By Molly Folan, Conference Producer 

That’s the $64 million dollar question. The answer wholly depends on who you ask. And when you ask. And what you ask about. And, well, just about every other dependency you can think of.  

Although touted as an initiative to “bring clarity around the BI solutions from SAP,” the recent SAP BusinessObjects BI renaming seems to have blurred the vision of most, rather than clarified. 

In an excerpt from The New York Times’ “Scientist at Work” blog, a zoologist studying the behavior of spotted hyenas in Kenya writes, “In our work we use naming conventions to help even inexperienced observers keep track of our hyenas and the relationships among them.”  

Seems like a simple enough formula to abide by, right? For example, if we strip the zoologist’s quote down to a mere phrasal template, and drop in familiar SAP terminology, we’re left with this: “In SAP we use naming conventions to help even inexperienced customers keep track of our tools and technology and the relationships among them.”

What else can Mad Libs teach us? Change the name and confusion results. Silly word games are fun for kids at birthday parties, but frustrating for consumers with a lot of money at stake.

I regress. Believe it or not, this post was initially intended to clear some of the confusion surrounding the name changes. So, without further ado, I give you the below (courtesy of SAP.com):