OLAP Survey 2005: arcplan Maintains Leadership Position In SAP BW Environment

Business Wire, Dec 20, 2005

LANGENFELD, Germany -- arcplan, Inc.:

--arcplan's dynaSight most widely used 3rd Party BI Front-end for SAP BW

--Rapid application setup and links into several data sources ensure success

arcplan, a leading global provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced that the new OLAP Survey from November 2005(1) confirmed arcplan maintained its leadership position among the third-party suppliers of front-ends to SAP's Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW). This success is primarily a result of the fast and easy implementation of its tailored applications, and the ease of linking into a myriad of different data sources, enabling customers to create comprehensive reports and analyses. These features underpin arcplan's exceptional positioning within the SAP environment. More than 10 percent of the SAP BW users participating in the survey have implemented arcplan's dynaSight to visualize business-critical enterprise data. Other third-party suppliers trail behind with around six percent. On average, one in three of the survey participants uses one or more third-party products on top of SAP BW.

arcplan - Certified for the SAP BW Interface

arcplan is certified for SAP BW 3.5's Business Application Interface (BAPI), which enables customers to use the dynaSight front-end solution. The importance of the SAP market for arcplan and its pioneering role is illustrated by the fact that in 1998 arcplan was the first supplier to be certified for SAP BW for Version 2.

Market Development for Third-Party Suppliers

In the context of the OLAP Survey, as well as the estimation of the Business Application Research Center (BARC)(2), it is clear that specialized third-party suppliers of business intelligence (BI) platforms, with their mature technology and comprehensive functionality, will continue to be popular with users and provide added value to SAP BW. This is still the case today, despite an increase in the number of SAP's own tools per installation since last year's edition of the OLAP report.

Jeroen van der Lingen, arcplan's CEO, sees the survey results as a confirmation that the company's strategy is the right one. "For the second year running, the OLAP report underlines our success in targeting SAP BW installations and giving our users demonstrable added value to their business intelligence solutions. Once again, we have succeeded in staying at the pinnacle of the third-party market, which confirms our partner and product strategy in the SAP environment. As this market is very important for us, we will continue to target it in the future and further strengthen our position as a third-party BI front-end supplier."

OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) Survey

The goal of the OLAP Survey is to gather and analyze global information about the experience users have had with OLAP software for the creation of information pools, and to provide users and suppliers with a tool for planning and decision support. The OLAP Survey, which was compiled by the leading independent industry expert Nigel Pendse, is totally vendor-independent. The results of this fifth edition are based on the detailed answers of 2100 users in 106 countries. According to the author, this represents almost twice the number of participants in last year's report.

Overview of SAP tools and third-party suppliers

Front-ends for SAP BW (based on information from 127 users)


                                                Share percentage
Tool or application name                          international
----------------------------------------------------------------------
SAP Business Explorer Excel add-in                   78,7%
----------------------------------------------------------
SAP Business Explorer Web Analyzer                   68,5%
----------------------------------------------------------
SAP Business Explorer Web Application
 Builder                                             54,3%
----------------------------------------------------------
SAP SEM Business Planning and Simulation             42,5%   Share
----------------------------------------------------------  percentage
SAP Enterprise Portal                                18,9%  SAP: 87,2%
----------------------------------------------------------
SAP SEM Business Consolidation (BCS)                 18,1%
----------------------------------------------------------
SAP CRM                                              15,7%
----------------------------------------------------------
SAP APO                                              10,2%
----------------------------------------------------------
SAP SEM Corporate Performance Monitor (CPM)           9,4%
---------------------------------------------------------- -----------
arcplan dynaSight                                    10,2%
----------------------------------------------------------
Crystal Reports/Enterprise                            6,3%
----------------------------------------------------------
BusinessObjects                                       5,5%
----------------------------------------------------------
Applix TM1                                            3,9%
----------------------------------------------------------
Cognos ReportNet                                      3,9%   Share
----------------------------------------------------------  percentage
Hyperion Essbase                                      3,1%   third-
----------------------------------------------------------   party
MIS onVision                                          3,1%  suppliers:
----------------------------------------------------------    12,8%
MicroStrategy                                         2,4%
----------------------------------------------------------
Hyperion Intelligence (formerly Brio)                 1,6%
----------------------------------------------------------
Actuate e.Reporting                                   0,8%
----------------------------------------------------------
IBI WebFOCUS fur SAP BW                               0,8%
----------------------------------------------------------
Andere                                                4,7%
---------------------------------------------------------- -----------
Average number of front-ends per
 installation                                        3,63
---------------------------------------------------------- -----------

Source: OLAP Survey 2005


(1)OLAP Survey, fifth edition, published in November 2005; see
   www.barc.de (German only)

(2)"Front-ends for SAP BW" study published in November 2005; see
   www.barc.de (German only)