Weren’t you drinking buddies with Bernard to?
dessa 
(BOB member since 2004-01-29)
I AGREE With This!!!
This Purchase And Promotion Was The Worse Move They Made !!!
di652 (BOB member since 2005-02-24)
why 
bernard timbal 
(BOB member since 2003-05-26)
Where to start…
Tool was created and released in the 80s - given out for FREE along with systems so this is Legacy mentality not OLAP
Need to be a Developer and understand SQL in order to create a report(no such thing as ‘Click and Drag’ - BO’s rise to fame with DESKI
Maintaining reports can be a huge undertaking with new requirements\changes
Similar to Microstrategy which is hard to master and maintain; and quite frankly not worth it with what you get out of it! As opposed to what DESKI provided.
Backend structure not stable even though SAPBO mentioned that was why DESKI was set to be terminated.
just talking about a couple quirks of Crystal; sure there are more but need to get back to better tools of BO.
di652 (BOB member since 2005-02-24)
Want to share this with everyone.
Still wondering why the HECK SAP decided to cut DESKI and keep that Crystal App garbage !! Crystal would have be RED X all the way down… I know I am stretching it but still can’t get over why they wanted to get rid of such a powerful tool!!
http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/Conversion+from+Desktop+Intelligence+to+Web+Intelligence
ColumbiaIT (BOB member since 2011-06-15)
Checking in time to time; this discussion went viral I see. But it didn’t seem to affect what SAP is doing.
I think they lost their edge by moving away from DESKI. More and more companies have moved toward COGNOS and away SAPBO. COGNOS always took a back seat to Business Objects in the past. Sad to say not any more
That said; predicting the end of Business Objects as other tools corner the market on other apps and pass BO by. It was great while it lasted.
Nice chart by the way and you’re right; not sure what was their thinking !!! 
BIGuru (BOB member since 2008-12-09)
I unfortunately have to agree with this statement. Been looking up my next BI opportunity and feeling out the waters… So many opportunities with COGNOS out there.
That search always used to require “Business Objects” Not any more… 
Joealyche (BOB member since 2012-02-29)
I still get plenty of calls for BO but not many for Cognos.
I’ve had more calls for Teradata than Cognos in the last year and I’ve not used Teradata for over 15 years.
One problem is that companies have tried to do it on the cheap, thinking that a successful BI deployment depends on the number of resources that you throw at it rather than the quality of them, especially at greenfield locations where the customer has little or no BO experience and they’re expected to come up with report specs. They’ve been used to Excel so they’ll want everything in Excel still, whereas you’re meant to demostrate the interactive nature of Webi - drill filters, input controls, etc.
Then there’s the cost side - SAP need to accept that not everyone has a seven figure budget for BI and should have a separate division managing the non-BW customers, which is most of the people on here with over five stars below their username.
Then there’s Lumira - there should be a better push on the awareness of it rather than just stumbling across it on their website. Other dashboarding tools did it better than Xcelsius - has Lumira caught up? SAP should say yes, here’s what it can do, etc. but there’s no active push to customers that I’m aware of.
While customer move from BO to other BI-platforms and tools?
Asking yourself - whats really new in the SAP BI platform from 2008 year?
What really unique and innovative in SAP BO vs other vendors?
Now 2014.
bmvrus (BOB member since 2011-05-08)
I was there at BOBJ in 1997 when they had decided to focus on the web and no longer work on deski. It was never planned to have deski in Webi.
We are still living with that legacy. Deski is/was a great too.
I don’t think MSTR, Congons are the real game changers.
Yellowfin, digdash, biboard, Qlikview, … They try to bring new ideas to the bi market
That being said BO has still plenty of customers out there and still building on the platform.
Maybe it is time to move into the 21st century with the BI thinking
ClaireB 
(BOB member since 2002-08-09)
Customers doing so are looking at the cost and going for the “low hanging fruit”, trying to please their bosses with a cheap alternative. I’ve heard one place talking about replacing BO with Panopticon, when Panopticon themselves badge their offering as complimentary to BO rather than opposing it.
Customers doing so are looking at the cost and going for the “low hanging fruit”
It’s a trend.
Why organizations choosing BusinessObjects BI products?
bmvrus (BOB member since 2011-05-08)
Qlikview; some say its got its greatness from DESKI look\act alike; talk about moving into the 21st century; Business Objects was there back in the 90s with DESKI.
So why is Crystal still out there; I mean a 80s tool trying to fit into the 21st century; talk about staying Legacy!
FYI, although I do see opportunities in SAPBO I see just about as many and sometimes more for MSTR(garbage) and Cognos
BIFan (BOB member since 2007-10-31)
Reputation. BO was traditionally best in market with Cognos for many years. The old 6.5.x and 5.1.x stacks were stable (when correctly patched, e.g. 5.1.6) and low cost deployments. The Crystal enterprise architecture and SAP’s revised licencing have hiked the cost and confused people, which makes BO seem less appealing for smaller companies than it used to. Reality is that you could get into BOcheaply via the Edge offering but the death of Deski is putting smaller organisations off as they don’t have the budget for server spend.
Agree, smaller, mid and larger companies with any sense of moving forward will not move onto an app which stresses Crystal within its names anywhere.
As far as Edge; I used it for a small organization(about 10 users). Not worth the move onto this platform.
Also, I’ve been at a company that had Edge and migrated to BOXI 3.1 a number of years before I got there.
SAP consultants used to do this… nightmare move. Left sour taste in their mouth; company is no longer doing anything new with BO unfortunately and is looking to handle their BI needs other ways.
Note:
Fellow peers turned me onto DESKI; I was Cognos. Guess what; COGNOS could not compete with what DESKI offered and performed.
Joealyche (BOB member since 2012-02-29)
I just found out my corp is buying/adding the SAS platform to our quiver of BI Tools (which is currently BOXI 3.1 and MSTR 9.4.1). We will be mostly using SAS for Forecasting, Planning & “What if” purposes.
I’ve been delegated as the SAS Administrator (probably because I’m also the BO & MSTR Administrator), and will be sent to they’re Admin Training Class soon in N.C.
Can anyone fill me in on the basics of the SAS Platform and how much Admin & setup work I can expect? I hope it doesn’t require the same amount of day-to-day admin work as MSTR requires…
Captspeed 
(BOB member since 2006-10-03)
I would disagree with your comments about Edge on XI3.1 but I guess it is more about how it is deployed and what it is used for. With respect to SAP consultants, many of us on BOB have over 10 years more experience than them with BO, barring their guys who were from the BO side pre-acquisition. I’ve worked on sites where SAP ERP was being introduced and the SAP consultants just kept refering to the tool/suite as BOBJ (pronouncing it “bobjay”).
Edge, imho, is at its most useful when there is a lot of scheduled information consumption going on and you have a smaller number of concurrent users with most consumption done by bursting. Again, part of the reason BI projects is that people have chosen a tool before gathering all information requirements. It may be the case that a pure BO solution is best fit or not up to the job on its own and a better dashboarding tool is required or that Cognos is a better fit.
If people don’t carry out a full cost benefit analysis (they cba with a cba!), then they deserve all they get. Unfortunately if BusinessObjects has been chosen as the tool for the job, it, rather than the project team, get blamed.
Got the pleasure to work with DESKI in BOXIR3; very nice and intuitive tool. This was after I had the time and misfortunes to work with Crystal.
I can read and understand how developers and reegular users liked DESKI so much and refuse to part with it.
WEBI in BOXI R3 is FAR more stable than WEBI R4. Not sure what they are thinking about in SAP. I mean, nothing should ever get released so badly as this r4.0 version.
I hope 4.1 is better because I can see me going back to developing DSS systems using Powerbuilder.
CrystalSx (BOB member since 2014-05-15)
I think it was a big risk to rewrite the Webi tool from the ground up and kill of Deski - it would have been such an easy contingency to have it waiting in the wings and to encourage migration. Instead they are gambling with their market share and our jobs.
So, finally the day has come…
My company has decided to go for Microstrategy & Qlickview instead of BO.
They are very much impressed with these tools. Specially Dashboard generated from Qlickview.
But, this is company’s decision. I can not do anything regarding their roadmap.
What i can do is switch the project where i can work as a BO consultant 8)
New Project, New Task, New dead-lines , New domain, New challenges 
I’M Ready! 
bryanket 
(BOB member since 2009-10-22)