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Oracle Essbase 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

Oracle Essbase
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (11th)
SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Oracle Essbase and SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Oracle Essbase is designed for Database Development and Management and holds a mindshare of 1.2%, up 1.1% compared to last year.
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 2.3% mindshare, down 3.8% since last year.
Database Development and Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle Essbase1.2%
Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials4.5%
Spotlight4.0%
Other90.3%
Database Development and Management
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform2.3%
Microsoft Power BI9.3%
Tableau Enterprise6.7%
Other81.7%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Bhavya N - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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

"I have found the most valuable aspect is the user-friendly environment and current features."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"The solution can handle a large volume of data."
"Its multidimensional analysis is great; unlike relational, where you're linking together multiple tables, with Essbase, you basically define what the dimensions are beforehand, and you define the hierarchy, and then load the data, allowing you to do sophisticated analysis so that you can drill into it and slice and dice the data."
"It helps us fetch specific data sets per users' requirements."
"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."
"It is my opinion, it is more comfortable in Oracle rather than a SQL server."
"With Oracle Essbase, everything is centralized in a comprehensive financial statement analysis, allowing for complete management of budget, actuals analysis, and forecast."
"Has features that can be leveraged to scale out and scale up."
"The reporting features the solution offers are excellent."
"It's the best product in the market when it comes to reporting technology."
"Business Object is truly a scalable and complete business intelligence solution for larger organizations."
"Go ahead with it -- it’s a good product."
"It is solid and stable."
"The most important feature of BusinessObjects is its integration with the SAP ERP system. If an organization is using SAP as its ERP system, and they want to do business intelligence, reporting, or analysis, SAP BusinessObjects is the only tool that I see doing that quite efficiently. That's because of the fact it is tightly integrated, and it gives a good user experience in terms of faster reporting. Its integration is the feature that I have found most valuable, but there are also other factors."
"We have used all the business objects tools, but this one satisfies all of the business requirements in an optimized way."
 

Cons

"The main concern is that Oracle is ending on-premises server support, so it would be better if there was a cloud platform available for Oracle Essbase."
"The licensing costs are too high."
"They should improve the solution's performance."
"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 consolidation engine, which is HFM or FCCS, needs some room for improvement."
"The initial setup could be simplified."
"The solution could enhance business analytics. I delved into the data using Oracle Essbase to create a new support tool."
"Variable attributes functionality needs to be incorporated in Planning, though it is available in Essbase I believe it is still not in Planning."
"Its price should be better. It is expensive and not cost-effective."
"I really want SAP to focus on the dashboarding side. Based on what I have seen in the past 10 years, dashboarding has captured a lot of markets. Executives at the top-level want data that is summarized, looks good, and tells you a story. That's where Tableau, Qlik, and Power BI have an upper edge. It doesn't mean SAP doesn't give you dashboarding. They do have a dashboarding solution, but Tableau, Qlik, and Power BI are more intuitive and more attractive. I would like SAP to capture the dashboarding market as well, wherein they give at least some competition to other competitors. Presently, Tableau, Qlik, and Power BI are leading the market."
"There are definitely some areas of improvement (i.e. interface, etc.), just as every product needs improvements to meet changing demands over time."
"It needs some improvement in its performance. I don't think it can handle huge amounts of data well when compared to other ETL tools."
"The dashboard tool is called Lumira and it is very uncomfortable for developers to use."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to be improved performance-wise. The look and feel of this application, its scalability, setup, and technical support also need improvement."
"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."
"It is not simple to use."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Essbase is competitively priced."
"I believe the licensing is on a monthly base."
"It is a costly solution."
"The solution is expensive."
"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to improve its licensing cost."
"Depending on your size, try to stick with SAP BusinessObjects BI Edge. Most people tend to overthink the licensing. Remember that one concurrent user means that one person can be performing a task at a given time. That does not mean that only one user can be on the system at a time, it means that only one person can be refreshing a report or designing a dashboard. There are tons of ways you can access your data or reports without consuming a license. I've seen cases where five concurrent licenses support thousands of users."
"It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
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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
20%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
Construction Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise66
 

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.
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...
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 ...
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

Essbase
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CHU de Rennes, Bellco Credit Union, Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd, Deutsche Telekom AG, Samarco MineraÊo 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.
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