This is comparable to the discussion about the exact distinction between Reporting and Analysis in SAP Frontend

tools, and especially for Planning Applications like BPC NW, Integrated Planning and BPC on HANA 10.1.

Analysis Office vs. EPM Add-in |

Analysis Office EPM Addin

In the first place, AO requires a BusinessObjects EPM is a standalone client tool (Excel add-in).
Platform (if you want to deploy your reports on BO
server

It also is the successor of BEx (Web) Analyzer and The EPM tool contains huge improvements with Excel
can be installed as Microsoft Excel plugin or can integration and provides features and functions for the
be used as a web version (OLAP) business users to analyze and report.

Analysis Office is the right tool for users with
extensive analysis needs
It is particularly suited to access and analyze
OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) sources. It
offers slice-and-dice capabilities and supports use
of hierarchies, for example a cost center hierarchy
One of the features of EPM is the Local
Members which can be explained as dynamic
referencing formulas. This feature is integrated in
Excel and can be created in EPM by the business users
without any involvement of the IT organization. This
increases the user adoption of EPM.
The business users are now in the drivers seat and are
able to create their own reports, local formulas, input on
data cells and reuse the look and feel by applying the
standard EPM formatting sheet

It is a tool for analysts who know the data and are EPM is not only used for BPC but it can also be used for
looking for answers by exploring the data the entire EPM Portfolio

AO works nicely for ad-hoc analysis-type of

reporting without focusing on formatting and
complex calculations (e.g. VLOOKUPs and
pivoting).
.

Latest and greatest Analysis Office 2.3 has not been released yet but we know already that AO 2.3 is planned for June
2016. What we know about the 2.3 version is not much more than that Analysis Office can handle local calculations
similar as in EPM, which would be a big improvement. This means you can have local member formulas in rows or
columns and you can apply specific formatting to it. Another feature is the work statuses (facilitates Data information
about planning cycle such as data locking or submission management) which was not supported in the previous
versions. More and more reasons to switch from EPM to Analysis Office for BPC Embedded version.

Wrap-up | We can clearly see SAP is investing in further development and enhancements of AO while EPM only has
bug fixing as a priority. This brings us to conclude that within a few years EPM is nearing the end of its product
lifecycle, since the introduction in 2011.