This article appeared in the Jan Feb Mar 2005 issue of SAP Insider and appears here with

■ ■

permission from the publisher, Wellesley Information Services (WIS), www.WISpubs.com.

SAP insider Special Feature: SAP Business Intelligence

SAP’s Peter Graf on

Business Intelligence Best
(and Worst!) Practices

By the end of this year, worldwide investments in business intelligence (BI) will exceed
$16 billion. The promises of these investments are manifold. In theory, more timely and
effective decision-making should translate into more competitive strategies, greater
market share, improved customer satisfaction, more productive employees, better control
and oversight, and more accurate planning, budgets, and forecasts. The real-world results
often fall short.
Peter Graf
There are a number of misconceptions and factors that stifle the payoff of a BI
Senior Vice President,
initiative. Among the worst offenders, or worst practices, are the following: SAP Collaborative
Solutions Product
“BI is just a data warehouse.” A data warehouse offers structured business infor- Marketing
mation. In and of itself, it does not offer business intelligence. It is only one of many
critical building blocks. Equating a data warehouse with business intelligence belies
the very reason you implement BI solutions in the first place, which is not only to
structure, store, and access information, but to interpret and actually act upon it for
Inside
the types of benefits I just cited. True BI scenarios incorporate much more than a data
warehouse and a slick UI. They work in lockstep with business process management,
collaboration tools, and business applications. Tying analytics back into action —
3 Track, Understand, and Manage
Your Enterprise Performance:
Integrated Business Intelligence
that’s what BI is all about. Solutions from Business Objects

“Good reports = Good BI.” Many who design and implement BI strategies are lulled
into a false sense of security, believing that good reports are indicative of good BI.
Building and delivering good reports is only one facet of BI; it is by no means a
5 Extending the Value of Your
Investment in SAP BW:
Do All Your Users Have
complete picture. Dashboards, alerts, balanced scorecards, and KPIs are also highly Access to SAP BW Data?
effective means for communicating business insights, and are means that are becoming
more popular given the trend toward “exception-based reporting.”
7 The Role of Data Integration:
How Informatica and SAP BI
Support Data Integration for
“BI ends when the report hits the executive’s inbox.” If you want to gauge the
efficacy of your BI activities, take a look at what happens once a report reaches Data Warehousing, Business
Intelligence, and Beyond
your CEO or your LOB executives. I see it time and time again. An important issue
warrants executive review and the CEO asks for a report. The report is run (or in
some cases, created at great expense) and sent via email to the CEO’s inbox. The
inbox offers no inherent support for collaboration among key stakeholders, no context
9 Business Intelligence and
Information Lifecycle
Management — Do You
upon which to draw meaningful conclusions, and no simulation or modeling capabili- Have to Choose?
ties — in summary, no actionable intelligence. And most glaring of all is the lack of
tie-in to processes and applications. BI should be a catalyst for business transforma-
tion, an enabler of smart business. That CEO should be empowered to make better and
11 SAS Gives You “The Power
to Know”
smarter decisions (ultimately affecting the bottom line of the organization), and to
quickly initiate process changes where recognized to be advantageous. 13 Monitor, Report, and Analyze
Your SAP Business Intelligence
Data Across the Whole
Continued on page S-2 Enterprise

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SAP insider Special Feature: SAP Business Intelligence
Continued from page S-1
“One size report fits all.” We all understand that
interest in a specific type of data — say, sales figures —
doesn’t mean a one-size-fits-all report is appropriate. A
marketing manager may want to review sales figures by
promotional campaigns, a sales manager by sales rep and
product, and a purchasing manager may want to focus on
trends over time in order to avoid out-of-stock situations.
And yet, many companies resign themselves to having a
data warehouse administrator run a report and having the
users decipher it on their own. Or worse, the administrator
(without the relevant business understanding) runs
numerous reports tailored to what he or she perceives are
the needs of the audience. Inflexible, impersonal BI such
as this forces users to make compromises and hinders the
quality of insights to be gained.
“Six different tools (and six different answers!).”
With the advent of Sarbanes-Oxley, acute concerns
about timeliness, accuracy, and consistency reach well
beyond the IT department. Internal controls and trust-
worthiness of financial figures are key concerns for every
CEO and CFO who has to attest to a financial statement.
Compliance can be difficult or easy to obtain, depending
on the route you take. Isolated data warehouse implemen-
tations take you down a difficult and expensive path to
compliance. And it’s a path marred by risk. You extract
information from a data warehouse, manipulate it with
external tools, and then return the revised data to the
system. There is no single version of the truth, and data
modifications cannot be traced or audited.
“To get the best, buy best-of-breed applications and
tools.” One of the myths that enabled best-of-breed envi-
ronments to take hold in the 1990s was the notion that
they offered flexibility. It didn’t take long for both the
business and IT sides of the house to discover the fallacy
of this claim. It’s hard (if not impossible) for a business
group or executive to get to one version of the truth
when different organizations take a different approach to
BI. Moreover, manual integration of multiple products
exponentially compounds IT overhead and expense.
Modifications, software patches, updates, upgrades, and
integration exercises — basically, day-to-day dealings for
every IT department — wreak havoc on a so-called “best-
of-breed” BI landscape. Vendors don’t coordinate the
release schedules with one another. They all issue updates
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at will, leaving IT organizations to administer change to
one system, then revisit every other system that is impacted
by that change. A single, integrated, and robust technology
platform from a proven vendor, not a best of breed, is actu-
ally the key to flexibility.
“Analytical and transactional applications: different
strokes for different folks.” Many BI initiatives
operate in isolation. They offer reports, but are either
not able or were not configured to track, measure, and
refine operational execution. But the very premise of busi-
ness intelligence is to assemble data for analysis that
guides subsequent actions! It is absolutely essential that
the BI solutions interact with operational systems, offer
monitoring and feedback mechanisms, provide timely (or
preferably real-time) alerts, and align business insights
with corrective actions and process improvements.
The 7 Best BI Best Practices
The seven best practices to emerge in the BI arena are
summarized in Figure 1 on page S-14. At the core of every
one of these best practices is an acute requirement for a
common, open, and unified technology platform. In this
regard, SAP customers are ideally situated because SAP
NetWeaver is precisely that.
Harnessing the benefits of BI requires broad-reaching
technical capabilities along a number of fronts. You obviously
need extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) capabili-
ties, integration brokers, and data-modeling tools. You need a
portal to enable access to information and analytic applica-
tions. Security is certainly a huge factor for every IT organi-
zation these days. And cutting across all facets of a BI
endeavor is the need for integration with business processes
and applications. These capabilities are all integral to the
SAP NetWeaver platform.
When these technical assets are at your disposal, BI can
take flight. You can use business process management in
conjunction with analytics. You can wield the portal for broad-
based delivery of content, be it reports, alerts, or KPIs. You
can tap into collaboration tools so that people can discuss the
contents of a report, reevaluate findings, and question conclu-
sions. You can readily tie analytics back into transactions. And
you can create processes around analytics, for example, via
ad hoc workflow definitions and guided procedures.
Continued on page S-14

Track, Understand, and Manage
Your Enterprise Performance
Integrated Business Intelligence Solutions
from Business Objects
Gain visibility into your business —
and leverage all your enterprise data.
Reduce costs — while increasing
productivity and minimizing demands
on IT. Pinpoint your most profitable
customers — and improve your overall
financial performance. And ultimately,
be able to act efficiently on the business
insights available within SAP NetWeaver.
SAP customers look to business intel-
ligence (BI) vendors to deliver all of
these benefits, and more. Easy to say —
not as easy to achieve. But with the
reporting offerings from Business
Objects, SAP customers get solutions
that are uniquely integrated with SAP
Business Information Warehouse (SAP
Figure 1 Business Objects’ Complete Business Intelligence Solution
SAP insider Special Feature: SAP Business Intelligence
BW), a core component of SAP Business
Intelligence (SAP BI).
Developed Jointly with SAP
Over the past four years, Business
Objects has worked hand-in-hand with
SAP and the Walldorf, Germany-based
SAP competency and development
center to develop its integrated solution
for formatted reporting, Crystal
Enterprise, for SAP customers.
The results? Unparalleled integration
with SAP BW and the SAP NetWeaver
strategy, in addition to integration with
SAP R/3, plus a leading position in the
number and scope of SAP NetWeaver
Subscribe today. Visit www.SAPinsider.com.
Gordon Breese
Vice President
SAP Alliance,
Business Objects
certified product offerings. What does
that mean for customers? You get best-
of-breed SAP reporting functionality
with the lowest risk to maximize your
SAP investment.
Customer Adoption
The roster of SAP customer companies
that have embraced Business Objects
and SAP reporting solutions includes
some of the world’s best-known and
most successful enterprises. Eastman
Kodak Company, Johnson & Johnson,
and Telecom Italia SpA have joined the
ranks of long-standing SAP customers,
such as Air Products and Chemicals,
BMW Group, FirstEnergy Corp., and
NVIDIA, to leverage the power of
Business Objects’ reporting solutions.
With a comprehensive portfolio of
BI products, Business Objects addresses
the specific needs of all users across the
enterprise, from the knowledge worker/
information consumer to analysts and
power users to business managers and
executives (see Figure 1).
Enhancing SAP Business
Intelligence Capabilities
Empowering employees with the infor-
mation they need and in a format they
require to make better decisions faster
SAP insider S-3
SAP insider Special Feature: SAP Business Intelligence

was a primary objective for SAP and

Business Objects. To this end, Crystal
Enterprise — SAP Edition 10 was inte-
grated with SAP BW. The bundled solu-
tion, available for the Windows
platform, includes over 100 report
templates, plus the ability to create 10
custom reports.

For those seeking to create custom

reports from all their enterprise infor-
mation, including SAP BW, SAP R/3,
and non-SAP data, Business Objects
developed Crystal Enterprise —
Enhanced SAP Edition. Users can
create and customize presentation-
quality reports on their own, without
needing to rely on the specialized skills
of IT personnel and while honoring SAP Figure 2 Self-Service Access to Crystal Reports Within the SAP BW Interface
security (see Figure 2).

Crystal Enterprise — Enhanced
SAP Edition enables SAP customers to:
■
Get the information you need, when
you need it, and in a format you can
use to make smarter decisions
■
Gain full access to all your SAP BW,
SAP R/3, and non-SAP data to track,
understand, and manage your business
in order to maximize enterprise
performance
■
Reduce IT expenditures, report
development time, and end-user
training
■
Empower end users to easily
create their own presentation-
quality reports
■
Securely manage your information,
adhering to SAP security standards,
by scheduling and distributing reports
via the Web
Loading Data into SAP BW
If your requirements also include
accessing heterogeneous source data
for loading into SAP BW, Business
Objects Data Integrator gives you
the flexibility of a fully functional,
enterprise-class data integration
platform.
Data Integrator accelerates the
implementation of SAP BW by simpli-
fying access to disparate data sources
for integration with your SAP BW
environment. Data Integrator can:
■
Integrate heterogeneous data with
one tool and a single, easy-to-use
graphical user interface
■
Provide a drag-and-drop design envi-
ronment that allows users to easily
manage data integration tasks
without programming
■
Easily load SAP BW with any SAP
R/3 data that is not contained in the
standard BW extractors, including
custom SAP R/3 tables or data from
industry-specific modules
Designed for SAP Customers
Covering the full BI spectrum from
operational reporting to ad hoc query
and analysis to enterprise performance
management, Business Objects Crystal
Enterprise offers proven solutions
optimized for the SAP NetWeaver plat-
form. Business Objects enjoys Certified
for SAP NetWeaver certification for its
WebIntelligence and Crystal Enterprise
— Enhanced SAP Edition solutions.
As SAP customers have been
exposed to the very real advantages of
Business Objects solutions, they have
responded by complementing their
SAP BI strategic enterprise reporting
solution with integrated reporting
solutions from Business Objects.
Combining world-leading BI function-
ality from Business Objects with the
SAP NetWeaver open integration and
application platform, SAP customers
can leverage the best in business intelli-
gence with full end-user power and
control and lower organizational TCO.
For More Information
To learn more, contact your
Business Objects representative
at +1 800 877-2340 or
+1 604 681-3435, call your SAP
sales representative, or visit the joint
SAP and Business Objects Web site at
www.businessobjects-sap.com.

S-4 SAP insider Subscribe today. Visit www.SAPinsider.com.


Extending the Value of Your
Investment in SAP BW:
Do All Your Users Have Access
to SAP BW Data?
A 2004 survey conducted by META
Group, a leading provider of IT research,
advisory services, and strategic consulting,
indicates that 56% of customers with
three or more SAP modules deployed
plan to standardize on SAP Business
Information Warehouse (SAP BW)
within the next two to three years. The
percentage increases to 63% for SAP
customers running five or more modules.1
As an SAP customer, you are likely
either planning to invest or have already
made the strategic investment in SAP
NetWeaver to leverage its BI capabili-
ties. The next step is extending the infor-
mation stored in SAP BW to more of
your decision-makers in finance, sales,
marketing, operations, and HR.
Cognos Further Expands the
Reach of Your SAP BW Data
Many customers choose Cognos software
to cure business pains such as lengthy
reporting times, cumbersome report
authoring, combining disparate data into
a coherent view, and poor visibility into
performance. Cognos, an SAP Software
Partner, can also extend and enhance the
value of your SAP investment:
■
More users leveraging the value of the
information available from SAP BW,
a key component of SAP NetWeaver
■
Self-service and increased reporting
flexibility for novice users
■
Added ability to amortize your overall
SAP BW and SAP NetWeaver invest-
ment over a larger number of users
1
K. Schlegel et al.,“SAP BW: Staying One Step Ahead
of a Juggernaut,” META Group, July 27, 2004.
SAP insider Special Feature: SAP Business Intelligence
Scott Lawrence
Director,
Most importantly, Cognos further Product Marketing,
enhances your SAP solution in helping you Cognos
run your business intelligently by providing
business intelligence insights to the right
users, at the right time, in the right format.
“From an ROI-oriented perspective,
Cognos ReportNet has a high potential of
The Benefits of Integration
becoming one of the leading reporting
Certified by SAP
platforms for SAP customers.”
Cognos has been one of the first vendors
to earn Powered by SAP NetWeaver — Jörg Narr, Analyst at the Business
Application Research Center (BARC)
certification for its Cognos ReportNet
and lead author of the BARC report
components. These components hold
“Front-ends for SAP BW”
certifications for integration with three
key components of SAP NetWeaver: pre-
packaged iViews for integration with
SAP Enterprise Portal; the Cognos How Cognos ReportNet
Driver for BAPI — an OLAP BAPI Leverages SAP BW and
interface into SAP BW; and certified SAP NetWeaver
deployment of Cognos Dispatcher on
Cognos ReportNet, our Web-based
SAP Web Application Server. These
reporting application, lets you create
certifications assure you of:
reports using:
■
Confidence and integrity of results by ■
All your SAP BW data — Master
leveraging your investment in security, Data, ODS Data, InfoCubes,
business content, and business rules, MultiProviders, and SAP BW Queries
including hierarchies, multiple
languages, and currencies ■
All your SAP business rules —
languages, currencies, conversions,
■
Time savings and simplicity with a
hierarchies, aggregations, calculations,
seamless, simple portal experience for
and more
business users to get the information
they need in a familiar interface ■
All your infrastructure — SAP BW
query processing power and deploy-
■
Reduced costs and simplified mainte-
ment on the SAP Web Application
nance by utilizing your existing IT envi-
Server, with no duplication or
ronment to deploy the reporting —
redundancies
from using the SAP BW application
for as much of the query processing as Cognos integration also extends to
possible, to deploying the reporting SAP security and SAP Enterprise
solution on the SAP Web Application Portal. This allows you to access and
Servers already in place interact with any report created in
Subscribe today. Visit www.SAPinsider.com. SAP insider S-5
SAP insider Special Feature: SAP Business Intelligence
Figure 1 Pixel-Perfect Reports
for Production
Reporting and High-
Volume Web Invoicing
Cognos ReportNet in the familiar SAP
Enterprise Portal environment. It also
provides single sign-on across SAP BW
and SAP Enterprise Portal using your
SAP roles for data access and to drive
the user experience in Cognos ReportNet.
You can extend this security to support
single sign-on access across all your
data, including non-SAP BW data.
Powerful, Flexible, Self-Service
Reporting Across Your Company
With Cognos ReportNet, you can
combine data from multiple SAP BW
sources and instances with non-SAP
BW data (for example, relational data
warehouses) within a single report. This
creates a single view of your operations
and helps eliminate the multiple reports
and reporting solutions that you’re likely
struggling with today.
Cognos ReportNet simplifies and
streamlines every aspect of reporting
for SAP customers, including those who
must use data from SAP BW and other,
non-SAP sources.
Users can create multiobject, multi-
query, multipage reports, as well as
pixel-perfect production reports (see
Figure 1), all over the Web, bringing
together key information from across
your organization. A table of contents or
S-6 SAP insider
Figure 2 Multipage Report — from SAP BW and Non-SAP BW Data —
with Sophisticated Formatting
paging down leads users to subsequent
pages of supporting details.
Cognos ReportNet’s easy-to-use,
Web-based report creation for sophisti-
cated or simple ad hoc reports (see
Figure 2) provides flexible report sched-
uling and output options — including
bursting, for broad distribution to
hundreds or thousands of users with one
touch to the SAP BW server.
Cognos ReportNet also supports
users across geographic boundaries with
diverse output format requirements.
Multilingual reports feature automatic
localization to reduce authoring times
and ensure data consistency across loca-
tions. Multiple output formats meet the
needs of all end users to increase satis-
faction and use — users can have
personalized default output formats or
can change report formats to HTML,
PDF, Excel, or CSV. The ability to
output in PDF addresses the need to
print your highly formatted, multipage
reports at the touch of a button.
Ultimately, users can access reports
when and where they need to — they
Subscribe today. Visit www.SAPinsider.com.
even have the option to schedule reports
to run at off-peak hours to reduce
network load, or immediately after
SAP BW data is refreshed for the
most current information. Cognos
ReportNet’s easy-to-learn reporting
environment ensures broad deployment
and uptake with little or no training,
and low administration overhead.
About Cognos
Cognos is a world leader in reporting,
business intelligence, and enterprise
planning software. Industry analysts,
customers, and experts recognize
Cognos’s leadership in these fields and
in the emerging field of corporate
performance management. They point to
the breadth and excellence of Cognos
performance management software as
the source of this leadership.
Founded in 1969, Cognos today
serves more than 23,000 customers in
over 135 countries. For more informa-
tion, please visit www.Cognos.com.

The Role of Data Integration:
How Informatica and SAP BI Support
Data Integration for Data Warehousing,
Business Intelligence, and Beyond
In an effort to gain a single view of the
truth across multiple functional areas,
companies today are turning more and
more to business intelligence and data
integration solutions to consolidate data
into operational data stores and large-
scale warehouses. When using the right
framework with the right data integra-
tion tools, companies can have faster,
more comprehensive reporting with
richer sets of business analytics and
improved data quality within an ODS.
At the same time, many customers
are realizing that data integration is not
just for data warehousing anymore.
Today, there are numerous other “killer
apps” in the data integration arena, and
companies need to look to their total
information integration and data move-
ment needs; there is much that data
integration technologies can be doing for
your organization and its bottom line.
This is particularly true in SAP
solution environments, which are only
as effective as their source information
is complete, accurate, and timely.
Operational areas of particular concern
to SAP customers include:
■
Quick integration of non-SAP data
into SAP BW
■
Feeding data from SAP BW into
downstream applications
■
Large-scale data migration and
consolidation
■
Synchronization of data from
legacy systems
■
Seamless SAP R/3 upgrades
SAP insider Special Feature: SAP Business Intelligence
■
SAP application instance consolidation
■
Heterogeneous IT landscapes where
external or third-party data must be
combined with SAP data
The good news is that the same data
integration and ETL (extract, trans-
form, and load) technologies that have
been developed, honed, and packaged
over the years for data warehousing
and business intelligence usage in your
SAP BI solutions can be brought to
bear in migrations, consolidations, and
upgrades, as a growing number of SAP
customers can attest.
Integration — Any Data, Any
System, Any Time — into SAP
As an SAP Software Partner, Informatica
is a leader in adaptive software for
integrating immediate, accurate, and
understandable enterprise data. In an
SAP environment, this includes:
■
Scalable, codeless data access — from
any system to any system — in real-
time, change-capture, or batch modes
■
Comprehensive data profiling,
filtering, and cleansing capabilities
■
Transparent sourcing, transforming, and
loading of high-volume data from older
applications such as pre-SAP supply
chain and manufacturing systems
■
Quick adaptation to system and data
changes with an open, scalable, exten-
sible architecture
The Data Migration Interface (DMI) is
the SAP-endorsed approach to integrating
Subscribe today. Visit www.SAPinsider.com.
David Lyle
Vice President of
Product Strategy,
Informatica
high volumes of data into SAP environ-
ments, including SAP R/3, mySAP, and
SAP NetWeaver — especially SAP
Business Information Warehouse (SAP
BW). Informatica’s PowerCenter data
integration product family is certified for
integration via the DMI interface and
proven to integrate data into SAP in a
standard, seamless, and simplified
fashion. It can also load data into SAP
through other standard SAP-approved
interfaces and technologies, including
BAPI (for bidirectional access), BCI,
Web services, ALE/IDOC, and ABAP.
For example, Informatica
PowerCenter Connect technology for
SAP, and in particular SAP BW (the
core component of SAP NetWeaver
Business Intelligence), provides bi-
directional connectivity that enables
organizations to quickly integrate
non-SAP data into SAP BW, as well
as leverage data from SAP BW to
feed downstream applications. Working
in conjunction with Informatica
PowerCenter, companies can easily access
and transform data from any source to
populate and extend any source.
Regardless of the interface,
Informatica provides application-layer
integration with SAP solutions. Time-to-
implementation and costs are minimized
through codeless GUI-based development
for leveraging DMI, BAPI, and other
SAP insider S-7
SAP insider Special Feature: SAP Business Intelligence
interfaces, and through reusable objects
such as data transforms and mappings.
PowerCenter is also adept at capturing
and managing metadata, which is a key
aspect of implementing master data
management strategies, as well as
successful business intelligence and
compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley and
other regulatory mandates. What’s more,
SAP and Informatica data integration
features extend your current data inte-
gration and reporting capabilities:
✔ Drive Migration and
Consolidation Efficiency
If you’ve ever engaged in large-scale
data migration or system consolidation,
you know the traditional hurdles of
moving high-volume data from main-
frame systems and other diverse
sources. Typically complex transforma-
tion and conversion are involved, as well
as data cleansing and validation.
Informatica’s PowerCenter data inte-
gration software works with SAP to
enable these processes to be performed
faster and more efficiently through seam-
less, direct data access, visually driven
design, a leading high-performance trans-
formation and integration engine, and the
ability to cleanse, profile, and optimize
data along the way as an integral step
in the holistic integration process.
✔ Stay Synchronized with
Legacy Systems
Much of the data in large, global enter-
prises resides in mainframe applications
as a system of record. It is critical to be
able to include that data in SAP BW or
other warehouse initiatives to provide
accurate and complete reporting for key
decision-making efforts. To ease the
often problematic sourcing of and
synchronization with mainframe data,
Informatica PowerExchange unlocks
complex data held on mainframes or
legacy midrange systems through a
seamless, codeless, direct access
approach. Migrations and consolidations
often require keeping legacy applications
S-8 SAP insider
Success Story: 46 Million Records Migrated into SAP for Improved
Supply Chain Efficiency
In one of the world’s largest logistical solutions, a government customer wanted one
general system that integrated as many organizational processes as possible.
Informatica’s software was used to access, cleanse, transform, and deliver 46 million
data records from multiple sources (including mainframe data) into a single SAP
system, completing the project in one-third the budgeted time and saving an
estimated 50 person-years of effort.
Moreover, the data transformed by PowerCenter is of immensely better quality than
what the customer had before, with just 350 “bad” records across all 46 million entries.
With the initial consolidation project complete, the customer continues to use Informatica
to integrate data into SAP, achieving a high degree of reuse and standardization for
ongoing interfaces with various systems — thus enabling a single materials master
with a standard way of looking at logistical information across the organization.
up and running for some time, which in constructs, and the data is accessed at the
turn requires that data be kept in sync metadata level — metadata being key to
between SAP and the older systems. effective BI. The extracted data can be
PowerExchange provides patented cleansed and optimized for BI, and loaded
changed data capture technology that into SAP BW for single views of any
enables old and new applications to be variable — whether it is a customer, a
kept synchronized as long as you wish. product, a supplier, a sales area, etc. —
Data changes are quickly identified and along with analysis and reporting in
propagated between SAP and legacy batch, real-time, or near-real-time modes.
applications, transparently and non- And because there is no hand coding
invasively to the host systems — with involved, it is easy to respond to changing
no special coding and no system information needs. PowerCenter also
performance “hit.” enables writing data back from SAP BW
via Open Hub Service to downstream
✔ Power a Single View of Enterprise systems and applications.
Data Across All Systems
Coming full circle, data warehousing
and business intelligence (BI) continue Informatica Fully
to be key concerns of SAP customers Complements SAP
looking to fully leverage their SAP data. Data in, data out, data back in.
Everything about PowerCenter that Unidirectional, bidirectional. Real time,
applies to migration, upgrades, and change-capture, batch, right time.
instance consolidation is also true for Whatever the data integration challenge
creating single enterprise views via SAP you’re facing, with more than 400 joint
BW using both SAP and non-SAP enter- SAP and Informatica customers world-
prise data. DMI and BAPI Web services wide, Informatica has a long history of
can be leveraged by PowerCenter to helping SAP customers cut the time,
provision and update SAP BW, and place costs, and risks of migrating, consoli-
it at the center of an enterprise business dating, and synchronizing data and
intelligence environment. systems; upgrading to the latest SAP
solutions; and fully leveraging SAP data
In line with “any data, any source, any
in an enterprise BI context.
time,” data can be extracted transparently
and noninvasively from any non-SAP To learn more, please visit
system. PowerCenter accesses all data www.informatica.com.
Subscribe today. Visit www.SAPinsider.com.
 SAP insider Special Feature: SAP Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence and Information Lifecycle

Management — Do You Have to Choose?
Leverage Your SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence Investment
with Proactive Information Lifecycle Management

Leo Kistner
Director SAP
Business Unit,
In a typical data warehouse environ- different performance and cost criteria. OuterBay Technologies
ment, the volume of enterprise data is ILM enables enterprises to proactively
growing at an exceedingly rapid pace. manage data growth and guarantee
At the same time, the ability to analyze transparent access to any data on various
all the relevant data across different storage levels at any time. With ILM, inside your SAP Business Information
subject areas is crucial to making the enterprises can store more data for less. Warehouse (SAP BW). In addition,
right tactical and strategic business many companies are forced or want to
decisions. keep detailed, historical data on hand in
How Do You Manage Your
order to meet their internal service levels
Current data warehouses suffer Data Today?
or legal obligations.
from this explosion of unmanaged data, A data warehouse is designed to support
which limits performance and increases strategic decision-making, but for a The traditional approach to managing
storage costs. Information Lifecycle truly complete picture of the business, the volume and variety of detailed infor-
Management (ILM) is an approach to companies need access to the detailed mation in enterprise databases is simply
data management that promises benefits history of business processes and to add more infrastructure (servers, disks,
using methods called “data aging” and geographic areas. The challenge is that etc.), working in combination with manual
“storage tiering” to categorize and the data needed for historical analysis is processes involved in data archiving, such
manage data based on its age and value most often stored at a highly granular as unloading and reloading/reindexing
using multiple storage devices with level — and not all of it is necessarily data. However, the cost of managing such
IT systems and processes can exceed the
acquisition costs of servers and raw disk
storage many times over. Additionally, data
OuterBay LiveArchive for SAP BI at a Glance
warehouse users cannot be kept waiting for
Features historical data to be restored and indexed;
■
Manages actual data volume in SAP BW they also need access to detailed data for
■
Provides transparent access to all levels of information regular reporting and ad hoc analysis.
■
Runs all queries and applications without modifications
As a result, companies face a data
■
Supports flexible configuration and support for all storage types
management tradeoff, being forced to
■
Provides enabling technology for customers’ data aging strategies
choose between high TCO for your
supporting IT infrastructure or limited
Benefits access to historical and detailed
■
Improves manageability of large quantities (terabytes, petabytes) of critical information.
business information
■
Provides seamless access to detailed and historical data
■
Reduces the total cost of ownership OuterBay LiveArchive for SAP
■
Accelerates backup and recovery processes Business Intelligence (SAP BI)
■
Improves the effectiveness of business intelligence by offering more detailed One solution for a data aging strategy
information (or more history) with your current infrastructure for SAP BI is OuterBay’s LiveArchive
for SAP BI, making data and storage

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SAP insider Special Feature: SAP Business Intelligence

management for SAP BI users easy and

affordable.
OuterBay LiveArchive is a result of
a development partnership between
SAP and OuterBay. This offering
manages the acceleration of data
growth by identifying and relocating
historical and detailed data to an online,
easily accessible archive (a “live
archive”) on more cost-effective storage
tiers. At the same time, OuterBay
LiveArchive provides real-time user
access to detailed historical data for
effective business intelligence, and is
Figure 1 Storage Tiering: Use Low-Cost, Near-Line Storage for LiveArchive
designed to help you manage the need and Reserve High-Performance, Primary Storage for SAP BW
for low TCO and a high degree of data
availability (see Figure 1).

Value of Combined Reporting

For effective business intelligence, a data
aging strategy requires the ability to
query and analyze all information. A
single query might involve access to
historical data and real-time information.
Utilizing OuterBay’s LiveArchive, histor-
ical and detailed data is relocated out of
the SAP BW database (with SAP BW
being the core component of SAP BI)
to the real-time, online live archive.
OuterBay LiveArchive also provides
Combined Reporting capabilities,
which enable any information (currently
in both the data warehouse and the
LiveArchive) to be available at SAP BI
users’ fingertips (see Figure 2).
There is no need to reload the infor-
mation back to the SAP BW system for
a “combined view.” This virtual aggrega-
tion is performed automatically and
transparently by LiveArchive. Using
InfoProviders and/or MultiProviders,
SAP BI users get the full value out of
their SAP BW systems.
With Combined Reporting, the SAP
BW database can be streamlined for
optimal performance due to reduced
overhead for maintenance and manage-
ment of high volumes of data. Combined
Reporting also enables a more aggressive
Figure 2 Combined Reporting Gives Users Transparent Access to All
Levels of Information Across Storage Tiers
data aging strategy, since all information
is available whether it is in SAP BW or
the LiveArchive. This data aging strategy
can be adopted for any combination of
InfoCubes and ODS objects. As the data
storage location is totally transparent to
SAP BW users, they can query any data
provided by InfoProvider/MultiProvider
objects. In addition, the solution lever-
ages more cost-effective storage tiers,
reducing IT infrastructure TCO.
As a result, companies no longer
have to make a choice between low
TCO for IT infrastructure and full
access to historical and detail informa-
tion. Combined Reporting delivers the
best of both worlds. There are no “black
holes,” as any data is available and can
be used to satisfy the business query.
Using Combined Reporting from
LiveArchive along with data aging prin-
ciples significantly increases the quality
of decision-making reports for strategic
enterprise management, as typically
more detail or history of data is avail-
able with low additional costs in terms
of infrastructure investment.
The combination of a user-defined
data aging strategy and OuterBay
LiveArchive enables users to realize
the benefits of Information Lifecycle
Management today. For more on
OuterBay LiveArchive, please visit
www.outerbay.com.

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SAS Gives You
“The Power to Know”
Getting ahead of the competition and
staying there poses a constant chal-
lenge. It requires a business to answer
such fundamental questions as:
■
What is the minimal level of inventory
needed to service my customers at a
95% level?
■
How can I prevent defects before they
reach my customer?
■
How will my Profit & Loss statement
be affected if I run additional
marketing campaigns?
■
Are my revenue projections based on
an accurate forecast of demand?
Companies often find that a single
approach cannot deliver meaningful
answers to these deceptively simple
questions, and that each cross-functional
task requires another specific tool.
SAS, however, can deliver the standard
for business analytics without compro-
mising on functionality or requiring
investment in additional tools.
Furthermore, you can enhance SAP
Business Intelligence (SAP BI) by using
SAS business analytics through SAP-
certified interfaces and technology.
SAP-Certified Integration
Offered by SAS
SAS offers SAP-certified integration
with SAP NetWeaver, including SAP
Business Information Warehouse
(SAP BW) — the key component of
SAP Business Intelligence.1 SAS also
1
see www.sas.com/news/preleases/102703/news2.html.
SAP insider Special Feature: SAP Business Intelligence
Tonny Dierckx
Director Intelligence
integrates with SAP R/3 Architecture,
and all the relational and SAS EMEA
nonrelational databases,
spreadsheets, and other
electronic data vital to your organization.
These easy-to-use data integration
capabilities upload data into new appli-
cations offered by SAP NetWeaver or
SAP BI. Multinational SAP customers,
and companies adjusting after mergers
and acquisitions, will benefit by consoli-
dating data from multiple SAP
instances and non-SAP systems. SAS
data integration includes built-in data
quality capabilities, assuring that data is
verified, augmented, and standardized at
the point of entry, and that it works
seamlessly in SAP applications.
SAP-Certified Business
Intelligence
SAS offers a wide range of interfaces
for business intelligence. Its standards-
centric architecture provides capabilities
that run the gamut from simple
reporting and OLAP analysis to
advanced forecasting and data mining.
SAS offers specific interfaces for many
levels of users, including information
consumers, business analysts, power
users, IT professionals, and advanced
statisticians. It uncovers the intelligence
hidden within volumes of data, allowing
each user to find the information perti-
nent to their field while working in their
familiar SAP BI environment. The IT
department retains control over the
quality and consistency of data and over
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Bernd Kosnar
Technology Strategist,
SAS EMEA
the security and performance of BI
applications.
SAP BI users can switch easily to
SAS for viewing, analyzing, and ad hoc
reporting on their SAP BI data using
SAS Enterprise Guide, which is a part
of the broader suite of SAS Business
Intelligence offerings and delivers a
number of specially designed interfaces
to support diverse users and their varied
reporting and analytic needs.
With the ability to access, analyze,
and share results within a common
infrastructure and shared metadata
(including SAP’s metadata), SAS tech-
nology makes information and insights
accessible to employees at all levels of
your organization.
Beyond BI: Adding Analytical
Intelligence
Knowing what an organization has
done in the past and how it has done
it simply does not provide sufficient
information to drive the organization
forward. Only by going “beyond BI”
(see Figure 1 on the next page) — by
employing historical reporting and
descriptive statistics, for example —
can companies achieve a competitive
edge and be able to answer questions
that drive the bottom line, such as:
SAP insider S-11
SAP insider Special Feature: SAP Business Intelligence

✔ What is the minimal level of

inventory needed to service my
customers at a 95% level?
Through the use of SAS optimization
capabilities, organizations can evaluate
the tradeoffs of certain scenarios to find
the one that gives the best fit.

✔ How can I prevent defects before

they reach my customer?
Use SAS to data mine the sources of
warranty-specific data to develop objec-
tive clusters and facilitate the diagnosis
of likely defects.

✔ How will my P&L statement be

affected if I run additional marketing
campaigns?
Capture the added value of running
additional marketing campaigns by
using mathematical, constraint-based
optimization, derived from the resources
and costs available.
✔ Are my revenue projections based
on an accurate forecast of demand?
Gain accurate revenue projections based
on dynamic forecasting of demand
through the application of proven statis-
tical forecast methods.
It is not uncommon for predictive
analytics to be based on hundreds, or
even thousands, of influencing variables.
With proven implementation methodolo-
gies, SAS can identify and retrieve the
important variables from across your
organization and your SAP BI environ-
ment. SAS Analytic Intelligence delivers
a wide portfolio of analytic capabilities
to ensure that the business issue can be
addressed with the appropriate analyt-
ical approach.
SAS enables companies to deploy
these powerful analytics enterprise-wide
to assist with the planning, simulation,
optimization, and forecasting of business
scenarios in concert with your SAP
NetWeaver environment using certified
interfaces.
Figure 1 Modeling, Predictive Analysis, and Optimization Take You “Beyond BI”
Closing the Loop
SAP customers need the ability to
update operational systems to benefit
from acquired intelligence — and to
apply this intelligence in real time to
business processes. SAS makes it easy
by providing smooth integration with key
enterprise resource planning and front-
office systems, including SAP solutions.
SAS Intelligence Solutions —
A Depth of Experience in
Analytics
SAS provides the basis for advanced
analytics, offering solutions to enhance
customer intelligence, marketing
automation, financial intelligence, IT
value management, performance
management, human capital manage-
ment, supply chain intelligence, and
activity-based management. Solutions
for banking, insurance, telco, and retail
provide industry-specific intelligence.
SAS’s best practices and best-in-class
analysis perfectly complement the
business content offered by SAP BI.
The SAS Solution Adapter for
SAP solutions provides a seamless link
between operational data in SAP solu-
tions and SAS solutions, making it easy
for SAP customers to get to the proper
data without having to write any inter-
face or code.
Bottom Line
Being able to react to business needs
quickly, to leverage all existing data,
and to avoid creating a patchwork of
various solutions are the objectives that
should drive IT decisions today. SAS
extracts intelligence from all operational
systems and leverages ongoing tech-
nology investments, working through
SAP NetWeaver to integrate the
people, information, and processes
that comprise your organization. SAS
enables you and your company to create
a unique competitive advantage, one
that stimulates continuous growth and
innovation in the most “intelligent” way.
SAS and SAP software make a perfect
combination, one that gives your enter-
prise all you need to go “beyond BI.”
For more information on how to take
your enterprise beyond BI, please visit
www.sas.com/sapinsider.

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Monitor, Report, and Analyze Your
SAP Business Intelligence Data
Across the Whole Enterprise
Organizations have long recognized the
value of a consolidated data architec-
ture, where multiple streams of informa-
tion from disparate operational sources
are collated and cleansed for reporting
and analysis. For SAP customers, SAP
Business Intelligence (SAP BI, a
component of SAP NetWeaver) offers
an efficient path to achieving this corpo-
rate vision of having one single version
of the truth. Having all the data readily
available is often, however, only half the
battle. Organizations face challenges of
distributing this valuable information to
all information consumers across the
enterprise — from executive users to
power analysts and from shop floor
supervisors to sales representatives.
MicroStrategy’s business intelligence
(BI) platform allows all users access to
valuable corporate data over an easy-to-
use thin-client Web interface, with user
self-service capabilities.
Figure 1 Interactive Reporting on SAP BW and Other Data Through
SAP Enterprise Portal
SAP insider Special Feature: SAP Business Intelligence
MicroStrategy offers a Powered by
SAP NetWeaver solution through
MicroStrategy 7i, version 7.5.3 — an
award-winning thin-client reporting and
analysis interface. Customers can develop
BI applications ranging from highly
formatted pixel-perfect scorecards to
powerful predictive and forecasting models,
all leveraging existing SAP NetWeaver
components such as SAP BI, SAP Web
Application Server, and SAP Enterprise
Portal (see Figure 1). Being Powered
by SAP NetWeaver, the MicroStrategy
solution also allows users to access and
combine the critical enterprise informa-
tion (as made available via SAP BI) with
other data from within a single interface
with drill-through to underlying data. All
of these applications are built on a single
platform architecture — SAP NetWeaver
— with shared metadata and comprehen-
sive security, allowing MicroStrategy
customers to achieve low TCO.
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Bala Chandran
Product Manager,
MicroStrategy
As BI becomes an integral part
of corporate decision-making, SAP
customers have come to expect their
BI software to have the same mission-
critical robustness as the rest of their
SAP solution. Complementing SAP
BI’s proven architecture, MicroStrategy
offers a similarly scalable, secure, and
maintainable system with built-in
caching, hot failover, and clustering,
allowing IT administrators to maintain
a 24x7 operation with minimal over-
head resources. With its commitment
to keeping certification current,
MicroStrategy also ensures that the
latest SAP features and optimizations
are incorporated into the software.
The technical and functional synergy
between MicroStrategy and SAP provides
new options for customers to expand the
use and reach of BI. Combining the inter-
active reporting and analysis capabilities
of MicroStrategy with the advanced
capabilities of the SAP NetWeaver
architecture provides organizations with
a unique and powerful insight into the
tactical and strategic nature of their
business. By empowering all users with
the right data, customers can react in
real time to changing business patterns.
To learn more about how thousands
of customers across verticals worldwide
have come to rely on MicroStrategy tech-
nology, visit www.microstrategy.com.
SAP insider S-13
SAP insider Special Feature: SAP Business Intelligence

Run business processes and BI activities
on one common, integrated technology
platform.
Remember that “Business Intelligence” starts with business, not technology,
and that business is in constant flux. Run BI activities on the same platform
that runs your business processes, and you can readily achieve and maintain
alignment between them, even as business conditions and requirements change.
In fact, much of this alignment (that which is not wholly unique to your busi-
ness) should come prefabricated. This is certainly the case with SAP business
applications and the SAP NetWeaver technology platform.

Don’t reinvent the (technology platform) The trend line in the BI market mirrors that which took hold in the ERP
wheel. market: utilizing preintegrated technology suites or platforms has proven to be
less costly, more flexible, and capable of supporting more robust BI activities.

Foster interaction and cooperate among BI projects draw upon a broad-reaching mix of skill sets. Communication and
BI project participants early and often. cooperation among business, portal, data warehouse, development, administra-
tive, and other teams are streamlined when one platform is in place and all
project participants speak a common language.

Think big, start small(er), iterate, and Starting with a focused effort, then iterating and refining a BI solution, opti-
learn. mizes its value. An integrated platform allows you to stay open and extensible
(for example, you can activate features when the time is right).

Invest in technology that is standards- Choose a platform that adheres to open standards, supports integration with
based, open, and backed by a vendor that third-party offerings, and has the size and success to run certification programs
will be around for the long haul. for a wide variety of products.

Make data quality a top priority. Much rides on the integrity of the information and conclusions drawn from BI
projects. An integrated platform significantly reduces the chance for data
contamination and inconsistency.

Architect for your current requirements Strike the right balance between current budget constraints and inevitable
and budget, but be acutely aware of downstream growth. Here, a common, scalable platform becomes a key asset.
the need for downstream growth and
flexibility.
Figure 1 The 7 Best “BI Best Practices”

Continued from page S-2 A New Era in BI and the Demise of

The Breakthrough BI Best Practice
“Speed” and “BI” are not terms often heard in the same
breath. This is a misconception. If you have the right
platform (and again, SAP customers do, with SAP
NetWeaver), you can achieve high-performance BI even
when contending with huge data volumes and large
numbers of queries. In its next release, SAP NetWeaver
leverages scalable and distributed attribute-search tech-
nology, vertical decomposition, horizontal partitioning,
smart compression, and in-memory processing. You can
expect speeds that are orders of magnitude, not just
gradual improvements, over what you have now.
Long-Standing Tradeoffs
Nowhere is the term “Powered by SAP NetWeaver” more apt
than BI. True business intelligence compels us to investigate,
integrate, and innovate; to be quick and confident when we
take action; and to ensure data integrity, consistency, and
alignment with business objectives the whole way through. You
can’t do these things when wrestling with multiple platforms.
You can with SAP NetWeaver.
Look out across the SAP customer and partner base
(including the partners you see profiled in this Special
Feature), and you see a new era in BI take root. Long-
standing tradeoffs with regard to ease of integration, flexi-
bility, performance, and TCO go away when you migrate
BI activities to the SAP NetWeaver platform.

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