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October 2007
Insight 2007 User Conference Edition

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The Repository comes out every 6 - 10 weeks. You'll find Crystal tools tips and tricks, news about Crystal Reports and Crystal Reports Server, Crystal Xcelsius, BusinessObjects Edge, and BusinessObjects OnDemand (including CrystalReports.com).

Insight 2007 User Conference
By George Peck
President - Ablaze Group, Inc.

We just returned from the Insight 2007 Business Objects User Conference in Orlando. We’re enjoying a renewed partner relationship with Business Objects, as well as coming up to speed on their new line of mid-market products. As such, this was an important conference for us to attend. Here are our impressions:

General Sessions These haven’t changed... way overboard on hype and “grandiose vision,” along with some glimpses at new technology and product direction. It all began with the conference slogan for 2007, Let There Be Light™. Notice that I actually mirrored the trademark symbol that was included on the conference slides. Someone needs to explain to me how that phrase can be trademarked!

After an excessive “revue” with loud music and dancers with flags and “twirling light sticks,” the rest of the session got underway. There was minimal discussion on the pending SAP acquisition, save for lawyer-generated SEC disclaimers included in slides, and a few bad German accents and related jokes. One of the first announcements of the initial session was the unveiling of Crystal Reports 2008. We can finally talk about this after this announcement, even though we’ve been in possession of a beta copy for several weeks. (As an aside, my publisher, Osborne/McGraw-Hill, had a table at the event and we announced my next book, Crystal Reports 2008: The Complete Reference, immediately after the software announcement!)

Other General Session announcements/demos included an upcoming upgrade to Crystal Xcelsius, a slew of enhanced Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) tools, a combination search and analysis product (dubbed Polestar) built on top of BusinessObjects Enterprise XI, a demonstration of logical import and organization of “unstructured data,” and a look at some initial ideas coming from the recently-unveiled Business Objects Labs, including a BI “widget” that exposes a few key company metrics somewhat unobtrusively on your Windows desktop.

This year’s keynote speaker was Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. While Don took every opportunity to plug his books, he did get around to his impression that the future of not just BI, but computing in general, is collaboration. He discussed various themes and examples of how this is coming about (the huge rise in the popularity of Wikipedia at the expense of Encyclopedia Britannica, for example). A BOBJ marketing executive followed Don with a presentation attempting to tie BOBJ offerings to this paradigm, showing Business Objects Labs’ first attempt at “object ratings” for BusinessObjects Enterprise (oh goody, now your viewers can rate your reports from 1 to 5 stars!).

Specific Product Directions More substantive and specific highlights from the conference include:

Crystal Reports 2008 This was probably the biggest announcement of the conference. This long-awaited upgrade to the BOBJ product of longest standing covered the new features of the latest version of this tool, which is slated to ship by the end of November (the current beta version of the product was distributed to all attendees, and is available for download from the Business Objects website). We’ll highlight all the new features of CR 2008 in an upcoming Online Learning Series session.

BusinessObjects Edge (including Premium Edition) What’s in a name! Originally known as BusinessObjects BI Server, this product was later renamed Crystal Decisions. This apparently created confusion with the BOBJ-acquired company of the same name, so the product has been re-branded yet again, this time being known as BusinessObjects Edge. In addition to the name change, the third and final edition (Premium Edition) was announced. This product line will also be covered in an Online Learning Series session later in 2007.

BusinessObjects Enterprise While a companion version of the Enterprise line (Crystal Reports Server, Edge, BusinessObjects Enterprise) won’t be released at the same time as Crystal Reports 2008, new versions of these tools are slated for “sometime later in 2008.” Along with substantial changes to the look and feel of the products, we think Crystal Reports organizations will be particularly excited about the new report bursting capabilities coming in these future releases.

Crystal Xcelsius Enhancements An upgrade to Crystal Xcelsius is on the way next year as well. Of particular interest will be the ability to make changes to the underlying Excel data model right from within the Xcelsius interface. There will no longer be a need to open the original sheet in Excel, edit, save, and re-import.

Overall, we found the conference to be very beneficial. We enjoyed seeing a few of our customers in person, announcing the latest book, and taking the opportunity to become more familiar with the expanded line of products that The Ablaze Group is reselling and supporting. We’re looking forward to the opportunity to help you make the best use of these products in your own organization.