Hi

Hello everyone,

Lately i was told Baan does not support Crystal.
They r now supporting Cognos.
I was also told Cognos is much more expensive.
If i go with Crystal , what abt support and other issues , could i go to Baan?
What would be my choice now?
Pls advice

Thank you and have a nice day

Yours in service
dhnish

You heard correctly. Baan no longer supports Crystal, just Cognos.

Crystal will still "work" with Baan i'm sure as long as you're not using the "Baan Native Driver" which gives you some extened functionality like table names, etc. But you could access the raw tables via your DB...

You probably should never have "gone to Baan" with a Crystal problem to start with.. They might help you, but there not Crystal support. Same thing with Cognos...

Dave

Hi Dave,

You've confirmed what I thought, namely that SSA are firmly attached to Cognos, but I wasn't aware that Crystal WASN'T going to be supported? Please can you let me know where you got this as it would help turn rumour into fact.

Many thanks
Jacob.

Hi there,
Safari, Crystal, Cognos.. what will be next? As long as you need "only" an additional tool for extended reporting functionality just take what fits best to your company policy. We are running Crystal since ancient times and are very happy with it - despite all "offical" Baan owners preferences.

Good luck.

Martin

A BWU rep has just confirmed that BO/crystal won't be there - which pretty much confirms what we thought...

Regarding your comment about "What's next?" - looking at the BWU site it's either Cyberscience or LinC, but only Cyberscience seem to have a proven Baan solution ?

Jacob.

To clarify what the positions are: Crystal Reports will allways work with BaaN using ODBC, OLE DB or any other connector. These reports can always be published in Crystal Enterprise to be distributed over the web.

The "native driver" or BaaN solution kit offer you functionality
a to convert Baan reports to crystal
b to make multicompnay reporting easy
c to acces a few BaaN specific data types
d to respect BaaN security
This is a product of former Crystal Decisions (now Business Objects). They allways has sold it directly and through resellers ( of wich BaaN was one) . Any BO partner ( preferrably the Crystal Classic ones) will be able to supply you with as many licences as you want.

What has changed now is that SSA has decided to adopt Cognos as their reporting tool for all their applications (BaaN, BPCS, Masterpiece, MK etc.) So what may have changed is that SSA /BaaN willl not lead you to Crystal, but will promote Cognos. As said before: this does not mean that is does not work or is no longer available

For annyone looking to improve reporting, I just saw this post on IT Toolbox...

http://baan.ittoolbox.com/groups/groups.asp?v=baan-erp-l&i=595915

SSA might be partnered with Cognos, but Baan customers seem to be voting otherwise.

Jacob.

To elaborate on my point - In the past Baan support used to:
1) Help us with setup/problems when using crystal.
2) Log defects with regards to crystal's interface with Baan.

Neither of those are happening anymore.. that's what I mean by "not supported"

If crystal can keep up with the Baan changes then that's great!

I don't think it has to be so adversarial though guys.. SSA chose a partner, Invensys chose a partner.. its more of a reflection of Baan getting passed around so much, not that they're trying to cost everyone money.. Especially with SSA, they've got other products to worry about as well.

As Martin said, go with whatever works for your business!

Dave

When SSA sells Cognos, Cognos gives a better commission, compared to Crystal. I heard the difference is huge.

If I run a company, I would definitely partner with company which gives me the maximum commission, as long as the both the products have good reputation in the market (which the case in this example). So, no blame on SSA.