Good-Bye DESKI and Good-Bye SAP BO

[BIFan]

Good points mitra. But if this is true, SAP is working to wipe out Business Objects entirely

I agree, if they want to totally wipe out Business Objects and Webi from the name they should change it; but they should also remove the old crystal name as well.

Thinking back to a tool called FOCUS the vendors renamed because of its newly created web use. They called it WebFocus. Come on, are they kidding, it still has Focus in the name and industry will always look at it as the old legacy FOCUS tool they produced.

Same holds true from the Crystal name created back in the late 80s. People may want it for Free, like it used to go out!

[Mitra Moini]

[ystu15]

It doesn't look good for the future of Business Objects.

[dw_at_sap]

Let me try to remove some confusion, since it was my email that was partially quoted and shared here (which is fine, but reading comments there seems some confusion).

For simplicity, I'll number these so people can refer to them in case there are any questions:

1. WebI has long been the replacement product to DeskI, and that decision predates both the Crystal and SAP acquisition timelines and has not changed.

2. The Business Objects, and now SAP BusinessObjects strategy has always been the best tool for the job at hand. Yes, we distinguish between 'operational' or 'enterprise' reporting, and 'adhoc' and 'self service' reporting scenarios with Crystal Reports and WebI being focused on those respectively. We are also aware there is overlap in those definitions, and people will use WebI for dashboarding, or analysis, or operational reporting. That is fine with us, especially given #1 above.

3. It is about 9 years now we've been working to make the DeskI to WebI transition. So this is long planned, thought out and researched. We, however, remain open to feedback on how to make that switch easier, and what is missing to make it a success.

4. There seems some confusion on why "Crystal Interactive Analysis" was used for WebI in the download link I provided. We have 3 brands we use: BusinessObjects, Edge, and Crystal. Simply BusinessObjects for enterprise, Edge for SME solutions and Crystal is a brand that remains well known in distribution channels. The link was the most convenient one where we have a trial version readily available for download. If you go here (http://www.sap.com/solutions/sapbusinessobjects/index.epx) you can see we how we talk about Large versus Small and MidSize companies and our respective solutions. And, I should point out we're making some changes to some names, so I'll share them now: http://download.sap.com/download.epd?context=1DA760BA0F1EC83BE393EBA644F81666F51DD9A22B64430471986DC9069E0006EA2364413D2990C3DC0B25B525C25CBC22407270EEBDE423

Thanks,
Dave Weisbeck
SVP, Business Intelligence & Information Management Solutions

[MichaelWelter]

Dave, Welcome to BB! Thank you so much for jumping into this thread. Your input is valuable.

As you say, the demise of Deski has been long planned. That's why so many Deski users have been making the gradual transition to Webi. I grew up on Deski years ago, and knew it inside and out. But, quite frankly, haven't used it in years, so as to make the transition long before my hand was forced. And although Webi still doesn't have all the features of Deski, I have usually found workarounds for missing features. In addition, I find Webi to be easier to use, and less buggy than Deski. At this point, I love Webi, and would never go back to Deski.

[BIFan]

Its a shame that DESKI did not replace Crystal. I have never seen anything Crystal can do that DESKI cannot. It is user friendly, quick report creation turnaround in development and maintenance(especially - you ever try changing formatting in Crystal - OMG)

I too have been a long developer of DESKI and WEBI is fine but the system hangups far out way whatever you may have thought was buggy about DESKI. There are some things I like in WEBI especially linking across reports, very slick. But sick of trying to find workarounds. That said this site is a godsend with that since developers out there have run into similar issues I was faced with - thanks again all.

In short, I think the push to Crystal has to go. I mean, there is nothing about it that I can promote for users. Webi is easier to teach them and Rich Client is coming up but the amount of reports I am faced with converting from Crystal to Webi has to stop. Only with the cut of Crystal will this happen but I don't believe it will.
As mentioned by Dave Crystal is widely used, but this was so because of its earlier entrance(I think back in the early late 80s). It was a dog then and is still the same.

Name change, by all means, remove the word Crystal and I think your set. Remember FOCUS; changing their name to WebFOCUS didn't help. Although its a nice tool, but not many know of it because of its antiquated name.


That said lets keep moving forward towards a faster and smoother platform.

[substring]

I used both Crystal and BusinessObjects many years ago. For Crystal, it went way back to version 8.5. And for BusinessObjects, it went back to version 5.1.8 where Full Client (the original name of DeskI) was the only viable presentation tool (WebI was still in its infancy and nobody wanted to use it). Both presentation tools are great and I don't have any strong preference of one over the other.

I stopped using DeskI since XI R2 because of the roadmap plan announced by Business Objects SA. WebI is getting better and better on every release. And I can tell you that it is definitely NOT a non-pixel perfect reporting tool. We have some WebI reports that have very intense formatting. So I think calling WebI a pure adhoc tool is a mistake. But I believe it is the vendors (both Business Objects SA and now SAP) that want WebI to become a full blown adhoc tool.

By the way, WebI will remain as Web Intelligence in BI 4.0. The proposed name change to Interactive Analysis has been cancelled, thanks to objection from the user community. Once again, as I have stated before, if a proper forum is established, SAP does listen sometime.

[MichaelWelter]

I agree with substring. Webi has grown up quite nicely.

At the risk of sounding harsh, the demise of Deski has been in the works for 9 years, and has been discussed regularly here on BOB for 9 years. So, if the demise of Deski has caught you by surprise, and you're not prepared for it, you haven't been paying attention. And complaining about it now isn't going to change a thing. Deal with it.

[Mak 1]

[Wolfgang Bidner]

Well, Deski -was/is a great tool - I love it - but Webi is it's child, I love it too. Deski is about to retire ... it’s …. ok! Naming Strategies of Sales is also something to wonder about... Confusion is perfect here in Austria – did the customer get Xcelsius or Crystal reports – the Name in question is: Crystal Dashboard design …
I am organizing the BO-User-Meeting here in Vienna since 2005 – we had our 17th meeting end of January – the scenery changed completely throughout the years – First it was a BO-partner supporting the meetings, then as BusinessObjects arrived in Austria with its own representation it supported the meetings – all of them. Now since SAP is dealing with the subject, one of the usual three meetings a year is directly supported. I found some support in the DSAG the pendant to ASUG here in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. But DSAG has no focus whatsoever on BusinessObjects, I am still struggling to get BusinessObjects on the Agendas – not only as side dish product to a SAP-BW… This combination works well at the moment – we had 70 users at our last meeting – but there are still a lot of frictions … SAP - here in Austria at least – is focusing of doing the business all alone – maybe with some big players in the consulting company community – but the old BO-partner ecosystem is more and more crumbling… as the smaller bo-implementations are… one by one they say good bye to maintenance, to the products, …
I am seeing some piece of work here for SAP-BO… like a sermon my feedback to SAP is not quite heard. (and I am quite a preacher ) We even sang a little song at the last meeting about Old McDonald … who had an SAP… once
Well we could resume that this is as business always is - managers come and managers go – the work is still to do…
But I could imagine that working together with all the existing ecosystems and communities would be the better way than to do it all alone. SAP is big. But some small mistakes could have big issues following…
So the spirit in the Bo-Stammtisch (=user)-Community is not all happy with SAP and it’s attitudes of being a big company…
WoBi, concerned !

[Ottoman]

Well, I have been using BO for 13 years and used Mainframe and PC-Focus for 13 years before that (not WebFocus!) and would say that I was far more productive using Focus!

BO is ok for an end user with a well designed universe, but if you need to create rapid reports from multiple datasources with data complex manipulation (and no comments please about DI or building a warehouse - users dont want to wait weeks) I thought Focus was great for an expert user.

In my view, far too much time is spent on making things look pretty instead of looking at the data!

[Wolfgang Bidner]

- I remember customers where the look was more important than the data!
Wobi

[Ottoman]

they are still around!

and where all reports have to reconcile, regardless of accuracy!

[Mark P]

[MichaelWelter]