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AtScale Adaptive Analytics (A3) vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

AtScale Adaptive Analytics ...
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
57th
Average Rating
5.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Data Virtualization (6th), Data Governance (47th), BI on Hadoop (1st)
SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of AtScale Adaptive Analytics (A3) is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is 2.3%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform2.3%
AtScale Adaptive Analytics (A3)0.4%
Other97.3%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

it_user822762 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior BI and Reporting Analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The GUI interface is nice and easy to use, but the organization of the icons is not saved across users
Connecting to a Hadoop database to create a cube to connect to Tableau. We want to be able to easily create cubes which can be connected to Tableau for visualization The product had many issues. We had great collaboration with the product development team, but the product was not able to meet our…
EO
Data Analytics Manager at Dangote Industries Limited
Solution empowers self-service reporting and delivers comprehensive performance insights
Empowering business users means they should be able to work independently without depending on the developer. One advantage of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is self-service capabilities, allowing users to do drag and drop to build their own reports and perform analyses without needing technical know-how.The platform has many drivers that I can use to connect to virtually all available databases, making it easy to integrate with Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and many others. With the cloud version, I can fetch data on-premises and to the cloud for analysis easily. It is so flexible that I can make choices for fetching data. For authentication in an SAP environment, I can choose to integrate with SAP logon for SSO or use AD authentication for convenience, along with the flexible integration options.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The GUI interface is nice and easy to use."
"The GUI interface is nice and easy to use."
"The most valuable feature we have found to be the SAP BW, which is a warehouse tool. Additionally, it is an easy tool to use."
"Semantic layer is their main heart of SAP Business Objects."
"The planning and dashboarding features have been useful, and the fixed-format reports are good."
"A very creative tool to present the data in graphical and pictorial form, so as to make better decision for the growth of the organization."
"The reporting features the solution offers are excellent."
"There are two tools inside BusinessObjects' schematic layout called the Universal Design Tool and Information Design Tool, and these are the most powerful tools that set BusinessObjects' reporting apart from other solutions."
"If you are completely new to business intelligence but you are already using SAP solutions, this is the best tool that you can use to leverage your financial systems or logistic systems."
"The features which the solution has been awesome, and the way the data is fetched from the database and the queries are executed is unique using the Universe of Business Objects."
 

Cons

"The organization of the icons is not saved across users."
"The product was not able to meet our 10 second refresh requirements."
"There was an issue with the incremental aggregation not working as indicated."
"The product was not able to meet our 10 second refresh requirements."
"But SAP sort of dropped the ball with their 4.x release, leaving out features that we had become used to with 3.1, which was stable."
"Its price should be better. It is expensive and not cost-effective."
"SAP BusinessObjects is actually losing popularity within our company because people find the user interface and the way things are set up not to be as easy as many other tools that are on the market, like Qlik and things like that."
"It would be good if they could integrate the possibility for end users to create end models for themselves that they can use, especially for site operators, and if they could provide the end user not only the self-service BI, but also the self-service analytics, based on a predefined model, the same way that Oracle did."
"The SAP BOBJ suite needs to be more stable and seamlessly integrated with SAP BW and SAP HANA (one-time variable creation, etc.)."
"It has inadequate data analysis and data profiling, which has increased testing and user acceptance duration."
"We feel that the tool is very complex in terms of implementing the dashboard; lots of coding and performance issues, and we require particular skillsets and resources as regular users cannot understand it."
"Previously there was the Discussion board function, but it was not good and no one used it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price and the pricing model are fine. We find the solution does not give us a lot of additional value."
"There's no additional charge for a Development environment license, so build an additional development server."
"We are satisfied with the solution, but we are not satisfied with the licensing cost which SAP offers. They offer one lumpsum licensing which does everything. That is not the right strategy, because sometimes you don't have power users, they are only viewers, but we need to buy the full license for them. This is not something we want to continue with."
"SAP is losing market to its competitors because of its costly user license and licensing model. They can do much better on the licensing side. That's what Microsoft has been doing, and that's why Power BI is gaining market share at the moment. SAP needs to relax a little bit on the licensing part. If Microsoft is giving people a solution that is half of the cost of SAP, people will definitely go with Power BI."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an expensive application."
"It has an option of a Cloud Platform (SAP Analytics Cloud) which has a lower price than the on-premise platform, and you can buy individual licences per user.​"
"I have always found SAP BI to be expensive. It is expensive even when you compare SAP BI Cloud with Microsoft Power BI. Power BI is probably around $9.99 per month, and the cheapest SAP BI is around $20, which is double. In terms of price, Power BI is definitely a lot better. If you have budget issues, you may want to go for Power BI."
"It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."
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Comparison Review

it_user6663 - PeerSpot reviewer
BI Expert at a transportation company with 51-200 employees
May 25, 2013
SAP Business Objects vs. Microsoft BI
A quick look at the whole idea on another weblogs gives you a sense that all of them just talked about very brief things like report refresh feature in BO or cube feature in MS Analysis Service. I choose MS BI and I want to share my reasons and opinions on why I choose it and give you another quick…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Healthcare Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise66
 

Questions from the Community

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Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...
 

Also Known As

AtScale, AtScale Intelligence Platform
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rakuten, TD Bank, Aetna, Glaxo-Smith Kline, Biogen, Toyota, Tyson
SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools. Updated: March 2026.
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