- SAP BUSINESSOBJECTS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PLATFORM LICENSE SOFTWARE
- SAP BUSINESSOBJECTS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PLATFORM LICENSE LICENSE
SAP has stated that the LAW is intended for this purpose.
SAP BUSINESSOBJECTS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PLATFORM LICENSE LICENSE
License Administration Workbench (LAW) and LAW2 are developed by SAP to gather data for submissions to SAP for audit purposes. This point should not be overlooked the measurement tools provided by SAP for measuring and consolidating the named users and engine/ package usage, are not really the friendly tools many companies consider them to be. There may also be “packages” added to the BOBJ deployment, requiring additional contractual purchases to fully utilize the intended functions. Depending upon which other systems on which users are active, “upgrade” users mentioned above may come into play. Had this not been discovered, an SAP true-up would have been very expensive.Īnother area to be aware of is where one licenses users across an SAP estate which includes BOBJ. Only a very small proportion actually needed any such an account. In one Snow customer’s example, a BW process was started which read Active Directory (AD) accounts and created approximately 3000 user accounts on BOBJ for AD users. Also, because of the acquisition and integration, there are other issues which can arise. All of this highlights a single, salient fact in the world of BOBJ: getting the measurement data required for licensing is very difficult.
SAP is attempting to migrate companies across, yet some still have not done so. The interim systems, post-acquisition yet pre-integrated, are another issue. The server and desktop deployments are measured as other client-server combinations: number of desktop installations, number of server installations, etc. In the post-acquisition BOBJ world, measurement is performed with the License measurement tool for SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence platform (LMBI) tool, which SAP sends to customers when a measurement is needed. Since BOBJ was independent prior to acquisition, the pre-SAP management is essentially client-server. Because BOBJ is not a native development of SAP, the complexity of management, measurement, licensing, and control increases.
SAP BUSINESSOBJECTS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PLATFORM LICENSE SOFTWARE
From a Software Asset Management perspective, this is where historical context is important. SAP recognized the strength and value of BusinessObjects and moved to acquire the company in 2007and integrated the product into their own software suite.Īn important part of the integration of BOBJ into the SAP estate involved combining functionality with existing products and processes. BusinessObjects looked at, and used, business data in a different way. SAP continued to develop BI over time, adding functionality and increasing complexity, but the licensing, and the cost of the offering was still measured using the same tools and processes, nearly the same licensing model and with largely similar contractual language.Īround this time, BusinessObjects – a small Independent Software Vendor (ISV), created a dynamic and robust business intelligence system running in a client-server architecture, which began to revolutionize the BW/ BI space. However, BW and BI are essentially the same “under the hood”, with BI being the more powerful of the two offerings. SAP Business Intelligence (BI) was a logical expansion on BW, adding more seamless use of collected data, analytics, and aiding in strategic business planning.įrom a licensing perspective, BW and BI shared several common factors: both were designed and built initially on the SAP R/3 platform both run strictly in ABAP (SAP’s own language) both had integration options using the SAP portal both were updated/ redesigned/ upgraded over time for Netweaver/ ECC, and now HANA/ S4HANA. The next evolution would add built-in intelligence, to allow easier, more time-relevant use for the business. However, the data still required significant manipulation to provide value.
In the SAP world, this was an important step in the business strategy evolution. BW used a different structure than the then-current RDBMS’s (relational database management systems), which allowed for very powerful queries to be performed on the data. As a result, SAP created a Business Warehouse (BW) option for SAP systems. To better understand why, we should look back at the history of data analytics, business intelligence and BusinessObjects (commonly abbreviated as BOBJ).īack in the late 1990s, the concept of data mining emerged as a significant business benefit. Make no mistake, although BusinessObjects has been part of the SAP portfolio for ten years, the way that it is licensed remains very different from the traditional licensing you find with ABAP-based SAP solutions.