I recently saw a presentation mentioning that there “are more mobile phones than toothbrushes in the world”, and according to some research by the 60 second marketer, it seems that in all likelihood, this is absolutely true:

My next thought was “why not combine the two?!”. Here’s my quick mockup of an iPhone case of the future:

But as usual, truth is stranger than fiction. Just when you think you’ve seen every use of analytics possible, along comes a real “iPhone toothbrush”. The Beam Toothbrush is a bluetooth-enabled toothbrush and associated iphone application:

It provides detailed analytics, recording how long each person brushes their teeth:

And like any good performance management tool, it uses gamification techniques to encourage the right behavior…

It seems as if analytics is being embedded in every device possible, such as the new Nike Hyperdunk+ basketball shoes and associated application:

Anybody else have any favorite examples of how analytics are taking over the world of consumer products?

Mobile BI has been around for a long time. Starting in the late-1990s, the first SMS-enabled telephones became mainstream in Europe, with basic broadcasting of the latest figures available in your BI system (or email, fax, pager, etc.). By the end of the decade, the first telephones with WAP browsers were used to provide interactive BI, quickly followed by connected PDAs with basic HTML browsers.

Here’s what SAP BusinessObjects looked like on the Nokia 7110 in 1999, on a Compaq PDA running Windows Pocket IE, an AvantGo PDA, and a Japanese DoCoMo i-mode phone in 2001:

The arrival of all these new mobile devices was supposed to usher in a new dawn of mobile analytics. Here’s a slide from a presentation a decade ago by then-marketing-VP Dave Kellogg, including the heady prediction that “5-25% of companies indicated they already provide or will provide wireless access to BI within 6-12 months”.

Business Objects launched a big initiative to go after the mobile market, and managed to sell projects to customers including JP Morgan (Palm Pilots) and Zurich Insurance (a mobile extranet for risk managers).

But, clearly, the market didn’t take off – PDAs became more widely used, and phones got better, but they weren’t used much for BI. The user interfaces were too clunky and connection speeds were too slow. Interest in mobile BI did grow slowly over the decade, notably as RIM blackberry devices became ubiquitous, but it took the wide availability of 3G wireless and modern smartphones/tablets to provide truly usable interfaces.

Finally, a decade and a half after the first tentative steps, everybody seems to agree that this is the year that mobile BI will really take off.

2012 Is the Year of Mobile BI

Here’s a taste of the mountain of research data that’s been generated about mobile BI in the last few months:

• Boris Evelson of Forrester says mobile BI will go mainstream this year. “One needs to make decisions when and where they need to be made. Not ‘when I get back to the office,’ which may be too late.” He also says that “professionals must start evaluating and prototyping mobile BI platforms and applications to make sure that all key business processes and relevant information are available to knowledge workers wherever they are.”
• According to Gartner, “by 2013, 33 percent of BI functionality will be consumed via handheld devices.”
• A survey by analyst Howard Dresner indicates that BI has already become the third most in-demand enterprise mobile application, behind only email and personal information management apps such as calendars, and 68 percent of those surveyed rated mobile BI as “critical” or “very important,” up from 52 percent a year earlier.
• A recent survey by Information Week showed that 25 percent of organizations are planning to implement some form of BI this year.
• Sixty-one percent of the participants in a TDWI survey said that they expect users to spend more time accessing BI from mobile devices in the next 12 months.
• Business Intelligence and mobile are the top two technology priorities for CIOs in 2012.

Barriers to deployment

Not every organization is moving forward with mobile BI. Here are the main concerns:

• Security and administration: Organizations are concerned about data getting outside the organization, and the administration overhead generated by managing BI on mobile devices. A mobile device management (MDM) platform (not to be confused with the other MDM) like Sybase Afaria is key.
• Expectations-setting: An easy interface doesn’t mean that the data users want is readily available. New opportunities mean new requirements. Having the right data foundations in the first place, with a robust, standard BI platform in place makes it easier to react fast to user expectations.
• Platform choices: This is perhaps the biggest factor delaying widespread deployment. Just like the operating system wars of last century (remember IBM OS/2?), there’s no one obvious platform to standardize on for rolling out mobile applications. There are three main strategies, all with pros and cons:
  • Native applications—mobile applications written directly for iOs or Android. The advantage is optimal ease-of-use and access to the capabilities of the native device. The disadvantage is the cost and complexity of supporting multiple platforms and different user interfaces.
  • HTML—accessing mobile BI through a Web browser. The advantage is that you don’t care what device is being used to access the data – at least in theory. In reality, the disadvantage is that browser-based interfaces are generally far behind what’s possible using the native features. There are high hopes that the proposed HTML5 standard will help – but it hasn’tt yet reached maturity.
  • Hybrid solution—mobile enterprise platforms such as Sybase Unwired Platform. You create applications once, and then generate different versions of them optimized for different mobile platforms, including HTML. It’s an insurance measure against the turbulent real-life world of changing mobile platforms, but there’s some upfront investment.

An example of today’s mobile BI solutions -  SAP BusinessObjects Mobile showing the integrated Google maps pioneered by the Innovation Center.

Of course, most of us just want all these options to be available as part of the standard business intelligence platform – and that’s getting closer…

Next Steps

Gartner predicts that “by 2013, 15% of BI deployments will combine BI, collaboration and social software into decision-making environments”. In other words, mobile BI will become part of an “orchestrated” experience that combines accessing data with acting on it, and we’re starting to see this in the form of mobile medical analytics for doctors or mobile beauty advisor applications.

Interestingly, one brand new area of opportunities is the integration of mobile with voice-controlled interfaces such as Apple’s Siri. Business Objects was WAY ahead of the curve with this one, with the project codenamed “Ariel”. It sadly didn’t take off, but anybody who saw it demoed will have fond memories…

Corporate tablet alternatives to the iPad are now on the horizon. At Adobe MAX 2010, Mike Lazaridis demonstrated the features available through Adobe AIR on the BlackBerry PlayBook – including some SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (formerly Xcelsius) using the export-to-AIR functionality developed by the SAP BusinessObjects Innovation Center.

You can already access your SAP data on an iPad with BusinessObjects Explorer for iPhone/iPad, and existing SAP dashboards should work on any device that supports the latest version of Adobe Flash (such as the Google Nexus One Phone) – although there’s currently no support for multi-touch operations (soon available in Flash, but it will be a while before this is integrated into the SAP dashboards).

UPDATE: You can even “adapt” existing Xcelsius Dashboards for iPhone/iPod use, now that Apple has been forced to accept conversion tools. See this SAP Community Network post from Miguel Figueiredo

The SAP BusinessObjects Augmented Explorer prototype mentioned in previous posts, created by the SAP BusinessObjects Innovation Center now available, as a standard part of the BusinessObjects Explorer for iPhone / iPad download from the Apple App Store. You’ll find some pictures below taken from official blog post and you can download the official documentation and samples here.

Here’s a video demo I did of a slightly-older version of the prototype, showing you how it works (the icons aren’t as jumpy now!):

Here’s a diagram showing how it works:

This diagram and some other mockups of how the tool might be used are available as a PowerPoint presentation – and you can create your own mockups by ungrouping the elements, replacing the pictures, moving the points, etc.

Some screen shots of the final version:

I also put together another sample data set, that includes some links to extra graphics, and generates a random set of numbers and locations around a point that you choose: download the Excel spreadsheet (after you’ve uploaded it to BI OnDemand, don’t forget to set the first column to “MIN” in the Explorer view!)

Finally, here are some graphics that may be useful for the Points of Interest, showing both a trend (the arrow), and whether it’s on target or now (the background color. It’s available in two ways, to make it easier to use in Excel calculations, etc: first as a straight 1-9:

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/icon01.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/icon02.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/icon03.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/icon04.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/icon05.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/icon06.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/icon07.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/icon08.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/icon09.png

Then as two numbers – the first indicates the type of arrow, the second indicates the background color (see the spreadsheet above for an example of how to use this)

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/icon11.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/icon12.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/icon13.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/icon21.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/icon22.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/icon23.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/icon31.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/icon32.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/icon33.png

Then some miscellaneous icons

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/iconcircle.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/iconoffice.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/iconperson.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/iconperson_green.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/iconperson_red.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/iconstar.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/iconstar_green.png

http://sapweb20.com/blog/augreality/iconstar_red.png

And finally, here’s a Photoshop file containing all the layers used in the icons above, that you can use to develop your own (you’ll need a public server to put them on)

Please provide the SAP Innovation Center feedback to make sure we know how you’re using this and things you would like to see it do in the future. Please remember, this is a prototype only and NOT for use in production environments.

Also stay connected with SAP BusinessObjects innovation center RSS feed or Twitter feed.

Based on a blog post and proof-of-concept application earlier this year, I have been championing a SAP BusinessObjects Innovation Center project to build an “augmented corporate reality” prototype.

The idea stemmed from one of the key themes of my BI future directions presentations: that for the first time in centuries, new technology comes from the consumer world, not from governments and businesses, and so we need to adapt and adopt these technologies for corporate use.

The mobile telephone is starting to become a “universal pointing device”: using the phone’s GPS location and compass, it knows where you are, and what you’re looking at. There is now a wide range of augmented reality mobile applications available on the market that help people find the nearest pizzeria, get information about a monument, or locate local twitter users.

How could this functionality be used in the business world? My first proof-of-concept blog post imagined examples of a manager getting information about a particular retail operation, a factory foreman getting maintenance records of machinery, and comparing sales between two different areas of a retail store.

These examples spurred a lot of conversations with customers around the globe about possible applications:

• An oil company interested in getting information about equipment in refineries
• A car manufacturer interested in providing information to managers of sales dealerships
• A consumer goods company interested in tracking information and location of their vending machines

Based on those conversations, we have been able to validate the core concepts and refined the functionality of our prototype. The result is an iPhone / iPad application that works closely with the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer technology and the BI onDemand web site.

Before I tell you more about it, let me emphasize: it’s a prototype, not a product. The SAP BusinessObjects innovation center is modeled on Google Labs. We’re taking a transparent, Web 2.0 approach to innovation. Rather than working for years in some dark room and then unveiling a completed product, the team creates iterative prototypes and make them freely available for download, so that you can test them, use them, and give us feedback. They’re free, but not supported, and we give no guarantees that they will be developed further. The idea is that not-so-good ideas sink without wasted development, while good ideas get refined before turning into real products (our track record is very good: mobile BI, the Explorer product, and many features of the current BusinessObjects platform all started off as prototypes).

And please note that everything I mention below may change over time, based on your feedback. We are in the process of refining the prototype, and hope to make it available for you to download and use in the next few weeks or months.

How it works

You upload a data set that includes Point of Interest (POI) information to the BusinessObjects OnDemand platform at bi.ondemand.com (you can sign up for a free account), set some data configuration options, then access that data set from your iPhone or iPad. The prototype works out what information to display based on your location and the phone’s compass heading:

The prototype uses five fields of information to define the “points of interest” (POIs) that can be viewed: latitude, longitude, name, an associated image, and at least one data value.

Demonstration Screen Shots

First we install the Augmented Reality Explorer application (currently, this involves a specific build for identified devices – we will make it a free download from the Apple App Store as soon as we can). We then open up the application on the iPhone, and log into a BI OnDemand account:

We choose an appropriately-configured data source. The points of interest are then automatically displayed based on your location: you can choose to see either the closest POI first, or the one closest to the direction you are pointing your phone. The icons are configurable — in this case, I’m using them to indicate the current state of sales: the arrow indicates whether current sales are larger than the previous period, and the color indicates whether the current sales are above, equal to, or below the current sales targets.

We can choose to display the points on a map, and zoom in to get more detail by tapping on the radar to make it full screen, and sliding a finger to choose the radius of distance we’re interested in:

I can also view the points of interest superimposed on the real world, using the iPhone’s camera – as I move around, each POI seems to hover over its physical location, and I can choose what information is displayed as each point is selected:

At any time, I can choose to filter the points by any of the dimensions available in the data set, and clicking on a POI takes me through to the same interface as the BusinessObjects Explorer application. Any filters that are applied in the augmented reality view are applied to the Explorer view, and vice-versa, so I can easily and simply explore the information available (and it could be many millions of rows of data, if you’re using SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Accelerated)

And the prototype looks great on the iPad, too (the camera view is not available, obviously):

Other thoughts:

• The possible uses are currently limited by the precision of the location services of the iPhone/iPad (GPS, cell tower triangulation, wifi triangulation). It works very well outdoors with GPS, but using cell-towers only tells you where you are within a few blocks (which is good enough to locate the nearest retail branch, but not for comparing one aisle of a supermarket with another). Various companies such as SkyHook and Cisco are working on increasing the available precision.
• The Augmented Explorer prototype can also directly access a corporate Explorer server, with an appropriately formatted data set
• The BusinessObjects data quality solutions include location coordinates for just about any address in the world. In an ideal world, you’d be able to submit a file with addresses, and we’d turn it into coordinates on the fly, and that’s something we’ll be looking into in the future. In the meantime, there are other free solutions out there.
• Note that the locations that you’re looking at don’t have to be static: imagine pointing your device to get information about cars, trucks, or people (e.g. combining it with information from the Social Network Analyzer prototype). In the short term, data latency getting information into Explorer would be an issue, but better BI on event information will improve this area, too…

Next steps:

If you have an questions, comments, or feedback, or feel like you have a good case for getting a copy of the application even before we post it to the App Store (e.g. you’re an SAP employee with a customer who might be interested), feel free to contact me or the SAP BusinessObjects innovation center team directly. We’re particularly interested in finding real-world scenarios for this (it’s not about doing something just for the sake of the technology).

Early press coverage:

• SAP working on augmented reality for business, Jennifer Scott, IT Pro, July 8, 2010
• Q&A: Timo Elliott, BI evangelist at SAP, Jennifer Scott, IT Pro, July 9, 2010
• SAP working on augmented reality for business, TechCentral (Ireland), July 12, 2010
• SAP working on augmented reality for business, Leo King (Computerworld UK), Network World, July 9, 2010

Based on a blog post and proof-of-concept application earlier this year, I have been championing a SAP BusinessObjects Innovation Center project to build an “augmented corporate reality” prototype.

The idea stemmed from one of the key themes of my BI future directions presentations: that for the first time in centuries, new technology comes from the consumer world, not from governments and businesses, and so we need to adapt and adopt these technologies for corporate use.

The mobile telephone is starting to become a “universal pointing device”: using the phone’s GPS location and compass, it knows where you are, and what you’re looking at. There is now a wide range of augmented reality mobile applications available on the market that help people find the nearest pizzeria, get information about a monument, or locate local twitter users.

How could this functionality be used in the business world? My first proof-of-concept blog post imagined examples of a manager getting information about a particular retail operation, a factory foreman getting maintenance records of machinery, and comparing sales between two different areas of a retail store.

These examples spurred a lot of conversations with customers around the globe about possible applications:

• An oil company interested in getting information about equipment in refineries
• A car manufacturer interested in providing information to managers of sales dealerships
• A consumer goods company interested in tracking information and location of their vending machines

Based on those conversations, we have been able to validate the core concepts and refined the functionality of our prototype. The result is an iPhone / iPad application that works closely with the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer technology and the BI onDemand web site.

Before I tell you more about it, let me emphasize: it’s a prototype, not a product. The SAP BusinessObjects innovation center is modeled on Google Labs. We’re taking a transparent, Web 2.0 approach to innovation. Rather than working for years in some dark room and then unveiling a completed product, the team creates iterative prototypes and make them freely available for download, so that you can test them, use them, and give us feedback. They’re free, but not supported, and we give no guarantees that they will be developed further. The idea is that not-so-good ideas sink without wasted development, while good ideas get refined before turning into real products (our track record is very good: mobile BI, the Explorer product, and many features of the current BusinessObjects platform all started off as prototypes).

And please note that everything I mention below may change over time, based on your feedback. We are in the process of refining the prototype, and hope to make it available for you to download and use in the next few weeks or months.

How it works

You upload a data set that includes Point of Interest (POI) information to the BusinessObjects OnDemand platform at bi.ondemand.com (you can sign up for a free account), set some data configuration options, then access that data set from your iPhone or iPad. The prototype works out what information to display based on your location and the phone’s compass heading:

The prototype uses five fields of information to define the “points of interest” (POIs) that can be viewed: latitude, longitude, name, an associated image, and at least one data value.

Demonstration Screen Shots

First we install the Augmented Reality Explorer application (currently, this involves a specific build for identified devices – we will make it a free download from the Apple App Store as soon as we can). We then open up the application on the iPhone, and log into a BI OnDemand account:

We choose an appropriately-configured data source. The points of interest are then automatically displayed based on your location: you can choose to see either the closest POI first, or the one closest to the direction you are pointing your phone. The icons are configurable — in this case, I’m using them to indicate the current state of sales: the arrow indicates whether current sales are larger than the previous period, and the color indicates whether the current sales are above, equal to, or below the current sales targets.

We can choose to display the points on a map, and zoom in to get more detail by tapping on the radar to make it full screen, and sliding a finger to choose the radius of distance we’re interested in:

I can also view the points of interest superimposed on the real world, using the iPhone’s camera – as I move around, each POI seems to hover over its physical location, and I can choose what information is displayed as each point is selected:

At any time, I can choose to filter the points by any of the dimensions available in the data set, and clicking on a POI takes me through to the same interface as the BusinessObjects Explorer application. Any filters that are applied in the augmented reality view are applied to the Explorer view, and vice-versa, so I can easily and simply explore the information available (and it could be many millions of rows of data, if you’re using SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Accelerated)

And the prototype looks great on the iPad, too (the camera view is not available, obviously):

Other thoughts:

• The possible uses are currently limited by the precision of the location services of the iPhone/iPad (GPS, cell tower triangulation, wifi triangulation). It works very well outdoors with GPS, but using cell-towers only tells you where you are within a few blocks (which is good enough to locate the nearest retail branch, but not for comparing one aisle of a supermarket with another). Various companies such as SkyHook and Cisco are working on increasing the available precision.
• The Augmented Explorer prototype can also directly access a corporate Explorer server, with an appropriately formatted data set
• The BusinessObjects data quality solutions include location coordinates for just about any address in the world. In an ideal world, you’d be able to submit a file with addresses, and we’d turn it into coordinates on the fly, and that’s something we’ll be looking into in the future. In the meantime, there are other free solutions out there.
• Note that the locations that you’re looking at don’t have to be static: imagine pointing your device to get information about cars, trucks, or people (e.g. combining it with information from the Social Network Analyzer prototype). In the short term, data latency getting information into Explorer would be an issue, but better BI on event information will improve this area, too…

Next steps:

If you have an questions, comments, or feedback, or feel like you have a good case for getting a copy of the application even before we post it to the App Store (e.g. you’re an SAP employee with a customer who might be interested), feel free to contact me or the SAP BusinessObjects innovation center team directly. We’re particularly interested in finding real-world scenarios for this (it’s not about doing something just for the sake of the technology).

Early press coverage:

• SAP working on augmented reality for business, Jennifer Scott, IT Pro, July 8, 2010
• Q&A: Timo Elliott, BI evangelist at SAP, Jennifer Scott, IT Pro, July 9, 2010
• SAP working on augmented reality for business, TechCentral (Ireland), July 12, 2010
• SAP working on augmented reality for business, Leo King (Computerworld UK), Network World, July 9, 2010

The latest release of Android, v2.2 (“Froyo”) supports the Adobe flash technology used by Xcelsius (now called Dashboard Design) and SAP BusinessObjects Explorer. So now you can access your dashboards, reports, and exploration spaces directly from your mobile device without requiring a separate application (e.g. as you do for the iPhone and iPad).

It also means you can reuse all the effort you’ve put into developing Xcelsius dashboards and make them into slick, use-them-on-the-fly interfaces for your road warriors. Here’s a quick video demonstration of my Google Nexus One phone running Xcelsius, WebIntelligence, and Explorer, based on a Formula One data set (SAP is a sponsor of the Vodaphone McLaren Mercedes racing team, and the McLaren team use SAP’s PLM software).

Here’s a step-by-step picture view of the same demo:

1: open the xcelsius dashboard, using a bookmark link, or typing the dashboard link directly: http://assets.timoelliott.com/docs/formula1_android_open.swf

(Note: the Xcelsius icon below is NOT an application that you have to install, just a shortcut to the URL, which opens in a browser)

The flash file will open up in the browser:

To make it full screen, press and hold your finger on the flash file until the bar below appears

Then click on the left-hand icon to make the flash file full screen:

From here, you can explore the dashboard, for example, press the “Driver” button:

Or the “Engine” button:

You can also “drill through” to information using the other SAP BusinessObjects products. For example, touching the “Report” button can take you directly to a Web Intelligence report (this won’t work with the link above, because it’s a report only available to my account – the link takes you to the generic bi.ondemand.com page, and if you’re previously logged on – you can sign up for a free account – it will take you directly to your data sets, reports, etc.)

This report is rendered in HTML, and full interactable – all drill-downs, etc. will work, and you can use the standard “pinch” gestures to zoom into part of the report, scroll around, etc.:

Click on the “back” arrow on the phone (left-most icon on the bottom row of buttons on the phone) to get back to the previous dashboard (note, I occasionally came across a flash bug here, where the top bar would still appear, throwing off the tracking location of your finger. If this happens, hold your finger until the full screen icon appears, then click below it to get back to full screen)

Next, click on the “Explore button” to open a new pop-up window (you need to have enabled pop-ups in your browser options, or nothing will happen), and it will load an Explorer session with Formula One data (why do this via a pop-up? to make sure that the screen proportions are correct for the next step):

(Note: this data is stored on a corporate SAP server, but you can do the same thing using data you’ve uploaded to your free bi.ondemand.com account)

As before, hold down your finger and make the flash full screen:

This interface requires precision to use, but with a bit of practice, it’s feasible. Here, for example, I click on the pie chart icon to change the chart type:

Next, I click on the “Advanced” section under “Nationality” to get this window, and I chose “British”:

And by clicking on the little arrows to the left of the “Items to Select” section, you can expand it:

Or you can click on the little arrow to the left of “Visualize the data” to expand that part:

Here’s a copy of the Xcelsius dashboard I used (you can also download the flash and Xcelsius file) – the report button links to bi.ondemand.com, rather than the exact report, because I haven’t yet found a way to share it with everybody:

A few best-practice tips if you’re interested in recreating a demo like this:

• The screen size for the Google Nexus One is 480×800. When I designed the dashboard, I found I had to make the buttons and fonts extra-big in order to make them useable on the phone.
• To get a flash file to show full screen on your Android phone, simply press and hold. A bar will appear with a button to make the flash file full screen.
• Explorer automatically resizes to the available browser size available. Unfortunately, this means that even when you make it full screen, it doesn’t have the right proportions to fill the screen. I got around this by using a popup window set to 480×800, and enabling pop ups in the phone’s browser.
• Obviously, all this will be a lot easier as a new range of Android devices with larger screen sizes become more widely available, such as the French Archos 7 tablet

So. There you have it: Xcelsius, Web Intelligence and Explorer all running smoothly on your mobile device, no apps required!

Please share your best BusinessObjects-for-Android dashboards, reports and hints and tips, and I’ll put them in a follow-up post!

RoamBI for iPhone, which I reviewed last year, has long been the best-looking mobile BI application available in the market. Now the folks at RoamBI have been one of the very first vendors worldwide to come out with an updated application for the iPad, and they provided me with one in order to test their brand-new version.

First Impressions

It’s as beautiful as its predecessor, and the new document formats available use the new expanded workspace to pack in a lot more analytic ability. This video from Information Week shows Quinton Aslbury of RoamBI demonstrating what you can do, including additional data not included in the original documents, such as overlaid trending algorithms.

There is a series of videos available on the RoamBI web site that illustrate the different document types available.

View SAP Carbon Disclosure Data

SAP and RoamBI have partnered to provide easy access to information from SAP and the Carbon Disclosure Project. When you install the free application, it comes with a series of sample documents, including one that shows SAP’s carbon footprint data, showing progress towards SAP’s announced goal of reducing the company’s carbon footprint back down to 2000 levels by 2010.

It shows SAP’s carbon footprint for various categories (corporate cars, electricity for facilities, business flights, etc.), broken down by region (EMEA has to do the most work!)

To use your own data with the application, you register for an account on to the RoamBI Publisher web site and choose one of the available analytics. The free version lets you upload your local Excel spreadsheets, the Pro version expands access to online sources such as Google Spreadsheets, and the Enterprise Server lets you access your corporate BI documents.

Working with SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence and Crystal Reports documents

The RoamBI ES3 Enterprise Server option lets you use Web Intelligence documents and Crystal Reports from BusinessObjects Infoview as data sources for the analytics:

You simple log on to the Roam BI publisher web site, log onto your enterprise BI portal, and import the documents you’d like to see on the iPad:

Pricing

The basic version is free, the Pro app is $99 per user, and ES3 is $795 per user for a perpetual license with a minimum of 50 users.

Conclusion

First, if you’re the leader of a business intelligence project, this application is an essential part of marketing the value of your systems. I’ve had the pleasure of presenting in Stockholm and Copenhagen this week, and (like Xcelsius, where many of RoamBI’s staff came from), it is a great attention-grabber, with everybody keen to try out the tools. You may even want to consider buying your CIO or other executive sponsor an iPad just for them to be able to show off your project’s data…

As an application, it’s particularly well-adapted for mobile users such as account managers, who typically need offline access to small sets of well-defined data, and could use it effectively not only for their own use, but to share key figures with their customers.

The enterprise version also supprts parameterized ad-hoc access to data, using standard Web Intelligence and Crystal report prompt definitions.

The only potential downsides to the product are:

First, that some setup is involved for enterprise use (choosing or creating an appropriate report, and choosing a form of analysis).

Second, that end user interaction, while very flexible, is set is advance (e.g. you can’t change from a pie chart to a time view, although most of the time you wouldn’t need to).*

Overall, RoamBI is an excellent “analytic consumption” tool for BusinessObjects and other data, that fits in perfectly with the iPad ethos.

If you have users that may sometimes need to venture out of prepared guidelines, a complementary solution would be BusinessObjects Explorer, which offers a flexible choice of dimensions, measures, and visualization types at run time (but which requires online access and doesn’t rival RoamBI’s look and feel)

Summary:

Pros

• Beautiful, easy-to-use user interface
• Fantastic marketing tool for your information systems
• Now with added analytical power (trending, time slices, etc.)
• The application and basic use is free
• Works offline
• Links to multiple personal and enterprise data systems including strong support for SAP BusinessObjects reports

Cons

• Visualization type (type of analytic) has to be defined in advance, not changeable.
• Report dimensions limited to the parameters already defined in the document*

* Section updated to correct earlier erroneous statement that you could only access data already in the local document — apologies…

I’ve already written extensively about the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer product, the Explorer in the cloud prototype (now a product, as part of BI OnDemand), and the Explorer for iPhone application.

Now all of these have come together to provide “instant value”. You simply sign up for a free account at the BI OnDemand website, upload any data set you want, and then consume easily and intuitively on the road using the free Explorer for iPhone application.

Here’s what it looks like in use:

Update: somebody asked how to get the data into BI ondemand. It’s covered in a previous post, but there’s also this video that shows it step by step:

And, of course, the iPad version is on its way — the SAP BusinessObjects Innovation Center just tweeted out a picture of an SAP employee taking a first look at the Explorer for iPad prototype. Follow them on Twitter to get the latest news!

These products, and many more examples of SAP / BusinessObjects Innovation, will be shown at the SAPPHIRENOW innovation campuses in Orlando and Frankfurt.