Department of Irony:
I wrote to Mary Brigden and Paulo Vallejo. I received a bounce notice for Mary. I forwarded it to Paulo asking what happened. His reply was that Mary is no longer with SAP and he has been reassigned. 
I will give credit to Paulo that he tacitly acknowledged how that demonstrates we are in for a lot more of the same. 
MarcW 
(BOB member since 2006-08-01)
and what was in this email?
Tiny 
(BOB member since 2004-11-10)
I spoke about the travails of moving from a mostly functioning user support system into a monolithic SAP system in which formulas and scripts ruled over analyzing the issues.
I described how over a short period of time I was assigned several S-User IDs and each had its own unique properties - some products for which we purchased licenses were assigned to one, some to another and how I was having a terrible time getting them combined. I spoke about how SAP lost important information about my company that would have made the S-User issue obvious and easily remedied.
I echoed some of the frustrations expressed in earlier comments on this thread and emphasized how bewildering it is to not know from one day to the next who is our Sales Rep, who is our Licensing Renewal Coordinator, etc. It was that point that is so poignantly ironic given Mary and Pauloās current status.
Finally, I pointed out how the only contact I can always count upon is a string of āremindersā that our maintenance fees are due. I lamented that if support had the same dedication that no one would have an issue with SAP and its reputation would be greatly enhanced.
I was diplomatic in my message. I pointed out the issues that I felt were genuine misses or outright failings of SAP while keeping my tone respectful. There was no point in making it personal. Doing so was more likely to alienate the very people who had offered to help. What would be the point of that?
There are other fish in the Business Intelligence sea. Sometimes a smaller and scrawnier one is better suited to oneās needs than the fat and complacent one. Changing platforms is not something I really want to do, but I am not going to permit that hurdle to be the one that prevents evaluating my options.
I asked Paulo to pass my E-Mail along to the appropriate PTBs (powers that be). He said he would and I expect he will make a genuine effort to give it to an appropriate individual or group. Time will tell if anything changes.
MarcW (BOB member since 2006-08-01)
I am confused. Why are the people who are leaving BO monaing that Deski has been replaced by Crystal? Surely the replacment is Webi, which to be fair is pretty damned good. It didnāt feel reliable in XI R2 but XI 3.1 was great.
andyt 
(BOB member since 2006-02-02)
So, is there a new VP, Customer Success at SAP - or has Maryās old role been droppedā¦?
MJRBIM 
(BOB member since 2007-03-23)
It seems to me that we have some new concern to talk about at the upcoming SAP BusinessObjects User Conference. I certainly will bring it up to Bridgette Chambers, the ASUG CEO, at the Influencer Summit. This is the kind of issue and concern that ASUG can help.
substring 
(BOB member since 2004-01-16)
sub,
that would be great if you can bring that up to the ASUG hierarchy, infact in the duration of this thread MANY issues of concern by many respected longtime BOBers have been brought up.
katullus (BOB member since 2009-08-21)
Sad to say that my past years working with Business Objects is coming to an end.
Despite the efforts of keeping this tool(even with Crystal) I lost out.
As I was toldā¦ āThe Companyās Crystal Decision will be to move off SAP BO onto another tool, which is what BO wasā¦ Closest to OLAP technologyā.
The Push of Batch processing of Crystal and its support was the focus to the argument.
I want to take this time to THANK everyone on this site for the countless questions and answers provided and resolved.
Happy New Year to ALL and Good Luck in the coming New Year.
To me this site will always be remembered as the BEST TECH SUPPORTED SITE out there!!!
di652 (BOB member since 2005-02-24)
Although Webi has its mark within the BI reporting platform it is still a 3-tier environment. Users with report requests are increasing more and more these days. Having a tool such as Deski played a major role with Business Analysis(KPI, trendingā¦). This is something that is greatly missing within Crystal reports as it is not so easy making daily changes which some may say āADHOCā.
My thoughts, it would have been prudent for SAP to remove Crystal from the picture; as it has been my experience(however recent) that everything done in Crystal can be easily done in Deski. Butā¦
Hope this answers your question.
ColumbiaIT (BOB member since 2011-06-15)
Iām sad to report that our Corp just signed the bottom line 2 weeks ago with moving off of BO and onto MSTR. 
We will soon begin the loooong arduous conversion process of moving ALL our B.I. off of Bobj and onto the Microstrategy Platform. This includes approx 10,000 rpts, 50 Universes, 15 Executive Dashboards, and tons of user-level adhoc stuff.
Iām defintetly NOT thrilled (nor agree) with this decision that our brass has made, nor am I looking forward to the many forthcoming months (currently estimated at 15) of work needed to convert all our Universes, Reports & Dashboards onto MSTR. Specially on/from the Symantec level (as we have some VERY large complicated Universes).
I understood the decision was mostly based on MSTRās more robust Dashboard development tools/utilities as well as the lower efforts & time needed during the Dshbd development phases (when compared to BOās Excelsius. Which I do sort of understand & agree with).
I tried my best to confince the brass to at least stay with BO for our Enterprise Reporting, but guess they wanted to get rid of BO all the way around. They basically reasoned, āif weāre going to now use a different tool for all our BI Dashboarding, we may as well also use the same companys Enterprise Reporting Applications too. Otherwise we would hae to maintain, support & license two different companies B.I. s/w, which both basically do the same thing.ā (ie. Universeās & all the respective reports.)
Canāt say I agree with the Brassās philosophy & decision, but then Iām not a CIO or VP that gets to make this kind of final decision (unfortunetly).
So there goes 12 years of BO Admin/Architecture/Development skills & experience down the drain. I guess the only thing I have to look forward to now is the many hours of work it will take to get myself to the same high level of knowledge in MSTR (as I was at in BO), and thereby earning another feather in my cap (and on my resume) which states āspecializes in multiple BI Platformsā.
Captspeed (BOB member since 2006-10-03)
Hi Captspeed, sorry to hear your companyās decision. Keep in mind that very often, such decision is made with some political influence under the table ā¦something that will not be disclosure to the employees or the general public.
With that being said, the BOBJ job market is quite good. So you do not have to stay if you donāt want to.
substring (BOB member since 2004-01-16)
That is the key, if you canāt influence those in power at least you get something out of this.
Nick Daniels 
(BOB member since 2002-08-15)
Couldnāt agree more here. This is a superb opportunity to roll up the sleeves and jump in head-first into the MSTR world.
Many of us cut our teeth on Business Objects technology as we venture into the realm of analytics and decision support systems, but Iām sure many would agree that one of the greater goals is to evolve into a Business Intelligence professional, regardless of the tool or vendor.
Enjoy your new found classroom and let us know how you make out, especially during migration challenges.
Atul
Atul Chowdhury (BOB member since 2003-07-07)
Thatās a jack of all trades/master of one decision that needs to be made by the individual. Fortunately I chose not to specialise in Lotus Notes when I first got into database! Fortunately Iāve got 15 years of BusinessObjects experience under my belt now. Could have gone the other way quite easily.
Canāt imagine the outcome if you chose that route. 
substring (BOB member since 2004-01-16)
Maybe you should be excited!!! Iāve been using BO (building universes and webi reports) for about a 8 months now. These are the only BO tools i have had exposure to. To date, I would still take MS SSAS, excel client, SSRS and sharepoint portal over BO - no question. My biggest issue with BO is the metadata layer and reliance on relational DB for queries. SSAS is very nice. Define metrics once and use them all over. Sure you can put all your measure in the universe if you dont mind re-querying data from database and with a relaional back end, queries are laggy and slow.
Iād also take something Qlikview or Tableau first too. Not a huge fan of Cognos but their cubes are pretty good. Not as good as MS SSAS last time I looked.
I am leaving out data integration. Dont know anything about data integrator and tools like Tableau and Qlikview have nothing for this. For MS, its SSIS which is very flexible and pretty good for moving data into Dim Models.
BO webi just seems so old school - two dimensional array of black and white numbers on a screen. But maybe I am missing something so far. I hope so.
Good luck to you Guru. Have an open mind. Each tool has it advantages and some (like Qlikview) are super fun to use. So far the BO advantage (that I can tell) is that the reports, when finished, really do look very corporate and the interface is very predictable (ie left panel for filters, right is results ectā¦). And the scheduler / publication piece is nice. That it so far.
twebber (BOB member since 2009-03-23)
twebber, what training have you had in the tools?
The major difference being, that they only run on one platform, SQL Server, whereas BO is DB agnostic. Hence why it is considered an enterprise solution.
Depends on the design of your data model, index strategy, DB server platform and config, really.
Have you ever seen BO reporting against Netezza, for example?
I have worked with SAP BW, an OLAP source,I didnāt think the performance was that great. However, the model and the data volumes may have caused this, in this instance.
Qlikview looks nice and is user friendly.
However, it is not very scalable, takes a while to reload the underlying cubes when data volumes are large, has no query language, lo fi report output, limited āETLā type capabilities and no security module suitable for enterprise segregation.
To summarise, it should be conisdered a nice to have, rather than a replacement for an enterprise reporting solution, IMO.
Mak 1 (BOB member since 2005-01-06)
SQL Server is an enterprise solution. You do need the database for Sharepoint and SSAS cubes but that IS part of the solution.
The only way BO on big relational data is going to be fast is if you have partitioning and a great DBA. Otherwise it can and often is slow.
Its the above and the lack of analytic capability that make it hard for me to love this tool so far. I do think the reports look very slick and corporate though. I did a tool selection bake off between BO and Qlikview. About 10% of people scored BO higher. Some people do love the old school corporate report look and feel.
twebber (BOB member since 2009-03-23)
Can you give some examples of what you mean by analytic capability? Iām trying to understand what you are trying to do with it, and where the holes are based on my prior knowledge.
Also, isnāt the performance as much a function of good universe and query design as anything else?
norty303 (BOB member since 2003-03-19)