NEWTOWN SQUARE — SAP today announced new business intelligence (BI) innovations that bring customers richer business insights. Now generally available, feature pack 3 for the 4.0 release of SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions – including SAP BusinessObjects BI, Edge edition, software – and the 1.0.1 release of SAP Visual Intelligence software let organizations equip users with powerful analytics tools that are easy to access and use. The announcement was made at SAP Analytics Forum North America, being held today in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania. Register here to join the live virtual event broadcast, beginning at 1:00 p.m. EDT.

Using its BI market share leadership to help customers use analytics to run like never before, SAP is focusing on five key pillars of its ongoing BI strategy for innovation without disruption:

• Core: A foundation for managing BI initiatives – data exploration, visualization, organization, reporting, sharing and more – is core for organizations of all sizes to understand how they are performing
• Creative:  Easy-to-use, self-service connectivity to different environments and data sources helps customers unlock deeper business insights enabling user autonomy and individual creativity
• Mobile: Delivery of the content required by workers in the contexts they need it – wherever they are, on any device – via a friendly, consistent user experience means instant answers for more people
• Extreme: Powerful capabilities such as real-time and predictive analytics enable organizations to tackle “big data,” uncover hidden risks and reveal untapped opportunities
• Social: Increased collaboration allows teams to drive and capture the decision-making processes surrounding structured and unstructured data

“New innovations in areas such as ‘big data,’ cloud, collaboration, mobile, predictive, social and visualization have helped create a renaissance for the entire BI industry,” said Howard Dresner, chief research officer, Dresner Advisory Services. “It’s an exciting time for BI, with bountiful opportunities for organizations and lines of business to arm users with unique insights that can improve decision-making processes and transform businesses. Now more than ever before, BI solutions are accessible, affordable, complete, flexible, scalable and usable.”

New Analytics Innovations Now Generally Available
The latest examples of SAP’s continued innovation across its key BI pillars, today marks the general availability of feature pack 3 for the 4.0 release of SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions – including SAP BusinessObjects BI, Edge edition, for small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) – and the 1.0.1 release of SAP Visual Intelligence. The feature pack release for SAP Crystal Server software is planned to be generally available this month.

Feature pack 3 for the 4.0 release of SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions extends the core of customers’ BI foundations with new capabilities in the following areas:

• Mobile: By giving workers direct access to critical reports and metrics on their mobile devices, organizations can mobilize information assets in a collaborative, self-service environment. New support for Android devices and mobile BI for iPhone also means greater choice.
• Big data: Support for Apache Hadoop and deeper support for the SAP HANA platform enable high-performance analytics on petabyte-scale data, uncovering more data value and improving business velocity.
• Insights: SAP BusinessObjects Explorer software offers users a simple, intuitive experience for gaining immediate, interactive access to data to create visualizations and answer business questions on the fly.
• Social: Integration between the SAP StreamWork application and BI documents increases social collaboration by bringing together people, information and business methods for fast, meaningful results.
• Integration: Deeper SAP application integration enables customers to run operational reporting off of the SAP ERP application and multi-source universes. Access to the SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (SAP NetWeaver BW) application across all clients reduces total cost of ownership (TCO) and complexity.

Bringing creative, self-service BI directly to the desktop, the 1.0.1 release of SAP Visual Intelligence lets people use personal data sources such as Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and CSV files, in addition to data from SAP HANA. It also features SAP StreamWork connectivity for collaborative BI. Announced in May, SAP Visual Intelligence is a desktop BI solution that works with SAP BusinessObjects Explorer and has unique read and write integration with SAP HANA. The software helps lines of business, departments and individuals discover and analyze information to find the answers they are looking for, regardless of technical skill level. It also enables them to easily visualize data and apply key findings to decision-making processes without having to rely on IT.

“As the market share leader in BI, SAP is committed to helping customers run like never before by maximizing their analytics investments,” said Adam Binnie, global vice president and general manager, Business Intelligence Solutions, SAP. “With the most complete BI portfolio available today, SAP is also working hard on the service and support front to make our five-pillar BI vision a reality for any sized business, industry or line of business.”

For more information, including screenshots of feature pack 3 and SAP Visual Intelligence, visit the SAP Newsroom. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews and @businessobjects, and participate in the conversation using the hashtags #SAPForum, #SAPVisi and #BI4.

For more information, press only:
Jason Grosse, SAP, +1 (416) 558-0167, jason.grosse@sap.com, EDT
SAP Press Office, +49 (6227) 7-46315, CET; +1 (610) 661-3200, EDT; press@sap.com
Jeff Shadid, Burson-Marsteller, +1 (214) 224-8419, jeff.shadid@bm.com, CDT