Moderator: The Live Expert Q&A with Naeem Hashmi, CTO of Information Frameworks has begun. The topic today is SAP Business Intelligence: what is it? How does it relate to Internet and 3rd party tool integration? Please submit your questions in the bottom box of the screen.

scushman127594: What is Business Intelligence?

Naeem_Hashmi : Business intelligence, introduced by Howard Dresner of the Gartner Group in 1989, is a set of concepts and methodologies to improve decision-making in business through the use of facts and fact-based systems. These fact-based systems include: Executive Information Systems, Decision Support Systems, Enterprise Information Systems, Management Support Systems OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing), as well as newer technologies such as: Data Mining, Data Visualization, the Geographic Information Systems.

kalyan.dravida770238 : What is Business Intelligence in mySAP.com? What are its components?

Naeem_Hashmi : mySAP.com BI solution consists of mySAP Busines Information Warehouse, Knowledge Warehouse, and SEM. On top of that you also use Workplace portal as an Enterprise Portal for all information delivery applications including Business Intelligence applications.

mlewis238894: What about Business Intelligence initiative from SAP? Is it real or just marketing hype?

Naeem_Hashmi : Today, it is a real thing. Within the last two years, SAP BI initiative has evolved from a drawing board to one of the most powerful, rich in functionality and loaded with pre-defined analytics that definitely help customer reduce the BI solution implementation life cycle - from years to months. The WEB interface to BW is still somewhat a marketing hype. It does work but needs flexible publishing environment.

mtripp631765: Is BI the same thing as a Data Warehouse or Data Mart?

Naeem_Hashmi : Not really. The data warehouse or data marts are physical data stores that provide tools and technologies to manage data. Where BI consists on applications on top of these data stores.

thanavus670168: Is BEX of SAP BW a dynamic or static web page?

Naeem_Hashmi : BEX is where you develop queries against BW. They are dynamic but you can also save the result set for future request. Then it becomes static. The WEB interface is on top of such queries. So the answer to your question is yes. You can have both dynamic and static queries in BEX as well as on the WEB.

sfogarty88021: Why aren't today?s DW models/methodologies/tools right for e-Business Intelligence needs?

Naeem_Hashmi : Today's models and methodologies were based on 'passive' role of DW and centered on a company's Internal usage. Often times, tools and technologies used to construct DW are also different. Moreover, traditional DW are very much database centric. Not much sharing of Infrastructure between OLTP and DW. On the other hand, in eBusiness model, you have think BI applications as an integral part of your business critical applications renewal strategy and not as an after thought - a culture clash between the OLTP and DW teams. Now they have to work as one team and analytical/OLTP applications need to exploit common infrastructure. For this reason, the traditional DW models/methodologies/tools are not quite ready for eBusiness Intelligence needs.

ttearpoc291944: For a customer with an R/3 system, can you give a brief roadmap to building a BI environment?

Naeem_Hashmi : First, take a look at SAP BW business content. You may find that a lot of your BI needs can be met with this content - maybe not 100% but more than 60%. Then you simply enhance your custom BI applications. You can also bring non-SAP data as well. I have discussed a simple roadmap in my book on Business Information Warehouse. You may want to look at that.

martinrp30784: What is the status of LIS, PIS, FIS, SIS, XIS going forward?

Naeem_Hashmi : To the best of my knowledge, BW is where you will do most of Operational and well as strategic reporting. The Reporting Systems that you mentioned in SAP R/3 will remain, but I do not think they will be enhanced further. This is not an SAP statement but what I think.

aseguin721499: What is an ERP-Data Warehouse?

Naeem_Hashmi : ERP data warehousing is 'a framework of information objects that becomes the foundation of business intelligence, knowledge support systems, and other business applications across the extraprise, leveraging the infrastructure of ERP applications.' Note that simply extracting data from an ERP application package is not ERP data warehousing. An ERP data warehouse must support services needed to construct a data warehouse and collection of integrated applications, in order to report, analyze, and control business events across the enterprise... not just the data extractions. True, ERP data warehouses leverage the OLTP ERP infrastructure.

sapv4891219: Do we know what SAP is up to with its next BW release?

Naeem_Hashmi : The next release of SAP BW 3.0 has three significant developments. Warehouse Management, Business Explorer, Analytical applications and integration. It will also support Microsoft Analysis Services to build MOLAP applications, very flexible BEX environment and XML for integration.

david.e.melvin567331 : What is MOLAP?

Naeem_Hashmi : Molap stands for Molti-Dimensional OLAP. BW native OLAP is ROLAP (Relational OLAP).

scushman127594: Is e-Business intelligence another name for CRM?

Naeem_Hashmi : No. The e-Business Intelligence is just one component of CRM. e-Business Intelligence has to do with any intelligent business activity conducted over the Internet.

pacifico.rodriguez86839 : How difficult is it to create your own reports; how difficult is it to administer BW?

Naeem_Hashmi : Very Simple. BEX is Excel centric. The business people who know EXCEL will feel at home. Administering BW is somewhat technical and you need SAP BASIS training.

mtrombley580361: In planning the upgrade to 4.6, we are considering adding new modules at the same time, for a manufacturing facility, using both produced and procured goods. BI sounds like it could be of great benefit to us. What are some phrases to help the managers see the value of adding this to our solution?

Naeem_Hashmi : You mean SAP R/3 upgrades? The BW is not an add-on module in SAP R/3 alone. SAP BW is a separate Instance. Then you add special components just like standard upgrade or patches in SAP R/3 for BW content. The value of SAP BI is that once you have a license for mySAP.com, BW is already in there without additional cost.. a big plus.

mlewis238894: Why is Business Intelligence important for eBusiness success?

Naeem_Hashmi : You have to make intelligent decisions to run your business regardless of traditional or e-Business model. However, Traditional business processes were slow, not very integrated, used to follow very rigid business rules, and mostly handled by the company employees. Today, in the eBusiness world, one has to make business decisions at the speed of the Internet, round the clock because there is no day or night concept in the Cyberspace. This forces new business applications providers to architect smart business Intelligence subsystems as an integral components of e-Business applications that are customer rather company employee driven. Giving more control to the customers requires good business intelligence subsystems integration with the e-Business applications to safeguard company's assets and increase customer satisfaction.

matt.spyers855835 : Do you consider BW to be a viable tool for an Enterprise Business Intelligence System?

Naeem_Hashmi : Yes, especially for the new e-business models. The reason being that SAP BW is not traditional DW, rather an environment that is very tightly integrated with business critical applications to support analytics along the way.

lbloss651552: Who are the key players for eBusiness analytics?

Naeem_Hashmi : Hard to say since every vendor that used to have a simple reporting tool or a simply query is now 'e-labeled'. Most major applications providers such as SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Siebel, etc. offer a suite of eBusiness Analytics to their customers. Among ERP vendors, SAP is leading the eBusiness analytics, followed by Oracle. A few days back I searched 'analytics' over the Internet and google.com found more than 100,000 hits. I would say, the ERP vendors will be the key players defining the eBusiness Analytics world.

rsundar67281: What is the interface architecture between BW and other New Dimension Products such as APO, B2B etc.?

Naeem_Hashmi : The answer to this question is very long. In simple terms, all share the same BASIS technical architecture (IDOC, RFCs, BAPIs) to exchange information among themselves. I have a presentation that outlines these interfaces. Drop me an email at nhashmi@aol.com.

lbloss651552: Can ERP vendors provide Business Intelligence Solutions for e-Business?

Naeem_Hashmi : Definitely. Who knows best how a business workflows and business rules are integrated in business applications than the ERP vendors. Having full visibility to business rules and a solid understanding of 'decision' points in the corporate business information life cycle, the ERP centric Business Intelligence solutions can provide very viable solutions.

Moderator: Naeem is the author of the highly acclaimed text Business Information Warehouse for SAP. Visit our bookstore to buy Naeem's book at a 15% discount.

debbie.woldum766591 : What are the advantages & disadvantages to load BW from flat files vs. with third party ETL tools such as Informatica's PowerCenter ? Would 3rd party tools be more beneficial than the flat file method if we need to load flat files frequently (every hour)?

Naeem_Hashmi : When you need to load non-R/3 data in BW, the flat file mechanism requires no tools. It is built in. The disadvantage is that you have to prepare it. The 3rd party tools do provide good ETL functionality and pull data automatically and load in the BW using staging BAPI. But tools are expensive depending on configuration. In my book, I have 3 chapters on this subject and describe pro/cons of each.

matt.spyers855835 : For a customer with R/3 and other legacy systems, can you elaborate on any issues that rise when bringing legacy data into BW?

Naeem_Hashmi : This is reality. I have not seen a company that has 100% SAP data, especially large companies. The main issue is the cultural issue when legacy application folks try to work with BW. Data mapping and integration is one thing that I could see as a major issue. But that can be handled with a smooth migration model.

debbie.woldum766591 : We currently have very little info in R/3 (although it is our direction) and have chosen BW as our D.W. standard. So ... we will be loading lots of legacy data. Do you think this will be successful?

Naeem_Hashmi : I think you are going in the right direction. Yes. There will be some issues but those issues will be there regardless of BW or other DW tools. One good thing with BW, you do not have to deal with many tools/training and huge operations support. The SAP R/3 people can also manage BW as well.

sapv4891219: Do you know of any BW implementations where none of the transaction systems are R/3? If so how happy are the customers?

Naeem_Hashmi : Yes. There are few companies who implemented BW when they had no SAP R/3. The main reason was global operations (multi-language, multi currency). They are very happy that they made that choice. The main pain was learning the SAP lingo and operations areas.

Moderator: Thank you for your questions. Naeem is busy answering them now. Stay tuned for his answers.

tpolitano2111 : SAP has partnered with MIS AG {aka. IntelliCube}. Is their MIS Decisionware an alternative especially their DeltaMiner product?

Naeem_Hashmi : Not that I am aware of. SAP always work with its technology partners to bring/integrate their technologies in their product sets. I do know that some of the MIS products are certified to access data from BW.

Moderator: Naeem is the author of the highly acclaimed text Business Information Warehouse for SAP. Visit our bookstore to buy Naeem's book at a 15% discount.

sapv4891219: When publishing web reports to the WEB, can we use the SAME ITS say as workplace uses or say EBP uses or does BW need to have it's own ITS?

Naeem_Hashmi : You can use the same ITS server. From high performance perspective, I would rather have a separate ITS server configured for BW operations rather WP.

ttearpoc291944: Who is the target user for BI? How much training is required to effectively utilize?

Naeem_Hashmi : Just about all members of an organization. Executives, Managers, Operations folks, Analysts. Several roles are predefined. Queries ad reports and EIS cockpits are predefined for the users. Moderate training is required.

Moderator: Our chat will be ending in 10 minutes. If you'd like to continue to discuss these issues with other users, Go to our forums at http://searchsap.discussions.techtarget.com/WebX?14@162.mklta22Vc6d^0@.ee83dd3!viewtype=&skip=&expand=

tparke26477782: What is SAP strategic direction with Business Warehouse current and in the future?

Naeem_Hashmi : SAP BW is at the core of SAP product strategies - today and tomorrow. So it is very important component.

bernie_paul380934 : Can you discuss the problems that would be encountered when building an SAP BW Warehouse from 2 separate R/3 systems, different versions. Any recommendations on how to approach this from a design point?

Naeem_Hashmi : I do see this is a very common scenario - complex one. I see several models here. One could be two separate BW instances connected to each R/3 and then join for enterprise reporting. Another option, that I recommend, is to build an Operational Data Store. Move data from both R/3 instances in the ODS and then build InfoCubes or DW from there. As I said earlier, it all depends on how information is used by the end users and implementation archit follows that.

Moderator: Naeem is the author of the highly acclaimed text Business Information Warehouse for SAP. Visit our bookstore to buy Naeem's book at a 15% discount.

anupam_pandey381161 : What 3rd party integration tools (like Mercator, Crossworlds, etc.) currently have interfaces to BW?

Naeem_Hashmi : Mercator is certified to load data in BW using Staging BAPI. I am not aware of Crossworld certification. I will publish a document at SearchSAP.com shortly that lists all products that interface with BW (data access and data loads).

thanavus670168: We checked business content of BW and then found that it did not match our requirements. Is it difficult to modify system match with our requirements? How long? Is it necessary to hire a consultant?

Naeem_Hashmi : It is not very difficult to modify Business Content. You simply create new object based on business content and then you delete/add/modify the thing the way you want. Not so hard.

tpolitano2111: I don't see SAP BW as an end-all to business analysis because of its lack of flexibility. Are there any third-party front-ends that enhance SAP BW analysis for the end-user?

Naeem_Hashmi : The 3rd part tools vendors (arcplan, Business Objects, Cognose, IBI, and others..) do connect to BW via ODBO. You can use their strengths against BW data.

Moderator: This concludes our Expert Live Q&A Session today with Naeem Hashmi. Our thanks to Naeem for taking the time out of his day to join us and answer questions. Feel free to move to our forums to continue discussing the subject among yourselves.