Hi…I am looking for the following info for Business Objects
1.Hardware requirements (server/procsessor , speed/memory) on most widely used platforms?
amdel61 
(BOB member since 2004-07-14)
[Moderator Note: Moving to General Discussion.]
It depends. 
It depends.
It depends.
Pricing is completely up to you or whoever negotiates the deal with BusinessObjects. Hardware requirements are based on the number of users and type of installation, not the other way around. The number of users per server depends on the type of documents and activities that will be done.
Dave Rathbun 
(BOB member since 2002-06-06)
I am not looking for specific answers …just in general terms …just to give a client idea…
amdel61 (BOB member since 2004-07-14)
Dave’s answer is 100% accurate. 
Perhaps you could give us more information about your deployment. There’s also some great information in the deployment guides.
MichaelWelter 
(BOB member since 2002-08-08)
ok…lets put a scanario here …for 3000 users , using WEBI on windows platform, how would those questions be answered…thanx…
amdel61 (BOB member since 2004-07-14)
If they’re using WebI – does that mean they’re creating and refreshing WebI-query reports only? Or will they be refreshing full-client reports from the repository? That has a big impact as well.
Anita Craig (BOB member since 2002-06-17)
Those questions would best be answered by a BO sales rep.
The pricing has completely changed this year. Very few people even understand it.
As for capacity planning. It depends on whether your reports are full-client or WebI. It depends on the geographic dispersion of the users. Concurrency is a big factor in sizing.
It also depends on what these users are going to do. Some will be read and refresh users, while others will be create and edit types.
At list price a user can run you anywhere from $800 to $1400. Obviously there are volume discounts and a bunch of options.
You’ll need lots of Windows hardware to support this. I’d say at least 6 servers; probably more. But it all depends on how it’s being used.
Steve Krandel (BOB member since 2002-06-25)
Based on general assumptions, often used by BusinessObjects to size a configuration:
3,000 users => 300 online users => 30 active users at any point in time
Webi users run from 15-30 users per cpu
Full client refresh under Webi run from 4-8 users per cpu
If you have a pure Webi environment, you can support your configuration with a beefy quad-cpu box. Will it be the optimal solution? No. Do you need six servers as Steve suggested? It depends. 
BusinessObjects will use a rule of thumb that says of your total user community about 10% will be logged on at any given time. Of those (300) only about 10% of them will be running a query or actively using CPU resources, thus the 30 “active” users. So you could run all of this on one server if you have a pure Webi installation.
However, taking another view… one of my clients had 4500 users and used a cluster of 7 Windows servers to support their needs. They were 85% full client and 15% Webi and the server requirements are much higher. FYI, they replaced all of the Windows servers with 2 UNIX boxes later on.
This is based on my experience with the product line pre-XI. I don’t know how XI plays out under that kind of load yet as none of my larger clients have upgraded at this point.
Dave Rathbun (BOB member since 2002-06-06)
The sizing doc for XI is here:
http://support.businessobjects.com/communityCS/TechnicalPapers/boe_xi_sizing_recommendations.pdf.asp
(I was looking for it earlier but it wasn’t published until March 8.)
Cris E
St Paul, MN
Cris E (BOB member since 2005-03-18)