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GoodData vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 15, 2026

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

GoodData
Ranking in Data Visualization
23rd
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (14th)
SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Ranking in Data Visualization
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Data Visualization category, the mindshare of GoodData is 1.5%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence is 3.1%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Visualization Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence3.1%
GoodData1.5%
Other95.4%
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

it_user241098 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engagement Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
​Setup is straightforward from a business user standpoint but MAQL needs to be easier.
Cloud connect Report generator MAQL needs to be easier Better row-level security for end-users I've used it for nine months, mainly for implementation and delivery to customers. No issues encountered. No issues encountered. When the source is big and/or the source is Netsuite there are…
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

"It's a good product for your end to end BI needs when its all on the cloud."
"The development using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is very good."
"We have been very pleased."
"This solution provides much greater and faster access to information for a wide mixture of users and supports and promotes a common view of information across the organisation."
"It allows the analysis of business data and enables decisions based on the analysis."
"The most valuable SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform feature are metadata service layers."
"It's a reliable, stable, secure, and mature tool for business intelligence and other functions, like standard reports."
"BusinessObjects can handle a lot of usage on the front end, and many users can view these reports. It's a relatively stable and secure tool."
"Ive yet to find a bi tool that can match SAP’s offering, and Ive implemented all of them."
 

Cons

"When the source is big and/or the source is Netsuite there are issues."
"ROI for the reporting product alone, as a component in a whole stack of things contributing to ROI, is in my view a minor contributor."
"The interface could be slicker and more user-friendly."
"I don't like the fact that I have to use two tools."
"The product lacks the ability to manage universal connectivity, so it needs to be made better for users."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is scalable, but the scalability of the servers and other parts is complex. SAP has made scalability complex; it's not so easy, and it's not so quick, while in other solutions, we can increase the scalability of the servers very easily and very fast, e.g. in Microsoft, but in SAP, it's complex and it takes more time."
"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."
"The admin features for disk space management need work. It's very difficult to manage the disk space by the application; good admin features and not included to allow you to do that. I don't believe that is in the latest version of the product either."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform can be improved by developing another module of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform to integrate with the existing system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."
"It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."
"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.​"
"The platform's pricing needs to be revised."
"The price and the pricing model are fine. We find the solution does not give us a lot of additional value."
"We purchase licenses through Epic. So, we get an Epic price as opposed to the SAP price. If we were going to use other products like Webby that they offer or exclusively use BI Launch Pad, it would cost a lot because half of our employees would touch it in some fashion. So, we use Epic-Crystal integration to keep the licensing cost down. I believe the BI Launch Pad licensing is something like $800 for each, and the Crystal Report licensing is something like $500 for each, but that's not what we pay."
"It is not a subscription model, but you must purchase a perpetual license for this."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an expensive application."
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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
Construction Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Legal Firm
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise67
 

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

No data available
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AutoPilot, Redbubble, showpad, SpareFoot, LogMeIn, CSC
SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.
Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce, Splunk, Apache and others in Data Visualization. Updated: April 2026.
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