Oracle Essbase vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence comparison

The compared Oracle and SAP solutions aren't in the same category. Oracle is ranked #11 in DDM , with an average rating of 7.9, and holds a 1.3% mindshare in the category. SAP is ranked #6 in BIT , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 2.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Oracle users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of SAP users who would recommend it.

Oracle Essbase

Read 18 Oracle Essbase reviews

2,121 Views
445 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

SAP BusinessObjects Busines...

Read 114 SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence reviews

7,875 Views
5,513 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Oracle Essbase

SAP BusinessObjects Busines...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Oracle Essbase and SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix, Quest Software, Oracle and others in Database Development and Management.

To learn more, read our detailed Database Development and Management Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Database Development and Management

April 2026

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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

Oracle Essbase

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

4.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Database Development and Management (11th)

SAP BusinessObjects Busines...

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

114

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (6th), Data Visualization (5th)

Mindshare comparison

Oracle Essbase and SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Oracle Essbase is designed for Database Development and Management and holds a mindshare of 1.3%, up 1.0% compared to last year.
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 2.4% mindshare, down 3.9% since last year.

Database Development and Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Oracle Essbase	1.3%
Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials	4.2%
Spotlight	3.7%
Other	90.8%

Database Development and Management

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence	2.4%
Microsoft Power BI	8.0%
Tableau Enterprise	6.0%
Other	83.6%

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Bhavya N

Senior System Engineer at Infosys

Ensuring efficient data analysis and reporting while identifying areas for calculation and export improvements

The features of Oracle Essbase are valuable, such as its multi-dimensional database used for dynamic calculations and reporting purposes. These features are valuable because they support multi-dimensional data views, allowing users to analyze relationships across various data categories and establish a comprehensive perspective on business operations. Moreover, dynamic calculations allow real-time data analysis, significantly improving the accuracy and depth of financial insights. I have utilized Essbase's data aggregation capabilities. The Oracle Essbase interface provides a good user experience, allowing users to easily navigate and analyze data with fast query performance, effective data visualization tools such as charts, graphs, and tables, and flexibility for customizable analysis and reporting, including the ability to create ad hoc reports. The benefits of the interface include improving productivity and enhancing decision-making.

Read full review

EmmanuelOladinrin

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.

Read full review

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 very powerful analytical engine with Essbase as the back end. We can analyze, transform, or utilize a big chunk of data for our calculations."

"I have found the most valuable aspect is the user-friendly environment and current features."

"The solution is quite scalable, which is the most useful aspect for us."

"With Oracle Essbase, everything is centralized in a comprehensive financial statement analysis, allowing for complete management of budget, actuals analysis, and forecast."

"Oracle Essbase enables organizations to take their strategic decisions, which helps them make the right decisions at the right time."

"It is highly efficient and easily scalable, particularly for handling large databases."

"Essbase is extremely stable and low-maintenance."

"The solution can handle a large volume of data."

More Oracle Essbase pros

"Web Intelligence has allowed our company to move to a self-service delivery model by allowing our internal clients to access, run and schedule reports dynamically without intervention of the BI team."

"The initial setup of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform was easy since the solution is user-friendly."

"Business users manual data-entry load has decreased, and data between different systems are consistent in almost-real time."

"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."

"The Dynamic HTML (DHTML) client option of Webi has been enhanced adding features that were previously only available with the Java client including conditional formatting and support of XLS as a data provider."

"This reporting and broadcasting solution has a lot of flexibilities and can connect to multiple source systems."

"The development using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is very good."

"It has been extremely valuable, to combine data from various data sources."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence pros

Cons

"The initial setup is pretty complex."

"There is room for improvement in terms of cost-effectiveness."

"Sometimes, the current program is slow. They may have to consider the storage and the RAM, increasing the speed and performing the queries at a faster speed."

"The consolidation engine, which is HFM or FCCS, needs some room for improvement."

"Essbase has a programming language, and it has a couple of functions to do forecasting, however, their feature set for that is not that good."

"The solution could enhance business analytics. I delved into the data using Oracle Essbase to create a new support tool."

"The reporting tool of Essbase needs improvement."

"The ability to drive external reporting out for development could be improved."

More Oracle Essbase cons

"They could reduce the licensing expenses. If you are a part of BI Launch Pad, then you could run ad hoc reporting, but for the integration, you need access to BI Launch Pad, which is quite expensive."

"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform can be improved in that the user interface needs much improvement, as not everyone has a complete understanding of the components."

"This product could be improved with Cloud Integrations and Predictive Analytics functions integration."

"There are too many steps, and they take too much time."

"There is room for improvement in providing more user-friendly and versatile reporting options."

"It needs to be more flexible for the end-user."

"We had stability issues, mainly with the integration of the SAP BI products with SAP’s EIM products (Data Services, Information Steward)."

"The user interface should be easier to use and navigate."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I believe the licensing is on a monthly base."

"Essbase is competitively priced."

"The solution is expensive."

"It is a costly solution."

"Its price is fair."

"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an expensive application."

"It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."

"It is not a subscription model, but you must purchase a perpetual license for this."

"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."

"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."

"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to improve its licensing cost."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user6663

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	14

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	32
Midsize Enterprise	20
Large Enterprise	68

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Essbase?

It's not that expensive, but also not cheap. I'm not sure because it's a private license.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Oracle Essbase?

A significant area for improvement in Oracle Essbase is that financial statement analysis, CAPEX and OPEX analysis, and financial consolidation must be done manually, as Oracle Essbase doesn't incl...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Oracle Essbase?

The initial setup of Oracle Essbase is dependent on whether you select BSO or ASO cubes. First, you need to set up the type of information and once the type of cubes is defined, you need to define ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform?

SAP BTP is an expensive solution.

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 16% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 9% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 8% of the time

SAP Business Data Cloud vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 8% of the time

Oracle Analytics Cloud vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 4% of the time

More Oracle Essbase Competitors

SAP Business Data Cloud vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 24% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 8% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 4% of the time

IBM Cognos vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 4% of the time

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Essbase

April 2026

Download Oracle Essbase product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

March 2026

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence report

Download SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence product report

Also Known As

Essbase

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio

Overview

Oracle Essbase is an OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) Server that provides an environment for deploying pre-packaged applications or developing custom analytic and enterprise performance management applications.

Oracle

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform offers powerful tools for enterprise reporting and data visualization, enhancing strategic decision-making through robust integration and secure analytics capabilities.

Designed for comprehensive enterprise reporting, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform integrates seamlessly with SAP ERP, supporting organizations in creating detailed financial, operational, and academic reports. The platform allows data manipulation across multiple sources using a semantic layer and provides intuitive tools like Web Intelligence and Lumira for user-driven report creation. It features centralized management, versatile connectors, and supports large-scale data analytics critical for business forecasting.

What are the key features of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform?

Integration Capabilities: Seamless connection with SAP ERP and various data sources.
Dynamic Scheduling: Automate report generation for timely insights.
Robust Security: Protects data with stringent security measures.
Semantic Layer: Simplifies data manipulation across sources.
Intuitive Tools: Facilitates user-driven report creation with Web Intelligence and Lumira.

What benefits should be considered in reviews?

Comprehensive Reporting: Enables detailed and accurate enterprise reports.
Decision-Making Support: Enhances strategic decisions with reliable data.
Scalability: Efficiently manages large-scale and complex data analytics.
Versatility in Analysis: Offers flexibility for ad hoc analysis and KPI monitoring.

Organizations across sectors like healthcare, education, insurance, and retail leverage SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for its capability in facilitating detailed reports and integrating dashboards for key performance indicators. Its extensive reporting features support in-depth analytics vital for business prediction and decision-making processes.

SAP

Sample Customers

CHU de Rennes, Bellco Credit Union, Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd, Deutsche Telekom AG, Samarco MineraÊo S.A., PCCW Ltd., QDQ media S.A.U., Boiron Italia, Specialized Bicycle Components Inc., Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd., Air Canada, Daelim Industrial Co. Ltd.

SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.

Buyer's Guide

Database Development and Management

April 2026

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