Apache Spark vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apache Spark
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
N/AN/A
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
The SAP® BusinessObjects™ Business Intelligence Platform provides users with ad hoc queries, reporting, data visualizations, and analysis tools. Its integrated, unified infrastructure aims to offer scalability from one-to-many tools and interfaces on-premise, in the cloud, or as a hybrid approach.N/A
Pricing
Apache SparkSAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apache SparkSAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apache SparkSAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Apache SparkSAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Apache Spark
-
Ratings
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
7.7
49 Ratings
6% below category average
Pixel Perfect reports00 Ratings7.444 Ratings
Customizable dashboards00 Ratings8.145 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates00 Ratings7.745 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Apache Spark
-
Ratings
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
8.2
46 Ratings
1% above category average
Drill-down analysis00 Ratings9.045 Ratings
Formatting capabilities00 Ratings8.345 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages00 Ratings7.531 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration00 Ratings8.245 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Apache Spark
-
Ratings
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
8.7
46 Ratings
4% above category average
Publish to Web00 Ratings8.338 Ratings
Publish to PDF00 Ratings7.944 Ratings
Report Versioning00 Ratings9.140 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling00 Ratings9.145 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings9.224 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Apache Spark
-
Ratings
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
8.3
41 Ratings
3% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)00 Ratings8.339 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization00 Ratings7.737 Ratings
Predictive Analytics00 Ratings8.936 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Apache Spark
-
Ratings
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
9.4
46 Ratings
9% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings8.946 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings9.144 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings9.843 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings9.927 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Apache Spark
-
Ratings
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
8.8
32 Ratings
10% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings8.431 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings9.026 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings9.128 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Apache Spark
-
Ratings
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
7.5
22 Ratings
5% below category average
REST API00 Ratings7.319 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings7.217 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings8.116 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings7.520 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings7.319 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings7.418 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Apache SparkSAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cloudera Manager
Cloudera Manager
Score 9.7 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Analytics Engine
IBM Analytics Engine
Score 8.9 out of 10
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
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User Ratings
Apache SparkSAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Likelihood to Recommend
9.9
(24 ratings)
7.7
(71 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.3
(24 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(3 ratings)
9.0
(14 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(5 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(10 ratings)
Support Rating
8.7
(4 ratings)
8.6
(16 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(4 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(8 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache SparkSAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Likelihood to Recommend
Apache
Well suited: To most of the local run of datasets and non-prod systems - scalability is not a problem at all. Including data from multiple types of data sources is an added advantage. MLlib is a decently nice built-in library that can be used for most of the ML tasks. Less appropriate: We had to work on a RecSys where the music dataset that we used was around 300+Gb in size. We faced memory-based issues. Few times we also got memory errors. Also the MLlib library does not have support for advanced analytics and deep-learning frameworks support. Understanding the internals of the working of Apache Spark for beginners is highly not possible.
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SAP
The proper management of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards requires an expert on the team to manage and build reports. If an organization does not have the proper expertise on board to build and deploy reports it will fail. Data analytics, dropping into excel, and broadcasting of information are major bonuses for the use of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards.
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Pros
Apache
  • Apache Spark makes processing very large data sets possible. It handles these data sets in a fairly quick manner.
  • Apache Spark does a fairly good job implementing machine learning models for larger data sets.
  • Apache Spark seems to be a rapidly advancing software, with the new features making the software ever more straight-forward to use.
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SAP
  • This software is easy to initially learn, and very powerful in producing reusable reports.
  • It is much faster than my company's internal manual queries. The ability to build off of a saved query and share queries to other users is a great positive.
  • My favorite part is that you can run queries in the background and it does not interfere with your current work or slow your computer down.
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Cons
Apache
  • Memory management. Very weak on that.
  • PySpark not as robust as scala with spark.
  • spark master HA is needed. Not as HA as it should be.
  • Locality should not be a necessity, but does help improvement. But would prefer no locality
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SAP
  • The installation can be very complex and time-consuming, it requires a lot of planning and foresight as to what role the software will play in the organization.
  • The software has a relatively large learning curve that takes dedicated users months to get comfortable with, the UI is a bit intimidating for new users.
  • SAP could organize their help better, it can be difficult to find dependable solutions to issues via their website and support channels.
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Likelihood to Renew
Apache
Capacity of computing data in cluster and fast speed.
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SAP
The institution has decided to move in a different direction, and will be using MSBI for reporting. I have been very happy with the Business Objects suite of tools, and will continue to use them heavily until we make the transition.
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Usability
Apache
The only thing I dislike about spark's usability is the learning curve, there are many actions and transformations, however, its wide-range of uses for ETL processing, facility to integrate and it's multi-language support make this library a powerhouse for your data science solutions. It has especially aided us with its lightning-fast processing times.
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SAP
From a server and client side perspective. the Business Intelligence Platform provides a foundation for all aspects of content development, distribution, analysis, collaboration and self service. Ease of use from targeted content delivery through controlled accessibility. Content exporting in the format of the users choice. Scheduling for internal or external delivery. Public and private folders for secure content access when requied. Web based for viewing on the users device of choice without the need to download additional applications.
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Reliability and Availability
Apache
No answers on this topic
SAP
When we implemented 3.1, we had a tough time managing the system: It took almost a year to stabilize.

With 4.0, we want to roll out to more users, and are holding back because of fears about the performance issue
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Performance
Apache
No answers on this topic
SAP
Overall, the tool (Web Intelligence 4.2) is fast and solid. One issue is a dependability on JAVA for a full feature report creation/edit capabilities (as opposed to limited HTML option). Second, planned end of JAVA support by major browsers (Chrome is already not supporting JAVA applet).
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Support Rating
Apache
1. It integrates very well with scala or python. 2. It's very easy to understand SQL interoperability. 3. Apache is way faster than the other competitive technologies. 4. The support from the Apache community is very huge for Spark. 5. Execution times are faster as compared to others. 6. There are a large number of forums available for Apache Spark. 7. The code availability for Apache Spark is simpler and easy to gain access to. 8. Many organizations use Apache Spark, so many solutions are available for existing applications.
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SAP
SAP has released various versions of SAP BO BI. starting from 3.1 and going to 4.0,4.1,4.2 and latest being 4.3. SAP provides support to these new versions. As new versions keep on coming, support for the very old software goes out of scope from SAP. it is when the different organization plans to get their BO content migrated from a lower version to a newer version. The newer version had definitely added functionality and features which ease the work of users.
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In-Person Training
Apache
No answers on this topic
SAP
SAP authorized training is best, Please go ahead with it. Even lot of online training options/videos available for self learning
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Online Training
Apache
No answers on this topic
SAP
I haven't used it or got feedback from the end user.

Content looks to be pretty detailed. Focused on SQL but not BW.
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Implementation Rating
Apache
No answers on this topic
SAP
Hire specialists and experienced staff. Mix some beginners so that everyone is not a leader but a learner too. Plan well; architect well; break down implementation in small steps and move towards larger steps. Create a centralized and authorized SAP Business Objects implementation team.
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Alternatives Considered
Apache
All the above systems work quite well on big data transformations whereas Spark really shines with its bigger API support and its ability to read from and write to multiple data sources. Using Spark one can easily switch between declarative versus imperative versus functional type programming easily based on the situation. Also it doesn't need special data ingestion or indexing pre-processing like Presto. Combining it with Jupyter Notebooks (https://github.com/jupyter-incubator/sparkmagic), one can develop the Spark code in an interactive manner in Scala or Python
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SAP
We selected SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) based on price. It can stack up against others in terms of price and honestly, that's about it. Salesforce Commerce does a hell of a better job at handling it. However, in the space of Business Intelligence, SAP can do more, and that's why at the end we went with it
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Scalability
Apache
No answers on this topic
SAP
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform supports SOA Service Oriented Architecture. You can start/restart/enable/disable all the servers. You can seamless do load balancing and clustering. It supports all leading application and web server. Supports LDAP SSO integration. People who can work on excel with training they can work on SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence, dashboard, Lumira, Information design tool product suite. Tool is very user friendly and easy to learn and implement
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Return on Investment
Apache
  • Faster turn around on feature development, we have seen a noticeable improvement in our agile development since using Spark.
  • Easy adoption, having multiple departments use the same underlying technology even if the use cases are very different allows for more commonality amongst applications which definitely makes the operations team happy.
  • Performance, we have been able to make some applications run over 20x faster since switching to Spark. This has saved us time, headaches, and operating costs.
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SAP
  • By generating and distributing reports in a timely manner, we were able to save millions of dollars for the company which otherwise would not have been visible.
  • Almost realtime dashboard, saved the company a huge amount by showing the outages and kept the company from buying a tool to do just that.
  • It showed the customers who were not paying the bills and were missing in the system due to some loophole. This was visible by doing reporting on the theft usage of electricity.
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ScreenShots