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Databricks 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.6
Organizations experience mixed returns from Databricks, with benefits from cost savings and efficiency, but challenges in initial migration.
Sentiment score
6.2
ROI from SAP BusinessObjects varies; success depends on factors like user volume, setup, and integration with existing systems.
For a lot of different tasks, including machine learning, it is a nice solution.
When it comes to big data processing, I prefer Databricks over other solutions.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Databricks customer service is generally effective with prompt responses, though some report issues mainly with third-party support channels.
Sentiment score
6.4
Customer service reviews for SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform are mixed, with varied experiences in response time and technical expertise.
As of now, we are raising issues and they are providing solutions without any problems.
Whenever we reach out, they respond promptly.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Databricks is praised for efficient scalability and cloud compatibility, allowing easy resource adjustment across diverse projects and industries.
Sentiment score
7.8
SAP BusinessObjects BI is scalable, supports high user volume, and allows server additions for performance, despite complexity.
Databricks is an easily scalable platform.
The patches have sometimes caused issues leading to our jobs being paused for about six hours.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Databricks is stable and efficient for large data, with minor issues during updates and occasional connectivity challenges.
Sentiment score
7.0
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform stability varies, influenced by updates, configuration, and resource allocation, affecting performance in large environments.
Although it is too early to definitively state the platform's stability, we have not encountered any issues so far.
They release patches that sometimes break our code.
Cluster failure is one of the biggest weaknesses I notice in our Databricks.
 

Room For Improvement

Databricks users desire improved UI, enhanced data visualization, better integration, clearer error messages, robust support, and comprehensive documentation.
SAP BusinessObjects needs improved user-friendliness, integration, performance, flexibility, and support, with better visualization, administration, and training.
If I could right-click to copy absolute paths or to read files directly into a data frame, it would standardize and simplify the process.
We use MLflow for managing MLOps, however, further improvement would be beneficial, especially for large language models and related tools.
We could use their job clusters, however, that increases costs, which is challenging for us as a startup.
SAP BusinessObjects is expected to be phased out by 2027 as reports are moving to SAP Analytics Cloud.
 

Setup Cost

Databricks pricing depends on usage, with flexibility in licensing, and can vary in competitiveness compared to other solutions.
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform's complex and high-cost licensing hinders suitability for budget-constrained medium-sized enterprises.
 

Valuable Features

Databricks provides a unified platform for data engineering, machine learning, seamless cloud integration, and robust data management capabilities.
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform excels in data integration, user-friendly reporting, and advanced scheduling, enhancing decision-making and data visualization.
Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed.
The platform allows us to leverage cloud advantages effectively, enhancing our AI and ML projects.
Developers can share their notebooks. Git and Azure DevOps integration on the Databricks side is also very helpful.
The important features include a dashboard and reporting capabilities through SAP Analytics Cloud, which I consider to be a better version than the initial BusinessObjects platform.
 

Categories and Ranking

Databricks
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (7th), Data Science Platforms (1st), Streaming Analytics (1st)
SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
104
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Databricks is designed for Cloud Data Warehouse and holds a mindshare of 8.8%, up 3.7% compared to last year.
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 3.7% mindshare, down 5.3% since last year.
Cloud Data Warehouse
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

ShubhamSharma7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Capability to integrate diverse coding languages in a single notebook greatly enhances workflow
Databricks offers various courses that I can use, whether it's PySpark, Scala, or R. I can leverage all these courses in a single notebook, which is beneficial for clients as they can access various tools in one place whenever needed. This is quite significant. I usually work with PySpark based on client requirements. After coding, I feed the Databricks notebooks into the ADF pipeline for updates. Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed. Furthermore, I can connect our Databricks notebook directly with Power BI and other visualization tools like Qlik. Once we develop code, it allows us to transform raw data into visualizations for clients using analysis diagrams, which is very helpful.
Mo Sayed - PeerSpot reviewer
Dashboarding and reporting become more efficient with robust analytics capabilities
This platform is very important to us because it offers a dashboard and includes SAP Analytics Cloud for reporting. The analytics is a reporting platform with a separate license from the planning platform. We use this primarily for dashboarding The important features include a dashboard and…
report
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Comparison Review

it_user6663 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
18%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?
Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...
How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?
We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...
Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?
Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...
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...
What do you like most about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform?
What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making process.
 

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.
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