Business Objects Explorer; flash end of life, SAC a questionable replacement?

[Align779]

Hi All,

As we all know Business Objects Explorer life ends in December 2020, due to the end of life of Adobe Flash support in web browsers. We have a busy business objects explorer environment running, with around 500 users daily. If we cast our minds back to the original pitch of Business Objects Explorer (shown below) the software's target audience was professionally informed; not those of a technical mind:

I understand that Business Objects Explorer in a roadmap sense is replaced by SAP SAC.

I would estimate that, not 10% of our current user base would be able to navigate the SAC platform complexity in order to get to an explorer like tool. In my organization at least; the overall majority of users are not interested in a story. They want a quick number; they do not want to build a story; nor have the time to learn.

We have spent considerable time in a POC of SAC with SAP, and we concluded that the product was not suitable as a replacement to Business Objects Explorer.

There must be hundreds of customers having the same headaches, with what to do with Business Objects Explorer after December. I want to hear what other organizations are doing. As much as it pains me to do so, I must look at non-SAP products to find a suitable replacement.

There is a long-term hope for SAC, I see that a standalone explorer view has been suggested by others on the Customer Influence platform, please oh please fellow frustrated people cast your vote:

https://influence.sap.com/sap/ino/#idea/233194

Thanks,

Steve

[Align779]

Some good news regarding SAC and explorer functionality. This published by SAP at TechEd 2020, it at least acknowledges that the current explorer functionality does not hit the mark. Its going to be a long wait in Q1, but I expect people have moved to a competitors product.

No Lab preview was provided, hopefully it is similar to BOBJ Explorer.

[Align779]

venkateswaray.guptha , katryn.cheng fabien.aubert

Thank you for the webinar, it shows that the SAC version of explorer is very feature rich, and no dispute the connectivity options back to Hana views and BO Universes is fantastic. Katryn/Fabien mentioned in the webinar the ability to launch a story in an explorer mode, this would ease our pain a lot. There was also mention of the counts on the facets, which is another element our users rely upon heavily, and again would ease our pain. Looking forward to seeing a roadmap for these improvements in SAC Explorer.

[erdempekcan]

Hi,

If you want to stay in BO, Lumira is a great option. Lumira-Discovery is "freezed"; however Lumira-Designer has some great ready to run data analyzer templates for data discovery. You can simply connect your data source and use it without any development effort. The only difference from Explorer is that, they're drag & drop applications whereas Explorer is point and select.

Moreover, you can build your own Explorer-like application with Lumira Designer as well.

Regards,
Erdem

[Align779]

Hi All,

Can anyone confirm this functionality? Can anyone comment on the useability?

[Align779]

I've heard from a few vendors in the last month or so that are taking advantage of the fact that SAP dropped the ball with explorer. They try scare tack ticks, to get people to change to their explorer knock offs.

As we watch what BOBJ built dilute, and dissolve; isn't it easier to keep customers than win them back?

[Align779]

afshin.irani3 , of course, but that isn't an easy thing for almost all of our 500 users to do. The point i am making is the skill and equipment required to use the SAC explorer, is not equivalent to the skills and equipment required to use the BOBJ Explorer. I have to echo the words of our salespeople that used the BOBJ Explorer app; now they have to do what! You can imagine their jaws dropping at the horror of the new complexity.

[former_member6443]

Hi Steve,

Kindly note that the SAC Explorer mode can be launched from stories and if you have a mature Universe's setup then having a main story with users launching Explorer to slice and dice the data will definitely work.

Also SAC has Analysis of Office an excel add in which the majority of users might find useful and the performance is pretty impressive.

Good luck

Afshin

[Align779]

erdempekcan Super interesting idea, we had not thought about Lumira. We will check that out, even as a temporary measure.

We discounted building an explorer like application (in SAC or even Designer), basically because we don't do development (simply no resources to do so), we prefer off the shelf solutions, which is another reason why BOBJ Explorer appealed to us.

venkateswaray.guptha, i'll have a look at that webinar and let you know. I've read a lot of the blogs about the transition between the too tools. My favourite comment comes from this link:

https://blogs.sap.com/2020/03/03/sap-businessobjects-explorer-next-steps-using-sap-analytics-cloud-w...

Challenge, is certainly one way to describe it!

Thank you both for the tips guys.

Anyone else out there in the community want to share their story on the end of life of explorer? Doo Tell..

[VenkateswaraGY]

I believe it will help for the people looking for the comparison between SAP BusinessObjects Explorer and the exploration capabilities of SAP Analytics Cloud, here is the link for the same Search and Data Exploration with SAP Analytics Cloud.