SAP RIG event takeaways - SAP BOE XIR4 (aka Aurora), BI on-demand & SAP On-Device

Today, I attended SAP RIG(Regional Implementation Group) customer appreciation event held here at Mumbai. I would like to share some key takeaways from it.

Aurora is here !!  Aurora is SAP internal project code for SAP BOE(BusinessObjects Enterprise) XIR4 and will be released in q4 FY 2010. It is a next major release for BOE.

Following are some of the interesting additions/changes in BOE XIR4 release -

(1) Central auditing - Yes, it's here. Auditing of individual servers won't be required going forward.

(2) Search 

 - Searches Explorer contents in addition to BOE contents

 - Document and metadata search

 - Cluster aware indexing

 - Near real time & scheduled indexing

 - Public SDK

 - Open Search support

 - Integration with SAP Netweaver search, Google Appliance and Sharepoint

(3) Integration with Solution Manager.

(4) WebI is renamed to Interactive Analysis. Infoview with improved UI is now called BI LaunchPad. Import wizard is replaced with Java based utility called Upgrade Manager.

In addition, they talked about their SaaS offering BI on-demand. SAP has hosted(i.e. in cloud) all BusinessObjects BI solutions on their servers in US. All these solutions are offered on demand and follow SaaS model. They are planning to come up with BI on-demand servers in Japan as well.

BI on-demand can be integrated with other SaaS platforms like Salesforce.com. Data is extracted from Salesforce and stored in BI on-demand for reporting/dashboarding purpose.

I signed up for the Personal Edition which is free. UI looks neat. Refer the screenshot below.

 I plan to try it out soon to see how it works :).


Also, SAP India MD Peter Gartenberg introduced their new focus area On-Device. Like On-Premise and On-Demand, On-Device is SAP's one of the most important focus areas. Idea is to make all SAP solutions compatible with the mobile devices like BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad, Windows Mobile, Android, etc.


Finally, the event was held at Sun-n-Sand hotel.

It is located right next to the Juhu beach :).