ASUG BusinessObjects User Conference Town Hall Meeting Notes with SAP Executives

[TammyPowlas]

I was able to watch this year’s ASUG BusinessObjects User Conference Town Hall online.  I liked this year’s town hall a great deal, even though I couldn’t be there in person.    These are my notes, as I heard them.

Steve Lucas, SAP President of Platform Solutions, said they making products easy to adopt, ease of adoption is key going forward

ASUG Board Member and Summit Electric CIO David Wascom said two 2 things he was focusing on:

1. Product rationalization – pick the tool
2. HANA for a small medium enterprise, he felt, was difficult to reach – more prolific – make HANA cheaper

Steve Lucas said “SAP is tool rich”. 

David Wascom said what was exciting for him was Design Studio and that fits his product rationalization. Steve replied “Design Studio is “awesome”

David also said his company uses ASUG provide education, means to network and he made this statement: “We have justified our lifetime membership at ASUG mainly through cost avoidance”

Lucas said they want to make products easier to use, easier to adopt and one of the most important thing they were doing was listening.

Adam Binnie, SAP, spoke about new products.  He said BusinessObjects Explorer was a pre-cursor to Lumira, helping users get answers to questions, and making it easy to find information

How fit together in a traditional environment?  Crystal has a base, with classic SAP.  SAP said they do not want to lose a use case.  They realize they are “tool rich” and are looking at tool convergence.

Design Studio is the future of Web Application Designer, and products work together, such as you can go from Analysis Office to Design Studio.  The tools are coming together to use the CVOM technology.

SAP’s Christian Rodatus, in response to the cost question, said “we are working on bundling HANA”.

Jamie Bridwell, SAP Support, recommended looking at Expert Guided Implementation services.  Jamie was asked what does SAP do with the feedback regarding SAP Support?  He said it helps build the roadmap for the future.

BI4.1 GA

In response to quality issues in BI4, Stephane Le Cam, SAP, said the development team focused on quality.

What is new in the BI4.1 release for platform agnostic?  SAP said SDK customization, Big Data, Hadoop, and more visualization features. 

Christian said we should not wait to upgrade to B4.1, as it was a successful ramp-up program, went quicker than expected.  He said 3M rolled it out in grand scale, you can upgrade to it from all previous releases.

3M was able to use BI4.1 with a new mobile BI solution, SDK for mobile device, rebrand and make it part of their mobile solution

Jamie Bridwell suggested enlisting SAP Support to help review your environment, SolMan & Remote Support tools to enhance support experience.  Jamie said based on feedback  received, in 2014 we will see improvements to Service Marketplace message wizard, software download center, and license key administration.

Questions from Audience

Q: Brian Durning asked about direct data access to any tool in the platform – direct access in Lumira, Crystal has done it forever, KXEN?

A: Want to make that enablement; something was mentioned about NoSQL

Q: Dan Grew asked what about the BusinessObjects only customer  who cannot afford HANA

A: Steve:  Lumira is free, use Lumira Cloud to share.  He said the future is highlighted by Lumira – not the be all, end all, but Lumira eases low-level entry

Q: Steve Krandel of Intuit. “We’re your sales people in companies – sell against Tableau – what can we do?”

A: http://www.sapbusinessobjectsbi.com/

Q: Paul Grill: Big Data + Bad Data = Big Bad Data

Why is no one is talking Data Services?

A: There was a Data Management track at this conference, and SAP said for their keynotes they can really only pick one topic.

Related Links:

Highlights from ASUG BusinessObjects User Conference Keynote Today

Highlights from today’s ASUG BusinessObjects User Conference Keynote - Day 2

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