SAP BusinessObjects 4.0 announced at TechEd

A new version of SAP's BusinessObjects will be arriving this year, according to comments made at the company's annual TechEd conference in Berlin on Tuesday by Vishal Sikka, chief technology officer.

BusinessObjects Explorer 4.0, codenamed Aurora internally, will be available by the end of the year according to Sikka.

"About two and a half years ago, when SAP and Business Objects came together we launched an aggressive effort to consolidate and harmonise the entire Business Objects portfolio but also bring it together with Netweaver, the result of that is the new release of BusinessObjects coming this quarter," said Sikka during his keynote address.

BusinessObjects 4.0 is the first release to bring one consistent design across a variety of different clients such as Xcelcius, Crystal, and Explorer.

"[It has]One consistent design time across all of these, whether it is for reporting, dashboards, ad-hoc analysis, interactive exploration with Explorer, integration with SAP Netweaver, with Identity Management, Life-Cycle management, with Solution Manager, with Business Warehouse," said Vikka.

The company says it has also added multi-dimensional analytical ability so that users can analyse many different types of data.

"It's an awesome release, it's a once in a generation opportunity for us to renew the entire BusinessObjects landscape, the entire BusinessObjects install base, we're extremely excited about it," said Vikka.

At the start of October SAP launched its first app for iOS devices, designed to tie-in with the company's Business ByDesign software, it provides small-to-medium sized businesses with pre-configured processes for managing many parts of their operations.

The app is currently targeted at users in managerial or sales roles, and only iOS devices, but the company says that it plans to embrace more platforms in the future, including Android and Windows Phone 7 and BlackBerry.