David Taylors' Business Intelligence Blog

When Apple came out with the first iPhone, I was pretty amazed.  When corporate decided not to get us Blackberry’s I decided the time was right to get the new iPhone 3G.  I wondered how long the magic would last… 2 months?  maybe 3?  18 months later I’m as in love with my iPhone as ever…   Each day there are new apps.  I’ve got apps for twitter, shazam, memo recording, dictionary, tv listings, the list goes on and on.  Even though I can’t get corporate email “pushed” to my InBox, I don’t care.  My iPhone is WAY too much fun.

Now the fun has been extended to  BI for the iPhone.

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer for the iPhone

Back in December of 2009, the Innovation Center released the first prototype iPhone App which provided the same ease-of-use exploration capability that I had with the web version.  The only problem with the prototype version was that it came with a predefined sample dataset that couldn’t be changed.  It was a fun to demo and play with but wasn’t of much practical use.  That all changed 4 days ago.

iPhone Goes OnDemand

Today I downloaded version 1.1.233 which contains on important new feature.  Now I can access any datasets  that I have loaded up using my SAP OnDemand Account.  It’s great to see this solution taking shape.

Key Features
• Search Across Data – Simply type in a few words or data elements and Explorer brings your data source to the top of the list.
• Automatic Data Relevancy and Chart Generation – Have Explorer automatically bring the most relevant data element to the fore and generate a best fit chart based on the number of dimensions and measures.
• Speed – Because the back-end data sources are index in memory, result are instantaneous.  Performance is perfect.
• Share Results – your results can be instantly email your insights to other users who don’t have access to Explorer!

iPhone Demo

Here is a video that was posted by the SAP Innovation Center.

Please let the innovation center know what you think about these innovations.  Let’s bring it into the mainstream product by popular demand!  Email them:  innovation_center@sap.com

Finding Out More…

If you are interested in additional information SAP BusinessObjects Explorer go here:
http://www.sap.com/solutions/sapbusinessobjects/large/business-intelligence/search-navigation/explorer/index.epx

Want to try our OnDemand Solution free for 30 days?  go here:
https://goexplore.ondemand.com/

If you are interested in other mobile solutions, you have to checkout RoamBI:
http://www.roambi.com/

«Good BI»

Today I attended the GABOUG quarterly meeting and saw a really nice presentation of SAP BusinessObjects Explorer by Rob Fiorillo of RFP Consulting.  He showed multiple demos.

During the first demo, he wanted to show how to use Explorer with data from Excel, so he used Live Office to take the data out of the EDW.  He then imported the data into SAP BusinessObjects Explorer using the new plug-in from labs called, SAP BusinessObjects Explorer with Excel Navigation Prototype.

There are currently two versions of SAP BusinessObjects Explorer.  There is:

• SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Accelerated
• SAP BusinessObjects Explorer

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Accelerated – The Accelerated version provides unlimited scalability of in memory processing for data regardless of size and is really the way to go.  It requires the use of SAP’s Netweaver BW 7, BWA Blades and SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Blades.

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer (non-Accelerated) – Organizations can use the non-accelerated version, but there are limitations to the amount of data SAP BusinessObjects Explorer non-Accelerated can handle.  In 2010, SAP BusinessObjects will be bringing a “BWA Blades for non-SAP data” to the market, which will overcome the existing limitations.

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer breaks new ground with the way it brings together:

• Fast Performance
• Unlimited Data
• Intuitive User Experience

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Demo Site

A great example of the solution is represented my the http://microfinance.sap.com/ demo site.  Click below and take it for a test run.

Incredible Data Volumes

The microfinance website does a great job of showing you the intuitive user interface while and the same time demonstrating the large data volumes that can be processes.  This demo site is running a relatively small data sample of 27 million records, but look at the response time!

That’s fast!  0.016s to return a result set of 1,123,000 records.  Also what I love about SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is that I am able to see the desired metric broken down by every  dimension member.  In the screenshot above you can see that of the selected sample, 498 are Existing Clients, 375 are New Clients and 250 are Former Clients.

I am fascinated by the growth of in memory solutions within the BI Marketplace.  Qliktech’s QlikView is probably one of the better know solutions in the space.  With Explorer, SAP BusinessObjects answers the call of the industry to provide in-memory solutions for organizations who have standardized on their platform.  The good news is that you no longer have to deploy niche solutions to get the type of in-memory performance many of your end-users would love.

«Good BI»