Sqware Peg to offer SAP’s BusinessObjects

Local partner Sqware Peg to offer SAP’s BusinessObjects BI OnDemand solution to provide analytics capability to New Zealand companies

To meet a growing demand from companies of all sizes for software-as-a-service (SaaS) business intelligence (BI) tools that are easy to use, SAP Australia New Zealand today announced the local launch of the SAP® BusinessObjects™ BI OnDemand solution.

Targeted at casual BI users currently under-served by products on the market, the solution will deliver a complete BI toolset in one flexible offering. Leading Australasian on-demand services and solutions provider Sqware Peg is the first local partner to offer customers the new solution, which will provide analytics capabilities for customers using core on-demand solutions.

“SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand solution enables users to instantly access, explore, report, visualise and share data,” said John Goldrick, Director – Industry & Solutions Group, SAP ANZ. “The ease of use of this new solution means that customers can be up and running quickly with no prior experience or training. BI OnDemand provides a whole new market for SAP channel partners.”

The solution includes capabilities that make it easier than ever for business users to tap into their data online, get better insight into their organisation and securely share illustrative reports and dashboards with colleagues inside and outside the firewall. Significant features include:

• SAP BusinessObjects Explorer software, which empowers people with powerful data exploration and visualisation capabilities.
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• Capabilities that guide people with no prior BI experience through the process of accessing, exploring, visualising and sharing data – all without needing to switch between applications.
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• The ability to access all on-demand and on-premise data – including SAP data and data from the Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) application. People will be able to easily upload data to create dashboards, reports or interactive visualisations.
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• An on-demand solution for creating ad-hoc reports, conducting what-if analyses and securely sharing this information inside or outside the company. Business users will be able to provide customers, partners and employees across all lines of business with immediate, anytime access to the most current data.
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“We decided to partner with SAP in offering this new product to our customer base because we’ve been looking to build a practice in analytics for some time,” said Shawn Stilwell, Managing Director, Sqware Peg. “This new solution is a natural fit for customers that are using cloud computing or a mix of cloud and on-premise solutions, and this is an opportunity for us to stitch together all the ERP cloud computing solutions that we offer.”

SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand will also include flexible pricing, allowing customers to try the product, and easily scale their deployment as necessary. Three editions are planned that range from a comprehensive version with limited storage to one with more advanced capabilities and the ability to handle larger data volumes:

• Free personal edition – allows customers to try the comprehensive capabilities with limited storage capabilities.
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• Essential edition – with increased storage, this version is ideal for individuals, departments, teams or divisions – NZ$52 per month, per user.
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• Advanced edition – capabilities include a hosted data warehouse, development environment and single sign-on (SSO) security features, which will be available later this year – NZ$148 per month, per user.
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This pricing and packaging model allows even casual users to seamlessly move from individual use to departmental-wide deployments. They will be able to build out their SaaS BI system from a complete set of easy-to-use front end tools to add backend capabilities, such as a hosted data warehouse and development environment and single sign-on security.

“This is a massive opportunity for our channel partners to take advantage of two rapidly growing market segments: Business Intelligence tools and on-demand software delivery. Analyst research shows there is strong demand for SaaS BI tools that are easy to use and acquire. The on-demand model will provide a solid annuity stream and a healthy margin for channel partners,” said Helen Masters, General Manager, Growth Markets, SAP ANZ.

SAP is currently planning to make SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand available through its SAP® PartnerEdge™ programme in the channel partner ecosystem later in 2010.

“Customers want to work with their data their way – whether it’s behind a firewall, on the web or on their local computer in spreadsheets,” said Goldrick. “With access to data at their fingertips, customers can make more confident decisions, share their insights with others and react quickly to any changes in their business. SAP makes BI more pervasive by giving underserved casual users an affordable, easy-to-use on-demand BI solution. This is an important milestone in SAP’s on-demand vision, and further proof that we continue to innovate in the cloud.”

Follow SAP BusinessObjects on Twitter at @businessobjects, and be sure to check out the Needle In A Haystack blog.

ENDS

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