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BusinessObjects had another great year in 2024. Many organizations who planned to replace BusinessObjects decided to keep it and, in some cases, added licenses or re-purchased it again!
While Microsoft PowerBI continued to eat into the Tableau base, BusinessObjects beat them both hands-down for operational and BI reporting.
That was basically the story in 2023 and the trend just continued throughout 2024. Yes, most BusinessObjects customers also use PowerBI or Tableau but they are keeping BusinessObjects for their mission critical reporting.
Many BusinessObjects customers also upgraded to BI 4.3 in 2024 to avoid the end-of-life support for BI 4.2 which took effect at the end of 2024. Those that are still running BI 4.2 in 2025 are taking on a big security risk which in today’s environment of constant cybersecurity attacks should not be taken lightly.
Many have also converted or started converting their old universes (UNV format) to the new universe design tool (UNX format) as the old format will no longer be supported after BI 4.3 at the end of 2027.
Organizations have been wise to invest in BusinessObjects over the last few years as there is really nothing equivalent in the BI ecosystem to replace it’s comprehensive reporting capabilities or its versatile semantic layer.
The 10-year plus roadmap for BusinessObjects announced in 2022 was further extended in 2024 and a new cadence of software releases unveiled.
As customers eagerly await the new BI 2025 release expected to be generally available by mid-year, there will be a BI 2027 release two years later and a BI 2029 release two years after that. Each release will have new features and functionality as BusinessObjects just gets better and better.
I estimate about 25% of BusinessObjects customers currently run BO in the cloud using their own private cloud and that number will continue to grow in 2025 as more move their production applications and data repositories to the cloud.
We also saw an uptick in BusinessObjects training in 2024. While a lot of this can be attributed to learning the new Web Intelligence User Interface in Webi 4.3, even more appear to be learning the new Web Intelligence “soup to nuts” so as to understand all the new functionality that makes creating Webi reports and visualizations so much easier. I expect this trend to continue in 2025 especially with even more functionality in Webi 2025.
I am expecting 2025 to be an even bigger and better year for BusinessObjects than 2024 as even more organizations come to the realization that it cannot easily be replaced and makes no financial sense to do so.
InfoSol has scheduled another full year of free SpeakBO educational webinars along with planning regional BusinessObjects user group meetings around the US and maybe a couple in Europe!- hey, if the NFL can do it, so can we!!
We have also launched our annual BusinessObjects conference, IBIS 2025 at the Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain, AZ from June 23-25 with the agenda just being released . Tons of great sessions on BI 4.3 and BI 2025 will be included. The theme of this year’s conference is “Then and Now” as we contrast the past and present of BusinessObjects and Business Intelligence and show how we can learn from the past to make the journey forward that much easier. I hope to see you there.
A big congratulations to BusinessObjects for 2024 and looking forward to an exciting and even more successful 2025.
Wishing you all the happiest of New Year’s.
