7/21/2019 SAP BusinessObjects Explorer FAQ for IT

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©SAP AG 2012 Page 1

SAP BUSINESSOBJECTS EXPLORER 

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS FOR IT

May 2012

SUMMARY

The purpose of this Q&A is to provide IT information about SAP BusinessObjects Explorer.

CONTENT

GENERAL INFORMATION ................................................................................................................................ 1 

SAP VISUAL INTELLIGENCE ........................................................................................................................... 3 

COMMUNITIES AND LINKS ............................................................................................................................. 4 

GENERAL INFORMATION

 Agile organizations require decision making and innovation at every level, whether inside or outside of theorganization, everyone needs access to the right information – from the CEO to business analysts, field-based

staff, suppliers, and partners. The SAP® BusinessObjects™ Explorer together with the SAP BusinessObjects

Business Intelligence (BI) platform offer your IT organization flexible ways of sharing information and making itavailable throughout the entire organization – not just for selected processes, applications, or people.

1. What is SAP® BusinessObjects Explorer ™?

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer™ Explorer is fast, engaging solution for discovering answers from any data – from spreadsheets to big data – and getting better, richer insight for your business decisions..

2. What is SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) platform?

It is a flexible and scalable platform designed to make it easy to discover and share insight for makingbetter decisions.

3. What are the key capabilities of the BI platform?

SAP BusinessObjects BI platform includes the following key capabilities:

  Information access  – Provide access to fact-based information

  Information design  – Use graphical design tools to create the rich semantic layer (universes)

  Publishing  – Distribute personalized BI content to a mass audience

  Lifecycle management  – Manage BI content throughout the development, testing, and productionlifecycle

  Platform administration  – Manage, control, and configure a BI deployment from a central console

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SAP BusinessObjects Explorer  –  Frequently Asked Questions for IT

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2. Is SAP BusinessObjects Explorer a self-service BI solution?

Yes, SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is a self-service BI solution. It empowers organizations to extend the

reach of BI to all business users. With immediate insight into all of the data, business users quickly andintuitively find answers to all their business questions. SAP BusinessObjects Explorer also reduces IT

report creation backlog since business users are the ones building visualizations and dashboards.

3. Does SAP BusinessObjects Explorer need to be maintained on a different infrastructure than SAP

BusinessObjects BI platform?

No. SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is deployed and maintained on the SAP BusinessObjects BI platform.

The SAP BusinessObjects BI platform enables one unified infrastructure for data assets and analytics.

The unified environment frees your IT department to respond to ever-changing business requirements.

You can deploy and maintain BI applications more efficiently across your organization while supportingheterogeneous environments. To further optimize IT productivity, the BI platform offers built-in performance

optimization technology and comprehensive lifecycle management support.

4. Can SAP BusinessObjects Explorer leverage some of the BI platform investments we have madeover the year?

Yes, you can. SAP BusinessObjects Explorer leverages existing investments in SAP BusinessObjects

solutions, reusing existing security, metadata, and other platform services, which makes it easier toadminister and quicker to deploy.

5. Is SAP BusinessObjects Explorer secure?

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer is secure because the BI platform security is applied across all SAP

BusinessObjects Explorer functions, which helps to ensure that users have access only to permitted data.User search results and exploration functions are available from the BI launch pad of the SAPBusinessObjects BI platform. These functions leverage the semantic layer and common business terms

that have been standardized across the business and with which people are comfortable and familiar.

6. Can SAP BusinessObjects Explorer scale?

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer can be scaled to the largest of the Fortune 500 companies because it takesadvantage of our proven SAP BusinessObjects BI platform. Built on a scalable, service-oriented

architecture, the BI platform helps your IT department to quickly add BI services and tools to existingdeployments while minimizing operation disruptions. You can distribute multiple BI processes on a singlecomputer or server or across multiple machines, especially those crucial to system availability. Automated

functionality and tools streamline the BI deployment so IT departments can focus on other tasks. Theplatform reduces the total cost of ownership by supporting modern 64-bit architectures and virtualizationenvironments.

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SAP BusinessObjects Explorer  –  Frequently Asked Questions for IT

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7. What operating systems are supported by SAP BusinessObjects BI platform?

The Business Objects BI platform supports popular operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, Sun

Solaris, IBM AIX, HP-UX, and Linux. For more details, please see SAP BusinessObjects BI platformproduct availability matrix (http://service.sap.com/pam).

SAP VISUAL INTELLIGENCE

8. I have heard about Project Hilo in the past. What is Project Hilo?

Hilo was an internal project name and will not be promoted further. The solution name is SAP Visual

Intelligence.

9. What is SAP® Visual Intelligence™?

SAP Visual Intelligence is our latest innovation in the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer solution family. It is adesktop-based visualization and data manipulation solution that allows business users to acquire data froma variety of corporate and personal data sources and manipulate without any scripting. They can then

analyze this data, with beautiful visualizations, quickly discovering unique insight that can be easily shared,

shaping the business faster than ever before.

10. Does SAP Visual Intelligence replace SAP BusinessObjects Explorer?

No. SAP Visual Intelligence was created to complement and extend the value of SAP BusinessObjects

Explorer.

11. How is SAP Visual Intelligence different than SAP BusinessObjects Explorer?

With the web and mobile experiences of Explorer, business users can quickly explore their data and buildtheir own dashboards. SAP Visual Intelligence complements these two experiences while offering

Business Analysts the ability to perform more advanced analysis using visualizations and graphs.

12. What can you do with SAP Visual Intelligence?

From powerful data discovery to beautiful visual analytics, SAP Visual Intelligence is about bringing life toyour data, finding the key information for better decisions.

With SAP Visual Intelligence, you can:

•  Consume data the way you process thoughts: fast, interactive, and visual

•  Connect, access and visualize data without a single line of code

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SAP BusinessObjects Explorer  –  Frequently Asked Questions for IT

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•  Get real-time answers on any volume of data

•  View the big picture and drill down to details

•  Share your findings instantly with others

13. Is SAP Visual Intelligence currently available?

SAP Visual Intelligence 1.0 is generally available as of May 15, 2012.

14. Will SAP Visual Intelligence be available globally?

Yes, SAP Visual Intelligence 1.0 will be available globally. English will be the only language supportedinitially however other languages will be available in future releases.

15. Where can I get more information about SAP Visual Intelligence?

Please visit www.experienceexplorer.com for more information and demos about SAP Visual Intelligence.

COMMUNITIES AND LINKS

16. Where can I find SAP BusinessObjects Explorer communities?

a) Experience Explorer site b) SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Space on SCN 

17. Other resources and sites

a) SAP Analytics on SAP.com b) SAP BusinessObjects BI Solutions on SAP.com c) SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform Space on SCN d) SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Tutorials 

e) SAP Analytics Blog f) SAP Analytics Newsroom 

18. Stay in touch

a) Find us on Facebook b) Follow us on Twitter  c) Watch us on YouTube