SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.0 brings many new capabilities to the SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.1 platform. In addition to these new capabilities BI 4.0 also brings new identities for many products in the BO suite. Learning these new names will help you join the BI 4 conversation. However, even if you are using the new names don’t expect SAP BusinessObjects to use them all of the time. The 4.0 release may still use the old names on the front-end and on the back-end; the same may be true for the SAP Support portal and licensing areas.
BI is the new XI
SAP® BusinessObjects™ Enterprise XI 3.1 has been renamed to the SAP® BusinessObjects™ Business Intelligence platform. Therefore, we can also derive that “XI” is gone and “BI” is the new king. For this reason you’ll notice that I am trying hard not to say “XI 4.0” and to adopt “BI 4.0” as the new standard abbreviation.
Xcelsius is now Dashboards
“SAP® BusinessObjects™ Xcelsius Enterprise” has been renamed to “SAP® BusinessObjects™ Dashboards”. The rename characterizes the evolution of the this tool its Excel origins into into a full-fledged enterprise ready dashboard solution that works with a diverse number of data sources. SAP-BO says that “name Xcelsius was no longer meaningful or relevant.”
Pioneer = Voyager = Analysis for OLAP
“Pioneer” was the internal project name for one of the tools that eventually came to be known as “SAP BusinessObjects™ Voyager”. I’ve lost track of when, but at some time “Voyager” was renamed briefly to “SAP® BusinessObjects™ Advanced Analysis, Web Edition”. This name was long and confusing, and in BI 4.0 it has been replaced with the shorter, better name of “SAP® BusinessObjects™ Analysis, edition for OLAP”. I like to shorten this and call it “Analysis for OLAP”.
Analysis for Microsoft Office
The word “Advanced” has also been removed from the product “SAP® BusinessObjects™ Advanced Analysis, Office Edition”. It is now named “SAP® BusinessObjects™ Analysis, edition for Microsoft Office”. The word “Advanced” was removed because in the Business Intelligence industry “advanced analytics” usually refers to geospatial and predictive analysis, which the SAP® BusinessObjects™ Analysis tools are not.
Web Intelligence is and is not Interactive Analysis
SAP planned to renamed “SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence” to “SAP BusinessObjects Interactive Analysis”; however, based on the extensive feedback they received on this plan they cancelled it. The name “Interactive Analysis” has been completely dropped, but not before it made its way into some of the UI, the installer, and some of the product documentation.
For further reading on this topic you might want to read this article: scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-20500.