The first fruits of the SAP-Business Objects merger comes next month with the release of XI 3.0, the first major release of the software in more than two years. But there's no particular SAP integration benefits in this release which was under way before the $6.8 billion acquisition of Business Objects in January, although it does include better access to data within SAP Business Warehouse.
BusinessObjects XI 3.0 offers updates to many of the individual applications that make up the BusinessObjects XI portfolio, including the Crystal Reports 2008 reporting software and Xcelsius 2008 data visualisation tool. A new version of the Web-based Web Intelligence query and reporting software, for example, now provides users with both online and offline access. It can analyse unstructured data such as e-mails and documents. The platform also combines the vendor's data integration and data quality management tools into a singe product called BusinessObjects Data Services that improves the reliability of the data that's being pulled into the system for analysis.
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