No entry to SAP site for Business Objects users

By Chris Kanaracus

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July 21, 2008 (Computerworld) This version of the story originally appeared in Computerworld's print edition.

SAP acknowledged last week that problems with an online support switchover for Business Objects customers had left many of the users unable to access its support portal.

SAP, which bought Business Objects SA in January, shifted the business intelligence vendor's online product-support processes to its own system on July 7. But a substantial number of users -- nearly 20%, by SAP's admission -- hadn't received credentials for logging onto the support site as of last week.

John Sanzone, a BI and data warehousing specialist at a large IT services provider that he asked not be identified, said he had been trying without success to get a log-in for the support site since the changeover. "This is not the service I was expecting," Sanzone said.

A database administrator who works at a hospital in the U.S. and asked to be identified only as Wayne H. said SAP apparently sent a letter with the log-in information to a co-worker on the business side of his organization. But she no longer works there, he said, adding, "This is just a mess."

Andy Cobbold, group vice president of global customer assurance at SAP, said the company didn't have e-mail records for some customers and tried to send their log-ins via regular mail. "Obviously, we'll be conducting a postmortem to make sure we learn lessons from this," Cobbold said.

Kanaracus writes for the IDG News Service.

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