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Oracle OBIEE vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

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 OBIEE
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
157
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (3rd)
SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
104
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Oracle OBIEE is 3.8%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is 3.7%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

VishnuReddy - PeerSpot reviewer
Handles large datasets and easy to interact with and handle but performance could be better
Oracle's technical support usually recommends to upgrade when you contact them for support. They don't focus on fixing the issue at hand or providing guidance on how to do it. If you are in a lower environment, like one version down, they will blindly suggest upgrading. Additional patches are given for other Oracle products like WebLogic, databases, and apps. They fix issues and create patches based on client needs. But from an OBIEE point of view, they mostly provide bundle patches of around 5 to 6 GB that need to be applied and tested end-to-end. It's not an easy way to get small patches, and if issues arise after applying the patches, you have to contact Oracle again.
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…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable features of the solution are the various scenarios the product offers and its stability."
"The most valuable features of Oracle OBIEE are the ease of logging in, the dashboard, and showing the problems in the data. Additionally, the reports are well integrated and it has good technology."
"The solution is easy to use and very flexible."
"Its robustness is most valuable. It can handle massive amounts of data quickly. If it's properly configured and tuned, it can handle massive amounts of data very quickly to produce results. That to me is the number one feature."
"It provides excellent stability."
"They are introducing AI. There are good forecasting features and machine learning."
"The setup isn't too difficult."
"It can be used with any type of data models, such as relational lines and dimensional lines."
"The reports are most valuable. If it is a single-source universe, based on only one database, the performance, and the reporting tool is user-friendly, and users are very familiar with the tool and are comfortable using it."
"The feature that allows pivot users to create the report dashboards and run them when they want with a lot of flexibility with the drill-downs is very useful. The drill-down features are very good because, in other solutions, such as Excel, you have to create separate pivot tables and a lot of other operations to do drill-downs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform tool does the drill-downs automatically. Overall the solution is user-friendly and has a lot of drag and drop features."
"The common metadata environment means that the entire organisation has the same definition of core measures rather than these being derived in spreadsheets or specific reports."
"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 use it to identify critical KPIs to senior management."
"It can process big volumes of data fast."
"The ability to merge dimensions in a report is great."
"It is stable and robust. It has pretty direct integration with SAP ERP. It is easy to use."
 

Cons

"The platform's data visualization features need improvement."
"Supply chain and finance."
"Setup and migration are very complex. Technically, Oracle accessory is extremely complex. These days, the industry demands a kind of Excel analysis, which is very easy to install, set up, and it's very developer-friendly as well as end-user friendly. OBIEE lacks all those features."
"BI Server"
"OBIEE doesn't have audit logs."
"Oracle OBIEE can improve the ease of use. It is a lot to learn and it could be made easier."
"Essbase integration needs to be worked on."
"The development effort takes longer than other BI tools currently on the market."
"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."
"There is still a lot to be done on the mobile side to make Web Intelligence truly seamless between the desktop and mobile versions and I would like to see SAP pay a lot more attention to this."
"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."
"The dashboard tool is called Lumira and it is very uncomfortable for developers to use. They should improve this in the future."
"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."
"The user interface should be easier to use and navigate."
"​This product could be improved with Cloud Integrations and Predictive Analytics functions integration."
"The calculation engine requires some improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In our organization, we use a user-based license for Oracle OBIEE, and I've heard that the license cost is based on the number of users."
"Its licensing is yearly."
"Oracle products are extremely expensive."
"Simplifying the data integration process would save our clients considerable costs."
"Power BI is less expensive than Oracle OBIEE. A benefit to Power BI is having the option to work with concurrent licensing."
"I would rate it a 4 out of 5 in terms of pricing."
"This was not an expensive product for us, although the price varies depending on conditions for each company."
"The licensing cost for Oracle OBIEE is expensive."
"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."
"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."
"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 price and the pricing model are fine. We find the solution does not give us a lot of additional value."
"It is not a subscription model, but you must purchase a perpetual license for this."
"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."
"There is an annual license to use SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform."
"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to improve its licensing cost."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
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

How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?
Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...
Which Oracle product is better - OBIEE or Analytics Cloud?
Oracle OBIEE is designed to be relatively easy to set up and has a helpful customer support staff at the ready to assist customers. These are two attributes that make this system quite valuable. OB...
What do you like most about Oracle OBIEE?
The most valuable feature of Oracle OBIEE is its ability to handle large volumes of data and provide traditional BI functionalities that developers can easily understand.
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

OBIEE, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, Oracle BI, Oracle BI EE 11g
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Banca Transilvania, BeckmanCoulter, Hong Kong Housing Society, HealthShare, Ivanhoe Cambridge Unifies, and Home Credit, and Finance Bank.
SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.
Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle OBIEE vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.