Jaspersoft Community Edition vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
N/A
Jaspersoft Community Edition is a free product that offers embeddable pixel-perfect reports for Java apps and small workgroups.N/A
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Score 6.5 out of 10
N/A
The SAP® BusinessObjects™ Business Intelligence Platform provides users with ad hoc queries, reporting, data visualizations, and analysis tools. Its integrated, unified infrastructure aims to offer scalability from one-to-many tools and interfaces on-premise, in the cloud, or as a hybrid approach.N/A
Pricing
Jaspersoft Community EditionSAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Jaspersoft Community EditionSAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Jaspersoft Community EditionSAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Considered Both Products
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
FoxPro is a deprecated product and can no longer be downloaded or purchased. While it was a great report development tool, it is no longer a viable solution. While we do use Business Objects in very specific and limited implementations and for specific users, we find that …
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
My company has some cooperation with TIBCO, so they want to push Jaspersoft.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
I cannot fairly answer this questions and I have not used other reporting tools. Other reporting tools seem to look like they are great via sales pitches and video previews etc. At end of the day, they struggle with the same issues that Jasper faces. Or they might have solved …
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
I do not have solid knowledge on other products to compare them with Jaspersoft
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
Our initial selection was based on the understanding of this product to be able to match up against other enterprise BI tools. However, the difficulty with the reseller and the technical issues with the RBAC make this an easy choice to eliminate against other products.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
Pentaho and Cognos have been used and evaluated. Jaspersoft is similar to Pentaho, but has better support forums to answer questions. Cognos is slightly more intuitive, but at a higher licensing cost.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
Cost and ease of use. We ultimately decided to use Jaspersoft because we didn't need to do anything complicated. At the time we were looking into Microsoft Business Intelligence. While we saw Microsoft BI having actual better reporting and tools, we choose to use Jaspersoft …
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
Spotfire - Better support. More intuitive. Works with our databases.
Tableau - great support. Very simple and intuitive. Works with our databases!
Infor ION - Really expensive. Works well with their products. A lot of work with other products.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
At the moment of evaluation, it looked like Jasper would be able to cope with our data model. This was achieved with product customization. Visualizations are largely the same.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
TIBCO Jaspersoft was chosen because it fitted our software cloud architecture the best and at a reasonable cost. The rest didn't tick all the boxes at the time or were far too expensive. However, the likes of Power BI seem to be a contender now.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
We have explored other reporting tools like IBM Cognos, Tableau, SQL Reporting, and Qlik along with TIBCO Spotfire (in-memory). FInally looking at all options, features, degree of flexibility, and then license cost, we decided to go with TIBCO Jaspersoft.

The expressions and …
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
[TIBCO Jaspersoft is] Quicker, clearer and allows for more professional looking reports.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
Usage of a JRS report is vastly superior to xls usage.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
In the past we have used Cognos. Jaspersoft was a better fit for us at this time.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
Tableau and Qlikview reporting probably have better end-user experiences but can't be easily embedded in a Web app. Microsoft BI suite needs nearly a full stack of the latest versions of SQL Server, Excel and Sharepoint which an ISV can't assume its customers have. Other …
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
We are using both of them. Elasticsearch is still in early stage and very expensive.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
Tableau was way, way more expensive and wasn't able to be embedded and white labeled, so we didn't go with them. I think Tableau is stronger on the visualization and predictive side... but overall... if you can't afford them, who cares?
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
Crystal reports is very expensive and does not integrate well with java based servers. Jasper also provides community edition, if we every want to downgrade the use, we always have the option of eliminating the server and using the reports as they are. Jasper also give you the …
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
SSRS: seems to be more performant at this point but we're still trying to figure it out
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
They each of them have their own strengths and weaknesses. We selected TIBCO for its pixel perfect reporting.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
Jasper seemed to be a little behind in features and usability, but had better pricing.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
Of course, there are challenges in the evolution of Jasper and it may take some time to become a stable product. With Jasper 6.4 the stability is improvised a lot compared to previous versions(5.5). But I would recommend Jasper to any team for the following reasons.
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
This has the biggest drawback of handling the large data volume which I feel is needed as this is time-consuming and making decisions at the right time is getting harder and we have decided to move to this platform considering the time taken to process the data.
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
We are using SAC as well but the Schedule part of SAC cannot be compared to SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence schedule.
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Microsoft's Power BI has certainly gained a lot of attention and became a leader in Gartner's magic quadrant. This is certainly a good product for average data volume which can be handled in the cloud, however, SAP BI is capable of handling much more data with complex reporting …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
SAP Business Objects have better security model than Tableau. One can setup a lot of security permissions as compared to a tool like Tableau. Tableau is good for creating visualizations/dashboards but not very great for operational reporting. Scheduling features are much better …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Other offering include PowerBI and Tableau. Both alternatives have different licensing options to consider, in terms of capabilities, they increase in conjunction with the license price.
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
When we get the installation of the SAP BO BI Platform done on one of the BO servers, we get a whole of stacks of SAP BO BI suite tools installed. This is a package that has reporting tools inside it. For instance, web intelligence-rich clients, sap crystal reports, etc. We can …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Board is a great ERP software. Business Objects is more nimble and flexible. Board is good if the Dash Boards and screens are relatively static and have selection/filter options. Business Objects is if you do lots of ad-hoc analysis and reporting on the fly.
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
I'd say they are on a par with each other. AppD definitely provides very technical insights, whereas BI provides better business reports.
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
MicroStrategy Analytics and IBM Cognos Analytics is costlier compared to SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform stacks. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform stacks is user friendly, easy to adapt, easy to train resources and get them …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Even though all these tools are very similar to each other, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform does have better integration with the database than other competitors such as Microsoft Power BI. On the side of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
SQL Server Integration Services, Tableau Prep and Tableau Desktop
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
SAP BO BI is very similar to Microsoft Power BI. However, SAP BO BI is much stronger in terms of analytics and document management while Power bI is stronger in data visualization and big data integration. SAP BO BI is a great tool within its ally, which is performance analysis …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
There is no special differentiation point. My companies were using SAP as their main ERP and therefore using the SAP BO BI for reporting and analysis purposes. Some reports were defined to be released periodically but these reports were needed for day to day information. We …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Earlier, I used SAP BW's BEx tools for reporting, but it was challenging to format the report data and export to different formats. SAP BEx tools can access data from limited sources where as SAP BO can access data from most of the datasources which is why I prefer using BO …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
An upgrade to SAP BW/4HANA could be considered to get better performance. But if performance is not a huge problem, SAP BusinessObjects BI is a good solution on-premise.
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
We tried YellowFin BI but it did not work for our business model. It was nice and the user-experience was good but ultimate we sided with SAP Business Objects BI Platform because the visual reports that were produced were simple and easy to understand. We need that level of …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Crystal was part of the platform prior to my tenure. Explorer has always had a limited use case. I helped drive the conversation for Visual Intelligence and by the time we acted, it turned into Lumira which can't hold a candle to Tableau or Power BI.
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform is an on premise solution that allows you to display information hosted on an SAP BW / 4 HANA server.
SAP Analytics Cloud is SAP's business intelligence solution that works in the cloud and is complemented by SAP …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
As we have been using SAP ERP, having SAP BI was one of the key factors in our choice. Also design efficiency, variety of data sources' integration and document versioning gave better advantages to SAP BI over others. Also adding SAP BI during the SAP ERP rollout provided …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Crystal Reports has the most features that we need for our custom and purpose built reports.
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
We selected SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) based on price. It can stack up against others in terms of price and honestly, that's about it. Salesforce Commerce does a hell of a better job at handling it. However, in the space of Business Intelligence, SAP can do …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Sometimes configuration is challenging (unless you are also very familiar with setting up Java VMs). I like the meta-data layer design tool. I like that there are thick and thin versions of the tools users use. Users at this point try to build a report themselves rather than …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
We currently have implementations of both Microsoft BI and SAP Business Objects so our enterprise has found reasons for both. Some users prefer BI over SAP and it depends on the department they are working for. SAP was chosen for the more complex tasks that require large data …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
I use the platform as it is all that is available to me. I have no ability to query the warehouse directly probably for good reason. I have been using PowerBI and I know it can connect to the warehouse and do the query and visualization in real time. However, our admins will …
Chose SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
That was the best alternative that could connect to our ERP instances. The availability of SAP Rapid Marts that could be leveraged to pull data models for specific SAP areas such as Sales tables, Production, Maintenance, and others was also a very important differentiation. …
Features
Jaspersoft Community EditionSAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Jaspersoft Community Edition
9.3
Ratings
13% above category average
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
8.2
Ratings
1% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports9.00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Customizable dashboards9.00 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates10.00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Jaspersoft Community Edition
9.3
Ratings
14% above category average
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
7.8
Ratings
3% below category average
Drill-down analysis9.00 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Formatting capabilities10.00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages9.00 Ratings7.30 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration9.00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Jaspersoft Community Edition
9.4
Ratings
12% above category average
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
7.8
Ratings
6% below category average
Publish to Web10.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.00 Ratings7.40 Ratings
Report Versioning9.00 Ratings6.70 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling10.00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers9.00 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Jaspersoft Community Edition
9.3
Ratings
15% above category average
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
7.2
Ratings
10% below category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)9.00 Ratings6.80 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization10.00 Ratings6.80 Ratings
Predictive Analytics9.00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings7.30 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Jaspersoft Community Edition
9.3
Ratings
9% above category average
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
9.2
Ratings
8% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)9.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model10.00 Ratings9.60 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)9.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)9.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings9.60 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Jaspersoft Community Edition
9.3
Ratings
17% above category average
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
5.8
Ratings
30% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access10.00 Ratings6.70 Ratings
Mobile Application9.00 Ratings3.90 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile9.00 Ratings3.90 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Jaspersoft Community Edition
9.5
Ratings
20% above category average
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
7.0
Ratings
11% below category average
REST API10.00 Ratings6.70 Ratings
Javascript API9.00 Ratings7.30 Ratings
iFrames10.00 Ratings7.30 Ratings
Java API9.00 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)10.00 Ratings7.30 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)9.00 Ratings6.70 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Jaspersoft Community EditionSAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Small Businesses
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 9.1 out of 10
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Kyvos Semantic Intelligence Layer
Kyvos Semantic Intelligence Layer
Score 9.9 out of 10
Kyvos Semantic Intelligence Layer
Kyvos Semantic Intelligence Layer
Score 9.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Jaspersoft Community EditionSAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(0 ratings)
7.7
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
5.8
(0 ratings)
8.3
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
7.6
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Online Training
4.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
6.1
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Jaspersoft Community EditionSAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
Likelihood to Recommend
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition is very powerful platform that has enhanced smooth running of workflows across our organization. The system operation has greatly created positive development infrastructure in our company due to excellent planning from the data analytics. The cost running this product is low as compared to similar software and easy to learn how it works. It provides comprehensive reports that affect each department and offers solution to most challenges affecting our systems.
Read full review
The proper management of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards requires an expert on the team to manage and build reports. If an organization does not have the proper expertise on board to build and deploy reports it will fail. Data analytics, dropping into excel, and broadcasting of information are major bonuses for the use of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards.
Read full review
Pros
  • Custom design reports in Jaspersoft Studio. There is a lot of flexibility to customize reports. You can create easy reports in a quick time frame or complex report in a bit more time.
  • The company does not need a 100% developer to develop reports. Someone with some level of developer experience could use Jasper Studio
  • Jasper also provides a stand-alone web server to deploy your reports. This opens up a lot of Jaspersoft Studio files.
  • There is a lot of time and effort put into the software. Years of input that improved all levels of the applications. Jasperstudio, Jasperserver, a manual, the community, etc.
  • Flexibility is awesome, you can do almost anything. Having well-rounded REST API or you can use the Java Studio.
  • There is a lot out of the box functionality. Scheduler, stand-alone reports, report output formats, logging settings, customization of GUI to a degree, permissions, roles, and user setup Studio, etc.
Read full review
  • This software is easy to initially learn, and very powerful in producing reusable reports.
  • It is much faster than my company's internal manual queries. The ability to build off of a saved query and share queries to other users is a great positive.
  • My favorite part is that you can run queries in the background and it does not interfere with your current work or slow your computer down.
Read full review
Cons
  • Repository interface is a flat structure. Folder or other structure would be best for numerous reports for several different departments.
  • Should come fully equipped with all available properties for High Charts
  • Better user guides that includes more information about configurations for styles, conditions, etc. that aren't covered in the guide.
Read full review
  • The installation can be very complex and time-consuming, it requires a lot of planning and foresight as to what role the software will play in the organization.
  • The software has a relatively large learning curve that takes dedicated users months to get comfortable with, the UI is a bit intimidating for new users.
  • SAP could organize their help better, it can be difficult to find dependable solutions to issues via their website and support channels.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Even though there are challenges with Architecture, sizing and other areas with Jaspersoft provided that Jaspersoft comes up with the right set of innovation, performance, scalability, and documentation in future it will be great expansion (win-win) situation for the clients and as well as Jaspersoft.
Read full review
The institution has decided to move in a different direction, and will be using MSBI for reporting. I have been very happy with the Business Objects suite of tools, and will continue to use them heavily until we make the transition.
Read full review
Usability
The overall performance of this platform has been excellent. It is easy to work with the user interface. Creation of digital content and publishing on our social media platforms during marketing has been easy. Running our applications and upgrading our system to meet international standards has been successful. The user dashboard displays reports and performance of all departments effectively.
Read full review
SAP Business Objects is a great tool for operational reporting. It provides a lot of capabilities for scheduling the reports for end users as well as for Adhoc data analysis by business users. One can easily format a report in SAP BO. The tool is not very difficult to learn for both End users and Developers.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
When we implemented 3.1, we had a tough time managing the system: It took almost a year to stabilize.

With 4.0, we want to roll out to more users, and are holding back because of fears about the performance issue
Read full review
Performance
No answers on this topic
Overall, the tool (Web Intelligence 4.2) is fast and solid. One issue is a dependability on JAVA for a full feature report creation/edit capabilities (as opposed to limited HTML option). Second, planned end of JAVA support by major browsers (Chrome is already not supporting JAVA applet).
Read full review
Support Rating
We have only had a couple of tickets to be open while using Jaspersoft. Each time we have a very prompte responses that would meet our expectations. We always felt that our issues were being address in a timely manner
Read full review
We are getting the BI support from our SAP support company. Although they are good at some basic staff, they are unable to answer our questions for some complex structures. Sometimes we got the feedback that our request was not possible to implement, however later we found there were some methods available.
Read full review
In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
This is more a function of the training I received from the systems experts in my organization, not training from Business Objects/SAP. The training was rushed, without an agenda, and didn’t meet my needs as a user.
Read full review
Online Training
While the training was somewhat beneficial, a lot of what was taught to us was what we managed to figure out in the weeks prior. It did provide some useful tips and reference material, but overall something more tailored to our requirements would've been better.
Read full review
I haven't used it or got feedback from the end user.

Content looks to be pretty detailed. Focused on SQL but not BW.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
New releases can be very buggy, also lacking when it comes to standard time zones and formats that are outside the US. As a company we never feel comfortable implementing a new release for at least 3-6 months due to errors that are found
Read full review
Hire specialists and experienced staff. Mix some beginners so that everyone is not a leader but a learner too. Plan well; architect well; break down implementation in small steps and move towards larger steps. Create a centralized and authorized SAP Business Objects implementation team.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Crystal reports is very expensive and does not integrate well with java based servers. Jasper also provides community edition, if we every want to downgrade the use, we always have the option of eliminating the server and using the reports as they are. Jasper also give you the opportunity to build BI on case by base basis including Dashboards.
Read full review
This has the biggest drawback of handling the large data volume which I feel is needed as this is time-consuming and making decisions at the right time is getting harder and we have decided to move to this platform considering the time taken to process the data.
Read full review
Scalability
No answers on this topic
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform supports SOA Service Oriented Architecture. You can start/restart/enable/disable all the servers. You can seamless do load balancing and clustering. It supports all leading application and web server. Supports LDAP SSO integration. People who can work on excel with training they can work on SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence, dashboard, Lumira, Information design tool product suite. Tool is very user friendly and easy to learn and implement
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • Jaspersoft Community Edition has not had any significant impact on our ROI as we have purchased the commercial edition of the product.
  • The only impact on ROI is that when we bring on new developers, he or she can begin work using the community edition while awaiting the installation of the commercial edition.
Read full review
  • SAP BO BI Platform has a good positive impact on the overall business of any organization. It helps in important decision making, planning, and analyzing the growth of the particular organization
  • Another positive impact is that users get hold of data very easily and in a user-friendly manner. users can even interact with reports to get the meaningful data filtered out of that.
  • The negative impact can be on licensing costs and buying this software box. This in turn will add to the cost of expenses of a particular organization
Read full review
ScreenShots