be a good move by Business Objects.

I still need to read up more on this new company…

Andreas :de: (BOB member since 2002-06-20)

3

This probably goes into the equation somewhere:
Business Objects acquires Medience

Chris Pohl :us: (BOB member since 2002-06-18)

4

I would disagree regarding the spreadsheet comment. A for Profit company needs to display metrics for every system in an enterprise. Few companies have succeeded in implementating enterprise datawarehouses.

Not only that but it is impossible for a company to reflect the correct results based off erp systems. The numbers always get messaged before presentation.

That is why bo had a product called Business Warehouse which was a huge bust.

Companies want inexpensive fast solutions and af isn’t about that.

The truth is bo and everyone else built big package ala Siebel-Ephiphany style Dashboard solutions. With big ticket price. This change signals that they are going for a more ubiquitius solution. Cheap and fast to implement.

RDTs_ROCK (BOB member since 2004-06-04)

5

May be just killing the competition… :crazy_face:

BOBurao (BOB member since 2005-09-20)

6

I wonder if it has anything to do with their Office integration? I keep thinking a killer product would be a version of “Full Client” that’s tucked into Microsoft Excel. It would be a killer ad-hoc analysis tool, since so many users already know how to use Excel. If you could then park Dashboards atop those “live” spreadsheets . . .

Maybe BO will continue to support Crystal, with its pixel perfect presentation reporting, but switch to making analysis a plug-in for MS Office - Excel in particular. Users might be a lot more willing to go along with BusinessObjects if it allowed them to continue to use Excel. Might also save BO from having to support graphing and the like - just use Excel’s built-in functionality and augment it to handle cubes.

sunspot :us: (BOB member since 2003-03-12)

7

Guys,

I have not used the XI Application Foundation (Performance Manager) yet. I have been reading some posts and some other articles about Business Objects acquiring SRC Software for dashboards…
I have an assignment to start on 6.5.1 AF and I don’t know how much of it will change in the newer versions (Performance Manager) or XIr2? I definitely dont want to re-do the work if there are some major changes on the development procedure in the newer versions. Can anyone share some information?

Thanks,
kashif

Kashif Saeed :pakistan: (BOB member since 2004-06-02)

8

Business Objects used to have a product called Business Query for Excel that was exactly what you describe here, a Full Client add-in for Excel. They killed that off when they purchased Crystal in favor of Crystal’s Live Office product.

tmarion :us: (BOB member since 2002-08-20)

9

Don’t worry Kashif… :mrgreen:
There are still users with 4.x and Wi 1.x and AF 3.x

If it suits you…
Don’t change…

New version of AF is tune of BO marketing strategy to sell same product with twist of liscensing and names.

I Don’t think it changed a lot. except the archtecture of BO itself. :blue: :mrgreen: :crazy_face:

BOBurao (BOB member since 2005-09-20)

10

Thats what I kind of expected but then I read that they have bought SRC software for the dashboard technology. Don’t you think that a lot more will and should change if they bought a new compnay for this?

THanks for your reply,
kashif

Kashif Saeed :pakistan: (BOB member since 2004-06-02)

11

Kashif dada,

I don’t think BO will make big change with their AF. AF can produce pretty good dashboard and it has very good technology. They may adopt some but not all from this company. Acquiring company also business strategy to reduce competition. I think, it will be a while before they make any changes to AF.

M-

Mohammad T. Hussain (BOB member since 2004-09-21)

12

Talib bhui,

I think Business Objects has a lot of reasons to switch to a stable dash board paltform. What I have seen in AF 6.1b and 6.5.1 is not very stable and it is full of bugs. Secondly, their dashboard is only jsp based and if one is using IIS for Webi then it has to be changed to a Java based server in order to be able to run AF. This is one of the biggest hidrance to me because a lot of companies either don’t want to use a freeware like Apache/Tomcat or are unwilling to buy Weblogic/Websphere just to be able to run AF. This is other than the hastle of converting IIS based Webi to Tomcat based Webi. Thirdly, since AF is based on java based technology and every time a jsp page that uses a .java file is opened for the first time, it complies the file to create a .class file which takes a lot more time for the first time. Nothing against java, but sometimes just to get the login page it takes quite some time which is very irritating.

Kashif

Kashif Saeed :pakistan: (BOB member since 2004-06-02)

13

This is alright. I think this why BO is buying company after company to improve their Dashboard capabilities.

Mohammad T. Hussain (BOB member since 2004-09-21)