SAP Moves Closer to BI as a Service

SAP officials didn’t divulge exactly when the new SAP BusinessObjects BI on Demand will be available beyond soon; and specific pricing is not available yet either.

SAP has been under mounting criticism for being late with SaaS offerings overall, and appears anxious to demonstrate a working version of the product.

SAP executive vice president Marge Breya, who is leading a general embrace of all things Web 2.0 at SAP, said SAP expects do well in this SaaS category because customers want one vendor for both on-premise and SasS application software and the fact that SAP has taken care to tightly integrate the two offerings.

This integration, she said, creates a “borderless BI system” that gives business users the benefits of a SaaS service in an offering that the IT department respects in terms of robustness and security.