Missing Leo Apotheker

There was a lot of trepidation amongst the BusinessObjects community when SAP acquired Business Objects in January 2008. We had all seen how Oracle had consumed Hyperion (which had, in turn, consumed Brio) to the point of losing its identity as an independent BI solution. The question was would SAP do the same to BusinessObjects?

On the day of the acquisition, I was attending a joint sales and partner meeting for BusinessObjects in Las Vegas listening to a mix of top Business Objects and SAP Executives delivering presentations to motivate sales for the coming year. There was really very little of substance until this man named Leo Apotheker took to the stage. He was engaging and passionate as he explained that Business Objects would remain an autonomous division of SAP so that it could effectively continue to sell Business Intelligence to all. He then went on to explain who SAP was and the core values of the company and how those would benefit the BusinessObjects employees, partners and product suite.  He painted an exciting vision of both the direction for SAP and BusinessObjects. I believe he impressed and inspired a lot of people in the room that day.

The global financial crisis followed later that year and into 2009 and Apotheker had his work cut out for him to steer SAP through a difficult time but he continued to push Business Intelligence to the forefront of SAP as well as actively support the Sustainability solution initiative within SAP.

So at the beginning of 2010 as we emerged from that difficult period, I was both shocked and sad to see Leo Apotheker leave SAP.  Of course, what he put in place has borne remarkable results with now more than 50% of SAP’s license revenues coming from Business Intelligence (not bad when you consider SAP was eight times larger than Business Objects at the time of acquisition) and SAP a clear leader in the Sustainability solution arena.

Leo Apotheker is now the CEO of Hewlett-Packard ( a company eight times larger than SAP – HP Press release ) and I think they are very fortunate to have such a visionary leading them. Unfortunately, we will not see how much further he could have taken SAP but, from where I sit, he certainly set them on the right track.

In searching for a picture to post on this blog, I found the following blog post from Feb 7, 2010  http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/12079/news-analysis-saps-ceo-leo-apotheker-resigns/ which has many links including one to the official SAP press release.

Paul Grill started his career in Information Technology in the U.K. in 1978, as an Executive Data Processing Trainee for Honeywell. More than thirty years later, he still has a voracious appetite for learning as Information Technology continues to advance at an ever accelerating pace. He was first introduced to the world of Business Intelligence in 1991, in France, when he saw a demonstration of an early version of BusinessObjects on Windows 2.1. He returned to the U.S. to rave about this phenomenal product, but it was many years before BusinessObjects made it into the mainstream. Paul founded InfoSol in 1997, and made Business Intelligence one of the key solutions offered by the company. Today, InfoSol is a leading SAP BusinessObjects solutions partner, known for its expert consulting, education and innovative add-on solutions. Paul is well known within the SAP BusinessObjects community for his extensive knowledge of Business Intelligence, and he has lectured and written many articles on the subject. Paul enjoys writing, running and coaching kids soccer, and is passionate about Ancient Egyptology.

View the original article here

Missing Leo Apotheker

There was a lot of trepidation amongst the BusinessObjects community when SAP acquired Business Objects in January 2008. We had all seen how Oracle had consumed Hyperion (which had, in turn, consumed Brio) to the point of losing its identity as an independent BI solution. The question was would SAP do the same to BusinessObjects?

On the day of the acquisition, I was attending a joint sales and partner meeting for BusinessObjects in Las Vegas listening to a mix of top Business Objects and SAP Executives delivering presentations to motivate sales for the coming year. There was really very little of substance until this man named Leo Apotheker took to the stage. He was engaging and passionate as he explained that Business Objects would remain an autonomous division of SAP so that it could effectively continue to sell Business Intelligence to all. He then went on to explain who SAP was and the core values of the company and how those would benefit the BusinessObjects employees, partners and product suite.  He painted an exciting vision of both the direction for SAP and BusinessObjects. I believe he impressed and inspired a lot of people in the room that day.

The global financial crisis followed later that year and into 2009 and Apotheker had his work cut out for him to steer SAP through a difficult time but he continued to push Business Intelligence to the forefront of SAP as well as actively support the Sustainability solution initiative within SAP.

So at the beginning of 2010 as we emerged from that difficult period, I was both shocked and sad to see Leo Apotheker leave SAP.  Of course, what he put in place has borne remarkable results with now more than 50% of SAP’s license revenues coming from Business Intelligence (not bad when you consider SAP was eight times larger than Business Objects at the time of acquisition) and SAP a clear leader in the Sustainability solution arena.

Leo Apotheker is now the CEO of Hewlett-Packard ( a company eight times larger than SAP – HP Press release ) and I think they are very fortunate to have such a visionary leading them. Unfortunately, we will not see how much further he could have taken SAP but, from where I sit, he certainly set them on the right track.

In searching for a picture to post on this blog, I found the following blog post from Feb 7, 2010  http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/12079/news-analysis-saps-ceo-leo-apotheker-resigns/ which has many links including one to the official SAP press release.

Paul Grill started his career in Information Technology in the U.K. in 1978, as an Executive Data Processing Trainee for Honeywell. More than thirty years later, he still has a voracious appetite for learning as Information Technology continues to advance at an ever accelerating pace. He was first introduced to the world of Business Intelligence in 1991, in France, when he saw a demonstration of an early version of BusinessObjects on Windows 2.1. He returned to the U.S. to rave about this phenomenal product, but it was many years before BusinessObjects made it into the mainstream. Paul founded InfoSol in 1997, and made Business Intelligence one of the key solutions offered by the company. Today, InfoSol is a leading SAP BusinessObjects solutions partner, known for its expert consulting, education and innovative add-on solutions. Paul is well known within the SAP BusinessObjects community for his extensive knowledge of Business Intelligence, and he has lectured and written many articles on the subject. Paul enjoys writing, running and coaching kids soccer, and is passionate about Ancient Egyptology.

View the original article here

Missing Leo Apotheker

There was a lot of trepidation amongst the BusinessObjects community when SAP acquired Business Objects in January 2008. We had all seen how Oracle had consumed Hyperion (which had, in turn, consumed Brio) to the point of losing its identity as an independent BI solution. The question was would SAP do the same to BusinessObjects?

On the day of the acquisition, I was attending a joint sales and partner meeting for BusinessObjects in Las Vegas listening to a mix of top Business Objects and SAP Executives delivering presentations to motivate sales for the coming year. There was really very little of substance until this man named Leo Apotheker took to the stage. He was engaging and passionate as he explained that Business Objects would remain an autonomous division of SAP so that it could effectively continue to sell Business Intelligence to all. He then went on to explain who SAP was and the core values of the company and how those would benefit the BusinessObjects employees, partners and product suite.  He painted an exciting vision of both the direction for SAP and BusinessObjects. I believe he impressed and inspired a lot of people in the room that day.

The global financial crisis followed later that year and into 2009 and Apotheker had his work cut out for him to steer SAP through a difficult time but he continued to push Business Intelligence to the forefront of SAP as well as actively support the Sustainability solution initiative within SAP.

So at the beginning of 2010 as we emerged from that difficult period, I was both shocked and sad to see Leo Apotheker leave SAP.  Of course, what he put in place has borne remarkable results with now more than 50% of SAP’s license revenues coming from Business Intelligence (not bad when you consider SAP was eight times larger than Business Objects at the time of acquisition) and SAP a clear leader in the Sustainability solution arena.

Leo Apotheker is now the CEO of Hewlett-Packard ( a company eight times larger than SAP – HP Press release ) and I think they are very fortunate to have such a visionary leading them. Unfortunately, we will not see how much further he could have taken SAP but, from where I sit, he certainly set them on the right track.

In searching for a picture to post on this blog, I found the following blog post from Feb 7, 2010  http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/12079/news-analysis-saps-ceo-leo-apotheker-resigns/ which has many links including one to the official SAP press release.

Paul Grill started his career in Information Technology in the U.K. in 1978, as an Executive Data Processing Trainee for Honeywell. More than thirty years later, he still has a voracious appetite for learning as Information Technology continues to advance at an ever accelerating pace. He was first introduced to the world of Business Intelligence in 1991, in France, when he saw a demonstration of an early version of BusinessObjects on Windows 2.1. He returned to the U.S. to rave about this phenomenal product, but it was many years before BusinessObjects made it into the mainstream. Paul founded InfoSol in 1997, and made Business Intelligence one of the key solutions offered by the company. Today, InfoSol is a leading SAP BusinessObjects solutions partner, known for its expert consulting, education and innovative add-on solutions. Paul is well known within the SAP BusinessObjects community for his extensive knowledge of Business Intelligence, and he has lectured and written many articles on the subject. Paul enjoys writing, running and coaching kids soccer, and is passionate about Ancient Egyptology.

View the original article here

Missing Leo Apotheker

There was a lot of trepidation amongst the BusinessObjects community when SAP acquired Business Objects in January 2008. We had all seen how Oracle had consumed Hyperion (which had, in turn, consumed Brio) to the point of losing its identity as an independent BI solution. The question was would SAP do the same to BusinessObjects?

On the day of the acquisition, I was attending a joint sales and partner meeting for BusinessObjects in Las Vegas listening to a mix of top Business Objects and SAP Executives delivering presentations to motivate sales for the coming year. There was really very little of substance until this man named Leo Apotheker took to the stage. He was engaging and passionate as he explained that Business Objects would remain an autonomous division of SAP so that it could effectively continue to sell Business Intelligence to all. He then went on to explain who SAP was and the core values of the company and how those would benefit the BusinessObjects employees, partners and product suite.  He painted an exciting vision of both the direction for SAP and BusinessObjects. I believe he impressed and inspired a lot of people in the room that day.

The global financial crisis followed later that year and into 2009 and Apotheker had his work cut out for him to steer SAP through a difficult time but he continued to push Business Intelligence to the forefront of SAP as well as actively support the Sustainability solution initiative within SAP.

So at the beginning of 2010 as we emerged from that difficult period, I was both shocked and sad to see Leo Apotheker leave SAP.  Of course, what he put in place has borne remarkable results with now more than 50% of SAP’s license revenues coming from Business Intelligence (not bad when you consider SAP was eight times larger than Business Objects at the time of acquisition) and SAP a clear leader in the Sustainability solution arena.

Leo Apotheker is now the CEO of Hewlett-Packard ( a company eight times larger than SAP – HP Press release ) and I think they are very fortunate to have such a visionary leading them. Unfortunately, we will not see how much further he could have taken SAP but, from where I sit, he certainly set them on the right track.

In searching for a picture to post on this blog, I found the following blog post from Feb 7, 2010  http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/12079/news-analysis-saps-ceo-leo-apotheker-resigns/ which has many links including one to the official SAP press release.

Paul Grill started his career in Information Technology in the U.K. in 1978, as an Executive Data Processing Trainee for Honeywell. More than thirty years later, he still has a voracious appetite for learning as Information Technology continues to advance at an ever accelerating pace. He was first introduced to the world of Business Intelligence in 1991, in France, when he saw a demonstration of an early version of BusinessObjects on Windows 2.1. He returned to the U.S. to rave about this phenomenal product, but it was many years before BusinessObjects made it into the mainstream. Paul founded InfoSol in 1997, and made Business Intelligence one of the key solutions offered by the company. Today, InfoSol is a leading SAP BusinessObjects solutions partner, known for its expert consulting, education and innovative add-on solutions. Paul is well known within the SAP BusinessObjects community for his extensive knowledge of Business Intelligence, and he has lectured and written many articles on the subject. Paul enjoys writing, running and coaching kids soccer, and is passionate about Ancient Egyptology.

View the original article here

Missing Leo Apotheker

There was a lot of trepidation amongst the BusinessObjects community when SAP acquired Business Objects in January 2008. We had all seen how Oracle had consumed Hyperion (which had, in turn, consumed Brio) to the point of losing its identity as an independent BI solution. The question was would SAP do the same to BusinessObjects?

On the day of the acquisition, I was attending a joint sales and partner meeting for BusinessObjects in Las Vegas listening to a mix of top Business Objects and SAP Executives delivering presentations to motivate sales for the coming year. There was really very little of substance until this man named Leo Apotheker took to the stage. He was engaging and passionate as he explained that Business Objects would remain an autonomous division of SAP so that it could effectively continue to sell Business Intelligence to all. He then went on to explain who SAP was and the core values of the company and how those would benefit the BusinessObjects employees, partners and product suite.  He painted an exciting vision of both the direction for SAP and BusinessObjects. I believe he impressed and inspired a lot of people in the room that day.

The global financial crisis followed later that year and into 2009 and Apotheker had his work cut out for him to steer SAP through a difficult time but he continued to push Business Intelligence to the forefront of SAP as well as actively support the Sustainability solution initiative within SAP.

So at the beginning of 2010 as we emerged from that difficult period, I was both shocked and sad to see Leo Apotheker leave SAP.  Of course, what he put in place has borne remarkable results with now more than 50% of SAP’s license revenues coming from Business Intelligence (not bad when you consider SAP was eight times larger than Business Objects at the time of acquisition) and SAP a clear leader in the Sustainability solution arena.

Leo Apotheker is now the CEO of Hewlett-Packard ( a company eight times larger than SAP – HP Press release ) and I think they are very fortunate to have such a visionary leading them. Unfortunately, we will not see how much further he could have taken SAP but, from where I sit, he certainly set them on the right track.

In searching for a picture to post on this blog, I found the following blog post from Feb 7, 2010  http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/12079/news-analysis-saps-ceo-leo-apotheker-resigns/ which has many links including one to the official SAP press release.

Paul Grill started his career in Information Technology in the U.K. in 1978, as an Executive Data Processing Trainee for Honeywell. More than thirty years later, he still has a voracious appetite for learning as Information Technology continues to advance at an ever accelerating pace. He was first introduced to the world of Business Intelligence in 1991, in France, when he saw a demonstration of an early version of BusinessObjects on Windows 2.1. He returned to the U.S. to rave about this phenomenal product, but it was many years before BusinessObjects made it into the mainstream. Paul founded InfoSol in 1997, and made Business Intelligence one of the key solutions offered by the company. Today, InfoSol is a leading SAP BusinessObjects solutions partner, known for its expert consulting, education and innovative add-on solutions. Paul is well known within the SAP BusinessObjects community for his extensive knowledge of Business Intelligence, and he has lectured and written many articles on the subject. Paul enjoys writing, running and coaching kids soccer, and is passionate about Ancient Egyptology.

View the original article here

How to handle missing data in time series analysis

Posted by Hemanta Banerjee on March 26, 2010

Saw a post today on the clearpeaks blog on ways to display time series charts with missing data. This is something that all of us run into and I wanted to try out some of the suggestions posted on the blog and actually implement those using XCelsius to see whether they can be done in real world.

So here is the situation. As you can see below I have sales for the various months of the year with data for Mar-June missing. If I do nothing and try to draw a chart it is actually misleading since it does not tell

the viewer that some of the months is missing. It is better if we include all the months and show missing data by a broken chart as shown below.

This is better since at least the viewer of the chart knows that the data is missing for some of the months.

This is of course not ideal since we would like to use the data we have to extrapolate and have a better visualization that shows the trend of sales for the full year including the missing months.

So how is done?

We added an excel formula to calculate a rolling average function… we could have used other functionality and even get the backend database to calculate the missing months.

With this new layout we could draw out the chart, and we do not have missing data… however I feel that we are again misleading the user since there is no way for the user to know that Apr to Jun is made up data.

Ideal would be if we could draw that section of the chart in a different color.

This is something that I thought would be easy but turned out to be a little bit complicated.

In the end I ended up doing a hack, which I am not sure if it is a scalable… In the table on the right, the yellow section is the data section. That has all the data from the database as well as the rolling months. Using that I have created 2 series, 1 which contains the real data (red) and another which contains the calculated months (green). For the calculated months series I have also included the boundary months to make sure that I have a continuous line.

Then I setup 2 series in XCelsius, the 1st pointing to the red portions, and the 2nd pointing to the green section of the spreadsheet.

And I have the final chart I need.

If someone has a better way of doing this using XCelsius would love to hear.

This entry was posted on March 26, 2010 at 5:35 pm and is filed under BusinessObjects, XCelsius. Tagged: XCelsius, BOE, BusinessObjects, Missing Data, Visualization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Be the first to like this post.

View the original article here

How to handle missing data in time series analysis

Posted by Hemanta Banerjee on March 26, 2010

Saw a post today on the clearpeaks blog on ways to display time series charts with missing data. This is something that all of us run into and I wanted to try out some of the suggestions posted on the blog and actually implement those using XCelsius to see whether they can be done in real world.

So here is the situation. As you can see below I have sales for the various months of the year with data for Mar-June missing. If I do nothing and try to draw a chart it is actually misleading since it does not tell

the viewer that some of the months is missing. It is better if we include all the months and show missing data by a broken chart as shown below.

This is better since at least the viewer of the chart knows that the data is missing for some of the months.

This is of course not ideal since we would like to use the data we have to extrapolate and have a better visualization that shows the trend of sales for the full year including the missing months.

So how is done?

We added an excel formula to calculate a rolling average function… we could have used other functionality and even get the backend database to calculate the missing months.

With this new layout we could draw out the chart, and we do not have missing data… however I feel that we are again misleading the user since there is no way for the user to know that Apr to Jun is made up data.

Ideal would be if we could draw that section of the chart in a different color.

This is something that I thought would be easy but turned out to be a little bit complicated.

In the end I ended up doing a hack, which I am not sure if it is a scalable… In the table on the right, the yellow section is the data section. That has all the data from the database as well as the rolling months. Using that I have created 2 series, 1 which contains the real data (red) and another which contains the calculated months (green). For the calculated months series I have also included the boundary months to make sure that I have a continuous line.

Then I setup 2 series in XCelsius, the 1st pointing to the red portions, and the 2nd pointing to the green section of the spreadsheet.

And I have the final chart I need.

If someone has a better way of doing this using XCelsius would love to hear.

This entry was posted on March 26, 2010 at 5:35 pm and is filed under BusinessObjects, XCelsius. Tagged: XCelsius, BOE, BusinessObjects, Missing Data, Visualization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

View the original article here

How to handle missing data in time series analysis

Posted by Hemanta Banerjee on March 26, 2010

Saw a post today on the clearpeaks blog on ways to display time series charts with missing data. This is something that all of us run into and I wanted to try out some of the suggestions posted on the blog and actually implement those using XCelsius to see whether they can be done in real world.

So here is the situation. As you can see below I have sales for the various months of the year with data for Mar-June missing. If I do nothing and try to draw a chart it is actually misleading since it does not tell

the viewer that some of the months is missing. It is better if we include all the months and show missing data by a broken chart as shown below.

This is better since at least the viewer of the chart knows that the data is missing for some of the months.

This is of course not ideal since we would like to use the data we have to extrapolate and have a better visualization that shows the trend of sales for the full year including the missing months.

So how is done?

We added an excel formula to calculate a rolling average function… we could have used other functionality and even get the backend database to calculate the missing months.

With this new layout we could draw out the chart, and we do not have missing data… however I feel that we are again misleading the user since there is no way for the user to know that Apr to Jun is made up data.

Ideal would be if we could draw that section of the chart in a different color.

This is something that I thought would be easy but turned out to be a little bit complicated.

In the end I ended up doing a hack, which I am not sure if it is a scalable… In the table on the right, the yellow section is the data section. That has all the data from the database as well as the rolling months. Using that I have created 2 series, 1 which contains the real data (red) and another which contains the calculated months (green). For the calculated months series I have also included the boundary months to make sure that I have a continuous line.

Then I setup 2 series in XCelsius, the 1st pointing to the red portions, and the 2nd pointing to the green section of the spreadsheet.

And I have the final chart I need.

If someone has a better way of doing this using XCelsius would love to hear.

This entry was posted on March 26, 2010 at 5:35 pm and is filed under BusinessObjects, XCelsius. Tagged: XCelsius, BOE, BusinessObjects, Missing Data, Visualization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

View the original article here