With SAP ECC6 EHP5, there is a new function enhancement with enable SAP BusinessObjects BI to report against data in SAP ECC as BEx Query. Certainly Crystal Report can consume SAP ECC data for ages but it is not working like report off a BEx query. If the customer has no BW system in place but would like to ultilze SAP BusinessObjects BI client tools, you should really consider this.
Essentially, transient provider just exposes out-of-box InfoSet of SAP ECCto BEx Query which can be consumed by most BI 4.0 tools.
Please check out this video.
http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/index?rid=/library/uuid/d01f24f9-048d-2e10-5abd-a9b82e6b3cb4