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AtScale Adaptive Analytics (A3) vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

AtScale Adaptive Analytics ...
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
57th
Average Rating
5.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Data Virtualization (6th), Data Governance (47th), BI on Hadoop (2nd)
SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of AtScale Adaptive Analytics (A3) is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is 2.3%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform2.3%
AtScale Adaptive Analytics (A3)0.4%
Other97.3%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

it_user822762 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior BI and Reporting Analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The GUI interface is nice and easy to use, but the organization of the icons is not saved across users
Connecting to a Hadoop database to create a cube to connect to Tableau. We want to be able to easily create cubes which can be connected to Tableau for visualization The product had many issues. We had great collaboration with the product development team, but the product was not able to meet our…
Declan Dempsey - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at Keyrus
Provides efficient data reporting while needing easier deployment and improved interface
Users tend to put everything into Excel, though I try to discourage this. The best feature about it for me, and for them, is the fact that you have a universe that is well made. This means you don't have those months that get assigned. You can just get to the point and get a report very quickly. Unfortunately, in some ways, it's a double-edged sword because it becomes more of a self-service ETL, even for the reporting team. If you have a decent universe and you just want to quickly get something together, it's very usable. Compared to Click, you can drop those reports very quickly.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The GUI interface is nice and easy to use."
"The most valuable function of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is the universe, so customers can build their own reports without programming skills."
"To share a metadata service layer, you don't need to add a user or write a SQL query. Instead, you can present a raw database to your end user."
"First of all, visualization tools, productivity, and predictive forecasting are mature."
"Enables us to present data with Smart Objects that can be embedded within presentations and which automatically update when the presentations are run."
"The platform is a complete enterprise-level tool where everything is integrated to suffice your requirement."
"I rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an eight out of ten."
"This reporting and broadcasting solution has a lot of flexibilities and can connect to multiple source systems."
"The planning and dashboarding features have been useful. Additionally, the fixed-format reports are good."
 

Cons

"The organization of the icons is not saved across users."
"The product was not able to meet our 10 second refresh requirements."
"There was an issue with the incremental aggregation not working as indicated."
"Factoring in total implementation and maintenance costs, SAP BusinessObjects is too expensive. If you deal with a huge amount of data, you can go with BusinessObjects. However, if you are a medium-sized company with a modest amount of data, you can opt for another solution."
"It would be good if they could integrate the possibility for end users to create end models for themselves that they can use, especially for site operators, and if they could provide the end user not only the self-service BI, but also the self-service analytics, based on a predefined model, the same way that Oracle did."
"Technical support may not always be timely or effective."
"Its price should be better. It is expensive and not cost-effective. It should also be improved in terms of end-user experience. It requires further improvements for usability and ease of use. It should have more dashboarding metrics and much faster integration with ERP so that when you double click, you can instantly see the scenario-based result."
"When we implemented BusinessObjects, the setup was straightforward. After SAP bought BusinessObjects, it gradually became more and more stepwise. There are too many steps, and they take too much time."
"It is limited for us because SAP is shifting toward the cloud, and we can't use a cloud solution for SAP BusinessObjects. SAP introduced a product called PlusTimes one or two years ago and another one that I believe was called Automatic BI. This tool is more powerful than BusinessObjects and other tools because it's provided in the cloud."
"There is room for improvement in providing more user-friendly and versatile reporting options."
"The dashboard tool is called Lumira and it is very uncomfortable for developers to use. They should improve this in the future."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an expensive application."
"It is not a subscription model, but you must purchase a perpetual license for this."
"SAP is losing market to its competitors because of its costly user license and licensing model. They can do much better on the licensing side. That's what Microsoft has been doing, and that's why Power BI is gaining market share at the moment. SAP needs to relax a little bit on the licensing part. If Microsoft is giving people a solution that is half of the cost of SAP, people will definitely go with Power BI."
"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to improve its licensing cost."
"Its price is fair."
"We purchase licenses through Epic. So, we get an Epic price as opposed to the SAP price. If we were going to use other products like Webby that they offer or exclusively use BI Launch Pad, it would cost a lot because half of our employees would touch it in some fashion. So, we use Epic-Crystal integration to keep the licensing cost down. I believe the BI Launch Pad licensing is something like $800 for each, and the Crystal Report licensing is something like $500 for each, but that's not what we pay."
"Depending on your size, try to stick with SAP BusinessObjects BI Edge. Most people tend to overthink the licensing. Remember that one concurrent user means that one person can be performing a task at a given time. That does not mean that only one user can be on the system at a time, it means that only one person can be refreshing a report or designing a dashboard. There are tons of ways you can access your data or reports without consuming a license. I've seen cases where five concurrent licenses support thousands of users."
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Comparison Review

it_user6663 - PeerSpot reviewer
BI Expert at a transportation company with 51-200 employees
May 25, 2013
SAP Business Objects vs. Microsoft BI
A quick look at the whole idea on another weblogs gives you a sense that all of them just talked about very brief things like report refresh feature in BO or cube feature in MS Analysis Service. I choose MS BI and I want to share my reasons and opinions on why I choose it and give you another quick…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Healthcare Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Media Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise67
 

Questions from the Community

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Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...
 

Also Known As

AtScale, AtScale Intelligence Platform
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rakuten, TD Bank, Aetna, Glaxo-Smith Kline, Biogen, Toyota, Tyson
SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Domo and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools. Updated: January 2026.
881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.