The first day of autumn, September 22, will soon be here. But there are three signs that autumn has already arrived:
- Starbucks has launched its annual Pumpkin Spice Latte campaign
- Apple has announced its latest iPhones, the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo
- SAP BusinessObjects customers are performing end-of-year patching or budgeting for 2027
I wrote the last State of the SAP BusinessObjects BI Upgrade in March of this year. Let’s take a moment to review the current state of the SAP BusinessObjects platform.
SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.2
Mainstream support for BI 4.2 ended in December 2022 and Priority One support ended in December 2024. While organizations using BI 4.2 can upgrade to either BI 4.3 or BI 2025, the best path often depends on whether legacy UNV universes have been migrated to UNX. Whether you perform an in-line upgrade or migrate to a new platform will likely depend on the age of your servers and server OS. BI 4.2 was first introduced in 2015 with support for Windows Server 2012 with later support for 2016, 2019, and 2022.
SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3
SAP BusinessObjects BI 4.3 was launched in 2020 and we’ll be waving goodbye to Mainstream Support at the end of the year. The final patch (BI 4.3 SP5 Patch 10) is planned for mid-November 2026. BI 4.3 supports Windows Server 2016, 2019, 2022, and 2025. If you’re moving up from BI 4.2, a migration to a newer landscape based on Windows Server 2025 would be a good choice and likely permit a simpler in-place upgrade to BI 2025 in the future.
SAP BusinessObjects BI 2025
SAP BusinessObjects BI 2025 was released in March 2025 and continued to extend the productivity enhancements introduced with BI 4.3 and its enhanced Fiori interface. SAP has clearly been keeping an eye on the other analytics tools available to its users. BI 2025 is a streamlined release, keeping the best parts and retiring some of the little-used features and technical debt (See SAP KB 3560025 – Which products and features are deprecated or removed in SAP BusinessObjects BI platform 2025). While there’s lots of new features, my favorite isn’t really a feature. It’s the productivity improvements found throughout the user experience. SAP has delivered 13 patches for BI 2025 and will introduce a couple of more before year’s end.
SAP BusinessObjects BI 2027 and Beyond
While I’ve had a brief look at BI 2027, we will all have to wait until the formal release in Q1-2027 to see what new capabilities BI 2027 will deliver for users. Definitely something to look forward to as 2027 approaches. And BI 2029 is already planned for Q1-2029, which will extend mainstream support for BusinessObjects and Crystal Reports through 2031. Also unknown is what the BI 2027’s platform availability matrix (PAM) will support, but as we’ve said already, whether BI 2027 will be an in-place upgrade or a migration will primarily depend on the age of your current hardware and OS.
On-Premise or in the Cloud?
Many SAP BI organizations are already living in their favorite cloud, be it AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, or many SAP-supported alternatives. Whether you’re upgrading or not, year-end is a perfect time to review your cloud foundations.
Conclusion
While the typical mandate for upgrades is new features or platform support, don’t forget about security. SAP publishes a security note every month on Patch Tuesday. Although nobody enjoys dealing with security vulnerabilities, your organization’s security team can be a powerful ally. Together with your analytics team and user community, they can help build a strong business case for the upgrade you’ve been considering.
Whether you are sipping a Pumpkin Spice Latte, pondering a new iPhone purchase, or planning an SAP BusinessObjects upgrade, enjoy the season!
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