SAP Statement of Direction
SAP BusinessObjects Analytics
© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
On-Premise Business Intelligence Solutions
from SAP: Statement of Direction
Table of Contents
3
Quick Facts
4
Transform Digital Technology with
Analytics and Business Intelligence
7
Enhance Agility with Our On-Premise
Business Intelligence Solutions
13 Making Predictive Analytics Available
to Everyone
14 Integrate Robust Capabilities with the
Digital Enterprise Platform from SAP
18 Enable Cloud Deployments
19 Engage with SAP
Preface
This statement of direction describes SAP’s vision, strategy, development, and
commitment for our on-premise business intelligence (BI) solutions – and the
future role and position of BI solutions within the SAP® BusinessObjects™ Analytics
portfolio – by laying out a two-year road map.
© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
2 / 19
On-Premise Business Intelligence Solutions from SAP: Statement of Direction
Quick Facts
Summary
As your business transitions to a digital enterprise,
you can start to give your employees, partners,
and customers immediate, data-driven, and
even predictive insight into what’s going on – in a
way that’s relevant for them. Strategic use of onpremise and cloud-based analytics accelerates
this process. At SAP, we’re continuing to invest
in on-premise solutions as part of our effort to
reimagine analytics. Using integrated solutions
such as SAP® BusinessObjects™ Enterprise
solutions and the SAP BusinessObjects Cloud
solution, everyone can access powerful, rolespecific analytics anywhere across the extended
digital enterprise.
Objectives
•• Provide enterprise-wide access to powerful,
role-specific analytics
•• Enable data-driven, predictive insights using
both cloud and on-premise analytics solutions
•• Foster business agility, creativity, and rapid
decision making with self-service access to
business intelligence
Solution
•• Modernized, on-premise business intelligence
(BI) solutions providing self-service BI along
with professional and trusted content
•• Predictive analytics with robust native functionality available on premise to everyone
•• Accurate, real-time insights into every corner of
the IT landscape
•• Integration of analytics with the digital enterprise platform from SAP
Benefits
•• Achieve greater business agility and creativity
for business users
•• Increase scale and trust for enterprise-scale
deployments
•• Tap into insightful data analysis using predictive
analytics
•• Obtain greater value at significantly lower costs
through digital transformation and
simplification
Learn More
For more information, please visit
www.sap.com/bi.
© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
3 / 19
On-Premise Business Intelligence Solutions from SAP: Statement of Direction
Transform Digital Technology with Analytics
and Business Intelligence
At SAP, we’ve reimagined our analytics solutions for the digital enterprise. With
integrated solutions from SAP, such as SAP® BusinessObjects™ Enterprise solutions
and the SAP BusinessObjects Cloud solution, you can deliver role-specific analytics
across your enterprise. You can empower finance, HR, operations, supply chain,
marketing, and sales to make decisions together. And you can automate analytics
and push recommendations to users at the point of decision.
New digital technology is freeing businesses to
reimagine business models, giving rise to a host
of disruptive market entrants across all industries. Consider the fact that the world’s largest
taxi company, Uber, owns no taxis. Airbnb, the
largest accommodation provider, owns no real
estate. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no
inventory. And the world’s most popular media
owner – Facebook – creates no content.1 These
examples (see Figure 1) are just the beginning of
what happens when technologies are used to
create new customer experiences, define new
business models, and cocreate value.
This shift toward digital business models is accelerating in every industry and compelling organizations to transform into a digital enterprise to
not just survive but also thrive. But digital transformation isn’t just about deploying new technology. As defined by Gartner, digital business is
the creation of new business designs by blurring
the digital and physical worlds.2 When you understand the disruption chain that leads to the
dematerialization and democratization of goods
and services through digital platforms, you can
blur these worlds – and give rise to breakthrough
business models.
As your business begins its own transformation
to become a digital enterprise, one of the big
opportunities it unlocks is being able to give all
employees, partners, and customers immediate
insight into what’s going on and in a way that’s
relevant for them. For example, an Uber customer instantly knows the status of his car. The
Amazon seller knows the status of a price offer
and can determine whether to take another loss
on the transaction for marketing purposes or
change the price and start to mine the investments in profitable transactions.
But as organizations of all shapes and sizes
embark on their digital journeys, few are able to
capitalize on their data and create net-new value
from it. Why? Because they lack the right analytics and business intelligence technology.
1. Tom Goodwin, “The Battle Is for the Customer Interface,”
TechCrunch, March 3, 2015, http://techcrunch.com/2015/03
/03/in-the-age-of-disintermediation-the-battle-is-all-for-the
-customer-interface/.
2. Gartner IT Glossary, Digital Business,
http://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/digital-business.
© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
4 / 19
On-Premise Business Intelligence Solutions from SAP: Statement of Direction
Figure 1: New Trends Yield New Opportunities
Uber
The world’s largest
taxi company owns
no vehicles.
SOMETHING
INTERESTING IS
HAPPENING.
Facebook
The world’s most
popular media owner
creates no content.
Alibaba
The most valuable
retailer has no
inventory.
Airbnb
The world’s largest
accommodation provider
owns no real estate.
© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
5 / 19
On-Premise Business Intelligence Solutions from SAP: Statement of Direction
2. Provide new software-as-a-service (SaaS)
capabilities for our customers who are
ready to embrace the cloud, using the
SAP BusinessObjects Cloud solution.
As explored in this statement of direction, we’ve
reimagined our analytics solutions for the digital
enterprise so that you can provide powerful,
role-specific analytics for everyone across the
extended enterprise.
OUR STRATEGY: INNOVATE THE CORE AND
LEAD THE CLOUD
At SAP, we’ve developed a twofold strategy for
our business intelligence solutions:
1. Continue to invest in on-premise solutions
such as SAP BusinessObjects business intelligence (BI) solutions, SAP BusinessObjects
Lumira software (previously SAP Lumira®
software), and SAP BusinessObjects Predictive
Analytics software (previously SAP Predictive
Analytics software). We will continue delivering
updates to those products for customers who
prefer to use them instead of our analytics solutions for the cloud.
Our large and experienced team of analytics software engineers enables us to invest and innovate
in both cloud and on-premise analytics solutions
in parallel. In this document, we focus on our
future plans for our on-premise solutions:
SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions (including
SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence® software,
SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio, and
SAP BusinessObjects Analysis software),
as well as SAP BusinessObjects Lumira and
SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics. For
more information on the SAP BusinessObjects
Cloud solution, please visit
www.sap.com/businessobjects-cloud.
As your business begins its own transformation
to become a digital enterprise, one of the big
opportunities is being able to give all employees,
partners, and customers immediate insight into
what’s going on in a way that’s relevant for them.
© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
6 / 19
On-Premise Business Intelligence Solutions from SAP: Statement of Direction
Enhance Agility with Our On-Premise
Business Intelligence Solutions
Our market analyses show tremendous demand
for business intelligence that delivers value on
two fronts:
••Greater agility and creativity for business:
The consumerization of IT is driving demand for
more agility, creativity, and self-service BI for
business users.
••Increased scale and trust for enterprise-scale
deployments: IT needs to support more data,
more users, and more devices with engaging BI
content.
ENABLING AGILITY AND CREATIVITY
WITH SELF-SERVICE BI
As your organization strives to differentiate and
innovate using digital assets, business users are
demanding more self-service access to business
intelligence. In this context, they want to be able
to access data, work with the data, visualize it,
find areas of interest, and then tell a story from
the data – all as independently and quickly as
possible.
The SAP BusinessObjects Analytics portfolio provides two on-premise BI solutions that help enable
self-service: SAP BusinessObjects Lumira and
SAP BusinessObjects Analysis for Microsoft Office.
SAP BusinessObjects Lumira lets your business
users work independently with both personal
and trusted enterprise data. Using SAP
BusinessObjects Analysis, business users can
work with data in the familiar Microsoft Excel
and Microsoft PowerPoint environments.
What’s New
Since we published our last statement of
direction on analytics solutions in 2014, both
SAP BusinessObjects Lumira and SAP
BusinessObjects Analysis have evolved considerably. With the last several releases of SAP
BusinessObjects Lumira, we’ve focused on
delivering more value to business users while
improving the ability to support trusted enterprise assets. Highlights of new capabilities
released in the past year include:
•• SAP BusinessObjects Lumira, server version for
the SAP BusinessObjects BI platform (platform
versions 4.1 and 4.2), to enable secure sharing
of SAP BusinessObjects Lumira content on the
BI platform as well as administration and
auditing
•• The ability to edit SAP BusinessObjects
Lumira storyboards from a browser via the
server version of SAP BusinessObjects Lumira
for the SAP BusinessObjects BI platform,
as well as bookmark favorite views of SAP
BusinessObjects Lumira stories
•• Support for SAP Business Explorer® (SAP BEx)
tools
•• The ability to cross-tabulate with totals, sub­
totals, calculations, and custom formatting
•• Visualization extensions on both the desktop
and server
•• An improved layout and linked filtering in SAP
BusinessObjects Lumira stories
•• Data blending across multiple data sets
•• New, on-visualization calculations (running
totals, difference from, and percentage of)
•• Tablet support
•• Integrated Esri geomaps
•• Support for Hadoop and SAP HANA Vora™
software
© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
7 / 19
On-Premise Business Intelligence Solutions from SAP: Statement of Direction
On the SAP BusinessObjects Analysis front, our
main focus has been simplifying our range of addins for Microsoft Office. In 2014 we launched SAP
BusinessObjects Analysis, edition for Microsoft
Office (now SAP BusinessObjects Analysis for
Microsoft Office), the SAP Business Planning
and Consolidation application (now the SAP
BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation
application), and SAP BusinessObjects Live Office
software. In 2015 we completed the first phase
of simplification: bringing the plug-ins for SAP
BusinessObjects Analysis and SAP Business
Planning and Consolidation together into a single
add-in.
Product Directions for 2016 and 2017
As we continue our client simplification
strategy, we plan to combine the agility of SAP
BusinessObjects Lumira with the professional
authoring of SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio
for creating BI content.
A goal is to extend the self-service paradigm to
enable line-of-business users to rapidly prototype BI content that can be further developed,
refined, and promoted by IT as professionally
authored content.
The execution of this strategy started with the
same charting experience and shared extension
library between SAP BusinessObjects Lumira
and SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio. As
we move forward, we plan more convergence
between both products, and we expect this
convergence to deliver the following benefits to
SAP BusinessObjects Lumira users:
•• Seamless promotion of stories in SAP
BusinessObjects Lumira into applications in
SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio
•• Improved user experience and responsive user
interface (UI) with components in the SAP
Fiori® user experience (UX)
•• More flexibility to customize stories in SAP
BusinessObjects Lumira with style sheets in
SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio
•• Full, online, multidimensional analysis support
on the SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW)
application
•• A full-featured Web experience, including selfservice data preparation with no desktop setup
required
Looking forward to 2016 and 2017, our focus for
SAP BusinessObjects Analysis will be on:
•• Continuing to simplify our add-in solutions
for Microsoft Office by bringing SAP
BusinessObjects Live Office functionality into
SAP BusinessObjects Analysis
•• Strengthening the analysis, reporting, and
planning capabilities, in particular, for the SAP
BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation
embedded model, as well as adding comments
features (similar to the SAP BEx tools)
© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
8 / 19
On-Premise Business Intelligence Solutions from SAP: Statement of Direction
ENABLING SCALE, TRUST, AND
PROFESSIONALLY AUTHORED BI
While end users have generated tremendous
demand for self-service BI, IT departments
across all industries also face pressure to produce professional and trusted content for all
users across the enterprise – including those
who don’t necessarily want to author analytics on
their own. These users need IT to create better
content for more users, on more devices, and on
more data – despite the fact that they may have
static (and sometimes decreasing) budgets.
At SAP, our goal is to help your IT department
meet user needs more quickly and easily by:
•• Simplifying our portfolio
•• Making the platform easier to manage
•• Modernizing our tools to create beautiful content quickly
Making things easier can have ripple effects
across the organization. Axel Bedikyan, director
of marketing intelligence at Cirque Du Soleil,
observes, “SAP can help the company simplify
through technology by making the company
more productive and by allowing employees to
concentrate on value-added activities.”
The SAP BusinessObjects Analytics portfolio
contains three primary solutions to help
create and securely distribute BI content:
SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio, SAP
BusinessObjects Web Intelligence software,
and SAP Crystal Reports® software.
What’s New
We recently issued two significant new releases
in general availability:
•• SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio version 1.6
at the end of 2015
•• SAP BusinessObjects BI version 4.2 at the end
of the first quarter of 2016
The latter includes SAP BusinessObjects Web
Intelligence software and SAP Crystal Reports
software. Says Alvara Muñoz, BI area manager
of the IT department at the Universidad de
Concepción, “It was an excellent decision for
us to upgrade to the latest version of SAP
BusinessObjects business intelligence solutions.
We are able to meet our users’ analytic needs
and manage information more confidently.”
Version 1.5 of SAP BusinessObjects Design
Studio delivered a number of new features primarily meant to close the functionality gap with
the Web application designer tool of SAP BEx.
With version 1.6 of SAP BusinessObjects Design
Studio, we continued simplifying to cover some
of the key features of SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards software needed in SAP BusinessObjects
Design Studio. Highlights of new capabilities
released in the past year include:
•• A new scorecard component that provides the
ability to create a scorecard with microcharts
•• A set of new components for SAP Fiori (for
example, Dialog, Filter Bar, Link, Multi-Line Text
Input, Switch, and Progress Bar)
© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
9 / 19
On-Premise Business Intelligence Solutions from SAP: Statement of Direction
•• Support for offline data via comma-separated
value (CSV) files for prototyping and testing in
local mode
•• Interoperability with SAP BusinessObjects
Lumira (for example, it enables you to create a
.lums file from a dashboard data set)
•• The ability for end users to create their own
online dashboard by laying out existing smart
objects
•• Charting enhancements such as waterfall
charts and display scaling factors
•• Support for ad hoc currency conversion for
SAP BW customers
•• Support for cascading filters for CSV files and
SAP BusinessObjects semantic layers
(universes)
•• New, on-visualization calculations such as running totals, difference from, and percentage of
calculations
SAP BusinessObjects BI version 4.2 delivers a set
of innovations for our customers while helping to
ensure the continuity, stability, and quality that
our customers need in their BI platform. The new
functionality in version 4.2 aims to provide more
interactive, social, and beautiful content to end
users; offer a trusted foundation to deliver BI
across the organization at a lower total cost of
ownership (TCO); and enable best-in-class integration on SAP content while enhancing support
for third-party data access. Highlights of new
capabilities released in version 4.2 include:
•• Commentary in SAP BusinessObjects Web
Intelligence, allowing both report designers and
readers to add commentary within a report in
order to add human context to the data
•• Shared elements in SAP BusinessObjects Web
Intelligence, so users can reuse different parts
of a document (such as a chart, query, or table)
in their own documents while maintaining the
link back to the original content; in this way,
changes to the source can be inherited
•• Geographic mapping in SAP BusinessObjects
Web Intelligence, enabling the creation of maps
•• Parallel queries in SAP BusinessObjects Web
Intelligence, dramatically accelerating content
loading when processing multiple queries
•• Visualization extensions in SAP BusinessObjects
Web Intelligence, freeing partners to create new
visualization types
To deliver a trusted foundation at lower TCO,
version 4.2 features include:
•• A streamlined SAP BusinessObjects BI suite
installer with a more flexible upgrade manager,
which reduces the time needed to install and
upgrade the suite and reduces downtime and
management costs
•• More efficient promotion management
capabilities
•• An administrator’s cockpit that gives users a
360-degree view of the health of their BI
deployments
•• The ability for administrators to send notifications to specific user groups or systemwide
•• A recycle bin that allows you to recover unintended content deletions from corporate
folders
•• Support for linked SAP BusinessObjects
semantic layers
© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
10 / 19
On-Premise Business Intelligence Solutions from SAP: Statement of Direction
Finally, version 4.2 helps provide best-in-class
integration on SAP content while enhancing our
support of third-party data access. It supports:
•• Authored semantic layers on SAP BEx queries,
allowing you to create a simple business view
on top of an SAP BEx query by renaming,
grouping, and hiding objects
•• Direct access to the SAP HANA® platform in
SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence,
enabling streamlined access to SAP HANA
without having to build an intermediate semantic layer
Product Directions for 2016 and 2017
Our goal moving forward with enterprise BI is
to make it even simpler to create and work with
professional content, increase interoperability
within our portfolio, and modernize the end-user
experience for consuming and interacting with
professional content. SAP plans to enhance this
area of our portfolio by:
•• Converging SAP BusinessObjects Lumira and
SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio to enable
IT professionals to rapidly develop, refine, and
promote BI content that was prototyped by
line-of-business users
•• Continuing to cover core SAP BusinessObjects
Dashboard features in SAP BusinessObjects
Design Studio by adding new components,
enhanced agnostic data support, and offline
mobile dashboards
•• Using SAP BusinessObjects Lumira data sets
as data sources in SAP BusinessObjects Design
Studio, enabling data mashup for dashboards
and applications
•• Continuing coverage of SAP BusinessObjects
Analysis for online analytical processing (OLAP)
and SAP BEx Web application designer tool features in SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio by
supporting ad hoc currency conversions,
scheduling and broadcasting, and commentary
•• Modernizing SAP BusinessObjects Web
Intelligence Interactive Viewing software with
extensible HTML5 apps and the look and feel
of the SAP Fiori UX to help ensure a simple and
beautiful experience for end users
•• Modernizing the launchpad feature in the SAP
BusinessObjects BI platform with HTML5 and
the look and feel of SAP Fiori
•• Covering nearly all of the Java applet features
in the dynamic HTML interface of SAP
BusinessObjects Web Intelligence
•• Continuing to improve geographic and commentary features in SAP BusinessObjects
Web Intelligence
•• Supporting SAP BEx queries in SAP
BusinessObjects Web Intelligence for parallel
query processing
ENABLING MOBILE ACCESS FOR THE
SAP BUSINESSOBJECTS BI SUITE
SAP BusinessObjects Mobile software
provides access to your existing BI content
(for example, in SAP BusinessObjects Lumira,
SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, SAP
BusinessObjects Dashboards, SAP Crystal
Reports, SAP BusinessObjects Explorer® software, SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio, and
PDF and hyperlink objects on mobile devices). It
does this by integrating analytics into the daily
decision making of business users throughout
your organization and beyond.
© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
11 / 19
On-Premise Business Intelligence Solutions from SAP: Statement of Direction
SAP BusinessObjects Mobile software gives you:
•• Highly secure access to BI content on mobile
devices by supporting various single-sign-on
(SSO) scenarios as part of the BI platform
•• An approach where you design once and
consume on different platforms, so your IT
department can make better use of its existing
investments
•• A mobile software development kit (SDK) that
offers further functionality through application
customization and integration with many thirdparty security tools to meet organizational needs
What’s New
With every release of the mobile application, SAP
continues to provide more secure and smooth
access to BI content on mobile devices running
iOS and Android platforms. Highlights of new
functionality we’ve released in the past year
include:
•• Access to SAP BusinessObjects Lumira on the
Apple iPad, extending the reach of analytics by
engaging and delighting business users
everywhere
•• Push notifications to keep business users
informed without disrupting critical operations
and busy schedules
•• Functionality to create Touch ID–secured documents and apps
•• Enhanced SSO through Kerberos and security
assertion markup language (SAML) with
trusted authentication
•• Support for variants and dynamic default
values in prompts
•• Offline support for hierarchy navigation in documents in SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence
•• Ability to manage PDF documents on the BI
platform and access them using SAP
BusinessObjects Mobile software
In this document, we focus on future plans for our
on-premise solutions. For information on the SAP
BusinessObjects Roambi® mobile app, which delivers cloud-based mobile analytics and business
intelligence, please visit www.sap.com/roambi.
Product Directions for 2016 and 2017
We continue to focus on the mobile user experience by providing effortless analytics that engage
and delight business users. And we do this by
investing in our enterprise-grade, secure, and
easy-to-deploy mobile apps throughout 2016 and
2017. To this end, we will continue to deliver
enhancements for SAP BusinessObjects Mobile
that offer:
•• A native SAP BusinessObjects Lumira story
consumption experience on mobile devices
•• Seamless, offline access to SAP BusinessObjects
Lumira on mobile devices
•• Data alerting capabilities on mobile devices to
provide the most current analytics to business
users
•• Access to SAP BusinessObjects Lumira for iOS
and Android devices
•• Continued enhancement of the SDK to enable
integration with third-party security tools
© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
12 / 19
On-Premise Business Intelligence Solutions from SAP: Statement of Direction
Making Predictive Analytics Available
to Everyone
SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics is a
comprehensive, end-to-end solution that delivers
value by:
•• Making it easier for analytics professionals of all
types to find hidden insights in their data using
a point-and-click interface
•• Providing an enterprise-grade platform to
manage the full predictive lifecycle from data
manipulation to modeling to model
deployment.
•• Delivering to the more advanced user or data
scientist a graphical model creation environment that integrates with the open source “R”
language, as well as the predictive capabilities
within SAP HANA
Our investment in predictive capabilities for
SAP HANA continues, but not at the cost of support or capability for other vendors’ products.
The automated predictive library in SAP HANA
will gain additional native functionality to take
advantage of the software’s unique features while
remaining feature compatible with deployments
other than SAP HANA. Similarly, our SAP HANA
Cloud Platform predictive services will continue
to evolve and provide the full functionality of the
automated predictive library, but with an agnostic RESTful interface available to all in the public
cloud.
Future Product Directions
Looking ahead, we will continue to execute on
our strategy to further “democratize” predictive
analytics by making our solutions even more
accessible to business users who may not have
a data science or mathematics background.
Our vision is to make adoption of our automated
predictive capabilities ubiquitous by:
•• Making it easier for anyone to create sophisticated predictive models, regardless of skill level
•• Making the consumption of predictive results
frictionless for users
The result will be a “data scientist in a box” concept designed to enable all of your employees to
focus on solving their business problems rather
than dealing with the intricacies of data science.
We are continuing to evolve SAP BusinessObjects
Predictive Analytics by bringing predictive model
authoring capabilities to our server platform and
creating a truly zero-client enterprise-class predictive solution. Looking ahead, the solution’s existing
in-database, predictive scoring capabilities will be
enhanced by the addition of in-database modeling
on SAP HANA, Big Data sources, and other vendors’ databases; this will dramatically improve the
performance of predictive workflows on huge data
sets by eliminating the need for significant data
extraction. The predictive model management
capabilities will also be enhanced to embed and
manage the full lifecycle of not only automated
models but those created with R, and the automated predictive library and predictive analysis
library associated with SAP HANA.
Alfonso Cedillo, CIO at Grupo Merza, cites
benefits his company has gained from working
with analytics, noting, “With analytics tools from
SAP, Grupo Merza is becoming a data-driven
organization. With better data access and deeper
point-of-sale insight, we can see who our customers are and what they want.”
© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
13 / 19
On-Premise Business Intelligence Solutions from SAP: Statement of Direction
Integrate Robust Capabilities with the
Digital Enterprise Platform from SAP
The digital enterprise platform from SAP is composed of a state-of-the-art enterprise data storage
and computing platform, critical data integration
and application development tools, and best-inclass front-office analytics tools. All of these capabilities are integrated via our cloud services that
enable organizations to dramatically increase
value delivery to customers at significantly
lower costs through digital transformation and
simplification.
The digital core of this platform is SAP HANA –
our modern, open, standards-based, 100%in-memory platform designed for enterprise
computing and storage needs (see Figure 2). It
drives simplification and agility while powering
next-generation, edge-to-core connected business applications.
The digital enterprise platform from SAP is
based on a “cloud first” philosophy, but we
recognize that many organizations will choose to
operate in a hybrid infrastructure model for many
years to come. The platform is designed to bridge
these worlds while delivering the ability to do more
with less. For example, because our on-premise
solutions – such as SAP BusinessObjects BI,
SAP BusinessObjects Lumira, and SAP
BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics – are key
elements of the digital enterprise platform, they
will continue to receive priority when it comes
to native integration with the digital core of the
platform, SAP HANA, as well as SAP applications
running on SAP HANA such as SAP S/4HANA and
SAP Business Warehouse. Although our BI solutions do not require SAP HANA, when deployed
with SAP HANA, they offer unparalleled value.
The digital enterprise information platform
from SAP is based on a “cloud first” philosophy,
but some will choose to operate in a hybrid
infrastructure model. Our platform bridges
these worlds while delivering the ability to do
more with less.
© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
14 / 19
On-Premise Business Intelligence Solutions from SAP: Statement of Direction
Figure 2: The Digital Enterprise Platform from SAP
Live Business
Superhuman analytics with or
without SAP HANA® –
with SAP HANA, it’s unparalleled
SAP
BusinessObjects™
Analytics
SAP
Fieldglass®
solutions
SAP HANA
Cloud
Platform
SA
P
Together in the moment
HA
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Vo
ra™
SAP S/4HANA
SAP Ariba®
solutions
s
ion
ns
te
Ex
SAP®
SuccessFactors®
solutions
App
lic
at
io
ns
SAP Hybris®
solutions
Any
database
Hadoop
© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
15 / 19
On-Premise Business Intelligence Solutions from SAP: Statement of Direction
INTEGRATION WITH SAP S/4HANA
Continued improvements to the integration with
SAP HANA and SAP Business Warehouse have
already been covered in previous sections of this
document. However, it’s worth noting two
aspects of integration of on-premise BI solutions
from SAP with SAP S/4HANA:
•• Native data access
•• Best-practices content
Native Data Access
SAP S/4HANA blends transactions and analytics,
allowing real-time operational reporting with core
data services. Core data services views build a
virtual data model based on the transactional
and master data tables of SAP S/4HANA. The
views are developed, maintained, and able to be
extended in the ABAP programming language
layer of the SAP S/4HANA software system; this
layer generates views in SAP HANA to actually
execute the data read and transformation inside
the SAP HANA database layer.
SAP’s strategy focuses on using core data services views in order to deliver all analytics in the
context of SAP S/4HANA – embedded to execute
tactical operations as well as stand-alone to drive
strategic initiatives. This strategy is aimed at
replacing all standard ABAP-related reporting.
This is true for all cloud-based and on-premise
deliveries of SAP S/4HANA. The advantages of
this approach include a full ABAP integration,
which allows you to reuse existing reporting
authorizations and make use of the analytical
engine (built-in SAP Business Warehouse functionality). BI solutions from SAP already consume core data services views and can mash up
SAP S/4HANA data with data from any other
SAP or non-SAP application; this enables you to
discover, visualize, and predict the performance
of the business across lines of business in a comprehensive and consistent manner with no
dependency on IT to move or integrate data.
Moving forward, we will continue focusing on this
approach to enable IT to standardize on one
agnostic BI platform with the best integration to
SAP S/4HANA and other applications in order to
simplify deployment efforts and reduce total cost
of ownership.
Best-Practices Content
SAP also delivers preconfigured packages,
including SAP Best Practices packages for SAP
S/4HANA, that are tailored specifically to accelerate and simplify the adoption of SAP S/4HANA
for faster time to value. They do this by providing
preconfigured content for core business processes, enabling a role-specific, responsive, and
simple user experience.
Analytical content based on SAP BusinessObjects
BI solutions and SAP BusinessObjects Lumira is
now included with SAP S/4HANA, providing the
infrastructure for the deployment, testing, and
extension of SAP S/4HANA with best-of-breed
strategic analytics.
Our customers find dashboards invaluable for
deepening insights and improving productivity.
Says Betty Jo Rocchio, RN, BSN, CRNA, MS, and
vice president of perioperative performance
acceleration at Mercy, “In the past, it took weeks
or months to deliver key performance metrics.
This information is now readily available through
dashboards on an information portal that provide
visibility into high-level metrics and the capability
to drill down to actionable detail.”
© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
16 / 19
On-Premise Business Intelligence Solutions from SAP: Statement of Direction
Table 1 lists the processes covered and dashboards
created with SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio
dashboards for specific processes.
Moving forward, we intend to also cover other processes with SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions or
content from SAP BusinessObjects Lumira. Table 2
summarizes the processes that will be covered.
Table 1: Current Dashboards
Table 2: Planned Dashboards
Process covered
Dashboards available
Dashboards planned
Core finance
•Cost center – plan and
actual analysis
•Profit center – plan and
actual analysis
Process to be
covered
Core finance
Accounting and financial
close
Order to cash
Procure to pay
•Sales order analysis
•Sales revenue analysis
•Rejected sales orders
analysis
•Accounts receivable
analysis
Human resources •Time management
•Project management
Order to cash
Inventory and warehouse
management
Plan to product
•Production planning
•Manufacturing operations
•Product development and
project control
•Maintenance
•Quality management and
compliance
Procure to pay
•Supplier management
•Inventory and warehouse
management
•Operational procurement
•Purchase analysis
•Invoice analysis
•Contract analysis
•Accounts payable analysis
© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
17 / 19
On-Premise Business Intelligence Solutions from SAP: Statement of Direction
Enable Cloud Deployments
The adoption of cloud technology is getting more
and more interest from the market, and SAP is a
leader in the cloud business intelligence market.
Our strengths lie in our ability to provide:
•• New SaaS capabilities, as with SAP
BusinessObjects Cloud
•• A series of options for simply deploying onpremise BI solutions in the cloud
This document focuses on the on-premise BI
solutions.
INFRASTRUCTURE AS A SERVICE
Increasingly, companies are interested in moving
away from traditional, on-premise deployments;
infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers can
deploy traditional, on-premise software in the
cloud to enable greater infrastructure flexibility
and reduce costs.
SAP works with multiple IaaS providers and
has been working on the validation of the SAP
BusinessObjects BI platform for several of the
world’s largest IaaS providers. This has led to a
strong portfolio of IaaS providers that you can
use to deploy your traditional BI solution within
the cloud.
Today the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio is being
certified for deployment against Amazon Web
Services and Microsoft Azure for IaaS deployment
models.
The future direction is to further extend the list
of IaaS providers – for example, we are adding
SoftLayer and Aliyun (Alibaba Cloud). Additional
IaaS providers will be added based on demand.
For all SAP BusinessObjects solutions on an IaaS
deployment, SAP manages a bring-your-ownlicense (BYOL) model.
MANAGED CLOUD AS A SERVICE
For customers who have interest in moving their
traditional BI platform into a cloud solution and
want to reduce the effort required to maintain
their BI installations, SAP is offering a managed
cloud option via the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud
service.
For deploying your SAP BusinessObjects solutions against SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, SAP
provides a BYOL as well as a subscription-based
model.
PLATFORM AS A SERVICE
To further enable the adoption of cloud and drive
the agility that comes with a cloud adoption, SAP
is offering SAP HANA Cloud Platform.
Today, SAP HANA Cloud Platform is the foundation of several SaaS solutions provided by SAP,
including SAP BusinessObjects Cloud. To further
enable our partners and customers, we plan to
enable and support the deployment of SAP
BusinessObjects BI platform version 4.2 against
the infrastructure of SAP HANA Cloud Platform
using its virtual servers.
By enabling SAP BusinessObjects BI platform
version 4.2, SAP can offer this wide BI portfolio as
a cloud-based offering and support our customers and partners in adopting a cloud BI solution.
© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
18 / 19
On-Premise Business Intelligence Solutions from SAP: Statement of Direction
Engage with SAP
This statement of direction reflects just one step
along a continuum in which we work with our
customers, partners, and key thought leaders to
define the estimated future of our solutions.
We’ve been listening to our customers’ expectations and discussing their needs as input to this
statement of direction, and we hope that you use
this document to engage with us further. With
your participation, SAP can continue to deliver
innovative solutions that help develop your
insights for better decision making. If you want to
be part of the conversation, join one of our customer groups, submit an idea, or simply respond
to our blogs:
•• Customer influence
(https://influence.sap.com)
•• The idea place
(https://cw.sdn.sap.com/cw
/community/ideas)
•• SAP Community
(http://scn.sap.com/community
/business-intelligence)
•• Social media (http://blog-sap.com/analytics,
www.facebook.com/SAPanalytics,
@SAPAnalytics)
•• ASUG: Influence SAP
(www.asug.com/influence)
FOR MORE INFORMATION
To learn more about business intelligence
solutions from SAP and how they can help your
organization run more simply and achieve better
results, contact your SAP representative or visit
us at www.sap.com/bi.
For the latest road maps for SAP solutions
and products, please visit
http://service.sap.com/roadmap.
Branding for Our Analytics Solutions
To bring a strong identity to the entire portfolio of analytics solutions from SAP, including our new
software-as-a-service offerings, SAP has extended the use of the “BusinessObjects™” brand – which
remains a widely recognized analytics brand name in the market – across the majority of products in
the analytics portfolio. The table below lists analytics solutions mentioned in this document whose
names have changed as a result of this branding update.
Before
After
SAP® Cloud for Analytics
SAP BusinessObjects™ Cloud
SAP Lumira®
SAP BusinessObjects Lumira
SAP Predictive Analytics
SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics
SAP Business Planning and Consolidation
SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation
SAP Roambi® Analytics
SAP BusinessObjects Roambi
The aim of this branding update is to make it easier for everyone to immediately identify SAP
BusinessObjects Analytics solutions and better understand their capabilities.
Studio SAP | 42578enUS (16/06) © 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
19 / 19
© 2016 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
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