Top BI Questions Blog Posts of 2009

January saw Obama’s inauguration, and a reflection on Bush’s analytic legacy, a discussion on whether “gut feelings” have any basis in science, a dashboard showing the best companies to work for in the US, and a quick demonstration that Malcom Gladwell was right.       February’s posts discussed the power of having the right data, and that dashboards have been around for a long, long time, but if they have poor data... [Read More...]

Season’s Greetings with Xcelsius!

Here is a season’s greetings dashboard that shows off some of the latest features of Xcelsius 2008 SP3. Tweet the color you’d like to see in the garland. The dashboard updates every 30 seconds. How long Twitter search takes to recognize the tweet can be pretty variable – but most of the time, it’s less than a minute. How it works: I set up an Excel XML Connection that grabs a feed from Twitter using the search term “#twitterlights”. The... [Read More...]

BusinessObjects is Still Open For Anything?

Apologies. For reasons of either “inappropriateness” or “excessive political correctness”, depending on your point of view, the video has been pulled from YouTube… If you’re shallowly interested in watching beautiful women talking about BusinessObjects software, you may like this video:  Read More →

What’s New in SAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius 2008 SP3?

Here’s a summary of some of the new things in the latest version of Xcelsius 2008. I’ve borrowed liberally from the official documentation that you can download, along with the program, here. New Components Sparkline chart components. The new Sparkline chart is based on the Sparkline chart created by Edward Tufte and provides a method for displaying a one-dimensional range of numeric data in a way that is dense, takes up a small space, and can... [Read More...]

Real Real-Time Analytics

Here’s a great video from this weeks SAP Influencer Summit featuring the advantages of real-time, in-memory analytics. You can see the full list of recorded keynote sessions here (registration required). If you’re interested in business intelligence and analytics, you’ll find it mentioned in the presentations by Jim Snabe, Vishal Sikka, Marge Breya and John Wookey. The sessions featured interaction with Twitter very heavily, using the... [Read More...]

Conversations: SAP Influencer Summit vs. Le Web

I’ve spent the last few days attending – virtually – the SAP Influencer Summit and the Le Web conference in Paris. The two events were very different, but I think there’s some interesting comparisons that can be drawn that point to the future direction of conferences. SAP Influencer Summit Let’s start with the SAP Influencer Summit. You can see the full list of recorded keynote sessions here (registration required). If you’re interested... [Read More...]

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer for iPhone Now Available on Apple AppStore!

The iPhone version of SAP BusinessObjects Explorer from the SAP BusinessObjects Innovation Center was (finally!) released today on the Apple iStore, available as a free download Here’s the description of the application: “Your business at your fingertips” With Explorer for iPhone, insight into your business is never more than a few flicks away. Through simple keyword search, navigation and visualization, Explorer allows you to ask and answer... [Read More...]

Microsoft’s Dallas Copies BusinessObjects Information OnDemand

Just over two years ago, BusinessObjects launched Information OnDemand, an online store allowing you to buy information from premium providers such as Dun & Bradstree, the US Census Bureau, NewsTin, etc. And now Microsoft have launched their “Dallas” project, a variation on the same theme: “Microsoft’s Information Services business, enabling developers and information workers to instantly find, purchase, and manage datasets to power the... [Read More...]