Antivia Adds Xcelsius on the iPad

Are you ready to move your Xcelsius (SAP Dashboards) to the iPad yet?

There’s nothing stopping you!

No, not even the fact that iOS doesn’t support flash.

Antivia’s new XWIS Anywhere bring a new product to their already popular suite of BusinessObjects extensions.

Antivia XWIS Anywhere

Antivia’s XWIS Anywhere is going to overcome a technology hurdle that SAP has been unable or unwilling to clear — Xcelsius (aka SAP Dashboards) on the iPad.

Antivia provided an in depth 55 minute presentation about Antivia XWIS Anywhere.  They are committed to:

  • Mobilizing Any Xcelsius Dashboard
  • Providing a Native iPad Experience
  • Full Catalog and Management inside SAP BusinessObjects
  • Additional iPad Security (for locally cached content)
  • Quick Deployment (hours instead of days or weeks)
  • Allow Offline Slideshows  (Screenshots of Xcelsius dashboards)
  • Access to WebIntelligence and Crystal Reports

Notables

It is important to note that because XWIS Anywhere is leveraging the SAP BusinessObjects repository, if the dashboard does not exist in the repository then it will not be available for the iPad.  A perfect example of this is the Xcelsius BICS connectivity for Netweaver.  These dashboards must be published to SAP BW and run from within the context of the Netweaver application server.  However, this is only a short term limitation.  SAP does plan to support BICS  connectivity for Dashboards saved into the SAP BusinessObjects repository with the next release, SAP BusinessObjects v4.0 SP3.

One glaring feature that seemed to be missing over the similar solution from Exxova is the zoom in/zoom out capability.  With Exxova, it works very much like the native iPad browser.  Users can use two fingers to zoom in and zoom out of their Dashboards.  This is great when viewing dashboards which might be hard to read – or helpful for executives who have difficulty with small print.

UPDATE:  XWIS Anywhere does support pinch and zoom (using native iPad gestures)

Here is a sample dashboard view:

Hospice Dashboard - Standard View

By placing two fingers on the screen and pulling them apart, Exxova allows you to zoom into a specific area of the dashboard and at the same time a small thumbnail (indicated by the red arrow) shows you a small red box indicating where you are on within the context of the dashboard:

Same Hospice Dashboard - Zoomed In

Future of SAP Dashboards

Donald MacCormick indicated during the webinar that Xcelsius/SAP Dashboards will be move to HTML5 in 2012.  That means he expects some subset of functionality available by the end of 2012.  What does that mean for you?   It means you can invest in Antivia today, move your dashboards to the iPad today, and when SAP eventually provides full Xcelsius HTML5 functionality (that could be some time), you can move ahead at your own convenience.

You will be prepared for change before it happens.  Because the XWIS Anywhere application is a native iPad application with a “screen emulation” technology in the middle, when HTML5 becomes available, Antivia will simply replace the existing “screen emulation” technology with the HTML5 SAP Dashboards output.

Keep your users happy.  Make dashboards available on the iPad today.

You won’t regret it…

«Good BI»

 

4 replies on “Antivia Adds Xcelsius on the iPad”

  1. Hi David,

    Thanks for this post.

    The major problem i currently see in the Xcelsius + Explorer ipad la la party is the disregard from Android devices and Iphone,although BI4 feature pack 3 will support iphone and android in Q2 this year.

    I can’t see long life for Xcelsius while HTML5 is the future and while most of the organiztaion deployments is still smartphones like Iphone and Android.

    Xcelsius engine will be replaced to HTML5 and while the Excel layer is also a limitation
    i can’t see how the product will remain the same instead of becoming what it should be:

    A native web + smartphone application that isn’t bound to Excel ,connects directly to data and visualiztion objects with simple drag & drop.

    Thanks

    Yoav

    1. Great! Glad to see that’s supported. With some dashboards I’ve created, the text can look quite small on an iPad.

  2. The streaming technology is fantastic from a technical point of view. Up until yesterday, this was a great solution. The problem is BO will have HTML support ‘soon’. Yes, it will probably be a year from now when it actually becomes available, but still, what CTO/CIO is going to spend $150-200K (for 400 users) when they can wait a couple months and get a solution (at least a partial one). Hell, they might as well roll there own at that price.

    I love Android, but sorry, its a no-go. Companies are only going with iOS. A good choice.

    Looks like SAP’s intention is to make Xcelsius a server app (see ZEN) and further lock users in..”MUST HOST IN INFOVIEW, must get viewer licenses!!” They’ll make Xcelsius evolve. The ones that will get pinched are those without BOE or SAP.

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