Oracle Essbase vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence comparison

Why PeerSpot?

The compared Oracle and SAP solutions aren't in the same category. Oracle is ranked #17 in DDM , with an average rating of 7.3, and holds a 1.5% mindshare in the category. SAP is ranked #5 in BIT , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 2.7% 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

3,299 Views
990 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

SAP BusinessObjects Busines...

Read 114 SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence reviews

14,382 Views
10,067 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 Quest Software, Oracle, SolarWinds and others in Database Development and Management.

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

Buyer's Guide

Database Development and Management

August 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 (17th)

SAP BusinessObjects Busines...

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

114

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (5th), Data Visualization (4th)

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 1.5%, up 0.8% compared to last year.
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 2.7% mindshare, down 3.0% since last year.

Database Development and Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Oracle Essbase	1.5%
Oracle Enterprise Manager	4.0%
Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials	3.8%
Other	90.7%

Database Development and Management

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence	2.7%
Microsoft Power BI	7.1%
Tableau Enterprise	5.8%
Other	84.4%

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

TarunKumar7

Senior Data Engineer at LTI LATAM and Toubro Improtech

Data insights have driven faster financial forecasts and improved role-based decision making

The best features SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform offers include cross-enterprise sharing, where sharing insights is easier and seamless across my organization, and creating role-based dashboards. The role-based dashboards help my team and organization by providing information to specific users, allowing them to make decisions more easily, anytime, anywhere, across any device. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to perform financial reporting to make decisions faster. Since we started using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, we have been able to make faster, data-driven business decisions based on actual data insights and data analysis, which has accelerated our ability to make better decisions for our business productivity.

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

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

"Essbase is a multidimensional database (MOLAP) is undoubtedly leading in that space."

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

"The solution is scalable."

"Oracle Essbase is a web integration system that integrates with other data systems."

"Essbase is a powerful tool that continues to provide value for companies."

"It is very fast compared to other normal databases, like SQL and MySQL."

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

More Oracle Essbase pros

"There are many tools that help the organization like SAP Lumira, SAP Business Explorer, SAP Design Studio and Dashboard to give you the summary and detailed analysis."

"The return on investment from this solution is high, with the highest ROI observed."

"ROI is absolute."

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

"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 that I have found most valuable are that we are able to build all dashboards with self-service BI and are able to provide our business users with self-service BI. We are building a repository on top of our data warehouse and building all the dashboards and KPIs."

"The scheduling and publication features are very useful."

"Since we started using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, we have been able to make faster, data-driven business decisions based on actual data insights and data analysis, which has accelerated our ability to make better decisions for our business productivity."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence pros

Cons

"The solution could be cheaper. It is costly, and the initial setup could be simplified."

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

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

"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."

"Variable attributes functionality needs to be incorporated in Planning, though it is available in Essbase I believe it is still not in Planning."

"I would like to improve calculations by optimizing performance and reducing processing time."

"The reporting tool of Essbase needs improvement."

"It's an expensive product to use."

More Oracle Essbase cons

"Currently, we can use Explore to do data discovering, but cannot generate charts."

"The basic components of the solution could be improved."

"The technical support for general issues gives us a good response, but for certain critical issues, it can takes four weeks to obtain a response."

"It needs to be more user friendly for web use."

"When we implemented BusinessObjects, the setup was straightforward. After SAP bought BusinessObjects, it gradually became more and more stepwise. There are too many steps, and they take too much time."

"Its price should be better. It is expensive and not cost-effective. It should also be improved in terms of end-user experience. It requires further improvements for usability and ease of use. It should have more dashboarding metrics and much faster integration with ERP so that when you double click, you can instantly see the scenario-based result."

"They need to improve the processing of software as it has lag when it initially starts."

"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."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."

"It is a costly solution."

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

"Essbase is competitively priced."

"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."

"It is not an expensive platform. The licensing is for a package of users starting at 10 users."

"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 price and the pricing model are fine. We find the solution does not give us a lot of additional value."

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

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

"The product's pricing falls on the spectrum's cheaper side, excluding its licensing cost. The product's pricing is good compared to other tools in the market. My company makes payments towards the licensing costs of the product on a yearly basis."

"The platform's pricing needs to be revised."

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

16%

Construction Company

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

11%

Outsourcing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing 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	34
Midsize Enterprise	20
Large Enterprise	67

Questions from the Community

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

What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Essbase?

The pricing functionality in Oracle Essbase is handled through the model you develop, where each cube can be customized with members and dimensions for pricing and entities. You can implement any f...

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 13% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 8% of the time

Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 5% of the time

Salesforce Einstein Analytics vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 3% of the time

More Oracle Essbase Competitors

SAP Business Data Cloud vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 20% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 5% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 5% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 4% of the time

IBM Cognos vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 3% of the time

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Essbase

September 2026

Download Oracle Essbase product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

August 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 provides robust multi-dimensional analysis with a strong calculation engine and aggregate storage, enabling fast calculations and swift response times for large data volumes.

Essbase offers scalable, stable multi-dimensional analysis capabilities, important for enterprises managing large datasets. Its flexibility and efficiency support detailed reporting, strategic decision-making, and advanced modeling. An intuitive interface allows fast data visualization and dynamic analysis, aiding strategic business operations. Continuous upgrades enhance performance and productivity.

What are the key features of Oracle Essbase?

Multi-dimensional Analysis: Enables complex data insights through powerful analysis capabilities.
Calculation Engine: Provides swift calculations essential for timely decision-making in business environments.
Aggregate Storage: Ensures efficient data handling, supporting fast response times and large data volumes.
Intuitive Interface: Facilitates fast visualization and enhances productivity through easy data management.

What benefits or ROI should users focus on in reviews?

Scalability: Supports growing data needs efficiently, maintaining stability.
Performance Upgrades: Continuously improves data processing speeds and system functionality.
Flexibility: Adapts to diverse reporting and analysis needs effectively.
Enhanced Productivity: Increases organizational efficiency with dynamic data analysis capabilities.

In industries like telecommunications, banking, and healthcare, Essbase is used extensively for financial management, including planning, budgeting, and reporting. It facilitates decision-making in multinational firms by supporting enterprise performance management and generating comprehensive financial statements. Users leverage it for complex data processing and intensive queries, improving operational efficiency.

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

August 2026

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We monitor all Database Development and Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.