SAP Business Object BI 4.3

SAP BO BI 4.3 RTC (restricted shipment) will be available in late 2019, with GA (general availability) in mid-2020. Mainstream maintenance will continue through 2026 or longer.

BI 4.3 plans to incorporate significant changes in their new release.

• A major improvement is the new default Fiori launchpad, which will replace the existing BI LaunchPad and offer a user experience that is both beautiful and business friendly.
• Enhancements relate to Installer, security (SAML-based SSO), and commentary service.
• Crystal Reports may benefit from cumulative enhancements, including conditional formatting and geo-maps.
• Webi will be modernized and re-energized, with new formatting and build panels, and a light menu bar. Most important, Webi will be simplified to enable self-service reporting and analysis, and to allow users to re-use existing Webi documents to build new information, share business semantics with others, and enforce consistency of information.
• In Sap BO BI 4.3 old products and functionalities will be removed, including the Deski Compatibility Pack, Report Conversion Tool, and Web Intelligence Java Applet.
• Design Studio 1.6 and Lumira 1.x may be excluded from maintenance with the BI 4.3 release.
• 32-bit versions of the Universe Designer Tool, Web Intelligence Rich Client, and Crystal Reports for Enterprise may be replaced with 64-bit versions.
• Overall, BI 4.3 should optimize hybrid capabilities by improving interoperability between Webi and SAC. It will enhance the mobile experience for business users. And it is expected to have a slick new look that users will love.

Future of Lumira
As per new announcement from SAP, SAC is their primary data discovery tool for all customers. That said, SAP will support Lumira 2.x until at least 2024. The Lumira 2.2 release will include a number of enhancements related to the generic analysis template, variants, charts, and workflows (Lumira Discovery), and custom calculations, context menu, nesting of composites, and bookmarking support (Lumira Designer).

Hybrid Deployment Architecture
A key highlight of the session was hybrid deployment and the important role of SAC in integrating on-prem deployments with cloud infrastructure without having to move data out of the customer network.