SAP BusinessObjects BI 4 & EIM 4 Launch, The Netherlands

I’m in the Netherlands for two days of SAP BusinessObjects BI and EIM 4 launches at the bright, modern offices of SAP Netherlands in ‘s Hertogenbosch (originally located so as to be close to Belgium, which originally didn’t have its own SAP office).

The first day was for SAP partners, with a packed room and in-depth technical presentations of BI 4 and EIM 4 in the morning (the survey results showed that they could have been even more technical – apologies, and note that much, much more information is available.) The end of the morning included included a discussion about BI competency centers and the need for agile data warehousing.

I gave my keynote presentation after lunch, and it was very well received (many thanks to everybody that filled out the survey forms)

Next, BusinessObjects veteran Coen de Koenig gave an overview of the key SAP differentiators, and gave a demonstration of the key new features, including the new SAP BusinessObjects Analysis product, featured below.

The day ended with a more commercial discussion of the different sales channels available for partners, and a final word from the SAP Netherlands COO.

Day 2 was for customers, with extra chairs needed to pack everybody into the auditorium…

SAP’s Marco Jansen opened the event with a welcome and introduction to the themes of the day, including an interesting discussion of BI applied to LinkedIn data that showed that “Jack”, “Fred”, and “Bill” are likely to be CEOs, “Chip” and “Todd” are in Sales and “Thierry”, “Philippe”, “Laurent”, and “Alessandro” are more likely to run a restaurant…

Next, Jason Sumner of the Economist Intelligence Unit gave a presentation entitled “levelling the playing field – how companies use data for competitive advantage”. You can get more information about the research here.

Coen de Koning, André Posthuma, and Vincent de Heer are currently doing detailed presentations of what’s new in SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.0 and EIM 4.0, then this afternoon, after lunch, Coen will do a product demonstration from Coen, and then I’ll be doing my keynote (as above). I’ll update this with more information later today…