It has been over a year since SAP announced its acquisition of Business Objects. During those long 14 months it seems that the branding experts at SAP have decided on a new name for BO. Yes, they brilliantly came up with the catchy and yet classic “SAP Business Objects”.
Here is what their Business Partner Announcement said on the topic:
Business Objects brings to SAP an extremely strong brand in the business intelligence and analytics category. The Business Objects brand delivers credibility with its customers as well as with those customers it shares with SAP. Brand research has shown that the combination of SAP and Business Objects produces even stronger brand recognition and purchase consideration, for both those customers that identify themselves as predominantly SAP and those that rely on other platforms.
Changes to Begin in January 2009
Beginning in January 2009, Business Objects will be known as a division of SAP as part of the new, branded portfolio called SAP BusinessObjects. This portfolio will encompass all of the solutions in the SAP BusinessObjects division, including business intelligence (BI); information management (IM); enterprise performance management (EPM); and governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) solutions. With the evolution of the Business Objects brand, the naming of individual products will also become more uniform and descriptive.
The new look and feel will be most evident in external campaign activities and Web presence. Outbound marketing campaigns will adopt the SAP visual brand identity and launch a new SAP BusinessObjects portfolio area on www.sap.com. This dedicated area, linked from the homepage of the SAP Web site, will present the full line of solutions for large, midsize and small businesses. At the same time, the Business Objects Web site — www.businessobjects.com — will be retired, and visitors will be redirected to the new portfolio area.
So what does this mean to you. Well, www.businessobjects.com will be retired, the product should remain virtually unaffected for at least another year, and your company may be able leverage their SAP contract to get BO at a discount. It does say that naming of BI products will become more uniform. So Designer, watch your back, you are about to fall under the SAP naming microscope. And you too “BusinessObjects”, I think your elusive single-word defiance and confusion is about to come to an unexplained end.
Next time SAP, just save yourself the time and $100,000’s and send me a very conservative $10,000 check and I will give you an equally powerful and catchy brand name for your next acquisition in 1/365th the time.