Re: SAP BW compared to Essbase/SQLServer/Oracle as a Enterprise Data Warehouse & OLAP application

"Amanda Jones" <amandajonesbc_at_lycos.com> wrote in message news:d42580f.0301110137.5d6bdcca_at_posting.google.com...
> Hello All
>
> My company as asked me to prepare and evaluate between alternative
> solutions for data warehousing and one of our major source system to
> the data warehouse is SAP R/3 but of course we have other source
> systems apart from SAP.

<snip>

> Precisely I am wondering why not Oracle 9i OLAP or SQL Server 2000 or
> Oracle/SQL Server with Hyperion Essbase/Cognos. Some of the SAP BW
> consultants claim SAP BW is better than Business Objects, Cognos or
> Hyperion. Can you please throw some light and compare SAP BW to
> 9iOLAP/MicrsoftOLAP2000/Essbase/BO/Cognos & Acta/Informatica and if
> any of you are using any of these alternative solutions can you please
> provide your experiences with these alternatives to SAP BW like Acta
> with Essbase/Oracle/Cognos or SQL Server and if there are any resource
> on the net which outline how to evaluate a data warehouse.

The OLAP Survey 2 also confirmed the low success rates of SAP BW users. Using an index based on eight separate benefits, SAP BW users reported the lowest scores among the nine products which had enough respondents to report. They also had the second lowest achievement of business goals among the same group. They also had an above-average rate of reporting technical problems (worse than any of the other products on your list).

But, bizarrely, they also had the greatest loyalty -- presumably, many SAP R/3 sites have a fanatical loyalty to the vendor (after having invested so much), and despite the poor experiences of BW, are reluctant to consider third party alternatives, even though *all* the third party alternatives perform better.

The same survey found that SAP BW users were the least likely to have performed a competitive product evaluation of all (only 24% of the BW sites surveyed had done this, against an average of 50%). This suggests that if people actually take the trouble to do what you're doing, they soon discover better alternatives and are able to achieve better results, more quickly and at lower cost. Largely, it's people who just assume BW "must be good because it's from SAP" who buy it, and then find it doesn't deliver. Of course, that same group probably don't realize how much better off they could have been if they'd bought something else.

Because there are so many well-heeled R/3 sites, you'll find that all the independent BI vendors have put a lot of effort into ensuring that they can work well with R/3. Of the ones on your list, probably the only one not to consider at this stage is 9i OLAP, which is still somewhat unfinished. It may be good in a year or so, but currently has no apps available, and few tools. Consequently, there are currently very few deployments of it.

Nigel Pendse
OLAP Solutions
http://www.olapreport.com
http://www.survey.com/products/olap2/ Received on Sat Jan 11 2003 - 04:17:57 CST