Q&A Session for Empowered Self-Service BI with SAP HANA and SAP Lumira with Honeywell – ASUG Webcast

Here is the question & answer portion of the ASUG webcast we had this past week Empowered Self-Service BI with SAP HANA and Lumira with Honeywell – ASUG Webcast

Q:  Is the 1TB of solid state memory or a mix of memory and disk storage…thanks.

A:  1TB is all memory – some disk storage in HANA is used for disaster recovery.  

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Q:  Did you consider using SAP BW versus using HANA directly?”

A:  We did have SAP BW in past; and ended up working on that for 2 years, went back to data mart structure – did not consider BW on HANA at that point.  

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Q:  To simply things, do you feel that Design Studio can replace Dashboard?

A:  With limited amount of experience with Design Studio – says yes, because it has application capabilities, not just dashboards.  Design Studio is more robust now for non-BW environment.  

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Q:  Do you use Analysis for Office (Excel)?  If not, why?

A:  He does not use that; wishes he could – MS Office Add in for pivot like reports – not used because of firewall architecture  

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Q:  Why would Lumira be dependent on the resource on the client machine?  Shouldn’t it use the HANA do the analytics?

A:  Lumira creates a Sybase database on client machine – that is what is used as the analytic engine.  Once in HANA server – heavy liftng goes away.  

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Q:  So you do not use BW Data warehouse at Honeywell? Where is the data from ECC replicated to?

A:  Not using BW in their architecture now.  

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Q: How would you compare this with Tableau and Qlikview

A:  Only has limited familiarity with Tableau – but they are going all SAP so Tableau is not a choice  

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Q:  Is Lumira Server available to download for the POC purpose?

A:  Lumira Server is not available yet  

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Q:  We saw poor performance with latest LUMIRA vesion with HANA online…are there any future integration improvements in the road map

A:  He does not work for SAP – does not know about next roadmap – cannot answer – hope so   

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Q:  Any consideration of building transactional systems directly on top of Hana to support direct, real-time connectivity rather than the extraction model shown?

A:  There are considerations for reporting off of HANA tables instead of ECC tables – RDS for HANA – CO-PA Accelerator – instead of using ECC CO-PA tables in ECC and use them in HANA – use GR55 against HANA tables.    

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Q:  What are different tools that you looked into before making a decision to go Lumira? 

A:  Primary one before HANA was Microstrategy – not real time like HANA.  Lumira is an SAP product, Explorer-like  

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Q:  If you were using Lumira agains SAP Hana, why does the client tool, require so much memory? Doesn’t HANA do the in memory processing?

A:  As mentioned before, HANA is used as a data source, not an analytic engine; analytic engine is on machine   

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Q:  Prior to using HANA you had a mix of ODS’s and data Marts. How long did it take you to re-model this data and the data loads for HANA?

A:  Started on working on this 2 years ago, then 1 year ago started putting other sets of data on HANA – not everything is there yet.  

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Q:  Before going to HANA have considered the AWS HANA one?

A:  no  

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Q:  Do you currently have Enterprise DW and if so are you planning to move EDW to HANA platform.

A:  They do have an EDW and do have plans to move it to HANA platform  

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Q:  Can Design Studio be used standalone like Xcelsius i.e. no connection to a database but by using an Excel file to mock up a dashboard, demo  dashboarding, prototype a dashbaord?

A:  No it cannot  

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Q:  Was the adoption throughout Honeywell presented to “end-users” (entry-level, with little to no analytics background) or to more advanced users?

A:  It was introduced to advanced users first, and change thought process of the business (those without the analytic background)  

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Q:  Before going to physical  HANA ….have you considered the AWS HANA one?

A:  Already answered – no  

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Q:  And as a follow-up… How was adoption for the end-users?

A:  Honeywell President says it will be a certain way – adoption rate is high  

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Q:  Can Analysis for OLAP and Analysis for Office both be used to access ECC data replicated via SLT to HANA when not using BW on HANA?

A:  Yes  

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Q:  Lumira has a limitation og 10,000 rows or datapoints…how can we increse the limit?

A:  He has not seen that limitation and he has a robust machine.  

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Q:  Are their limits to the number of power users that use the tool concurrently? Does it require any type of user management besides just logins, etc.?

A:  Because it is a client tool, no limitation as far as number of users – need licenses  

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Q:  Did you have an executive sponsor- IT, business or both?  How much effort was there to get buy in to go forward with the work?

A:  Have a sponsor from both IT and business.  

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Q:  How many business users are using HANA data?  And how many IT SAP developers do you have?

A:  Don’t have an exact – 5K    users

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Q:  What have you found your HANA compression ratio is, versus your previous database(s)?

A:  Previous databases had no compression; current compression is 7.5x  

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Q:  For historical data retention do you have near-line storage system attached to HANA?

A:  Do not have NLS yet – discussing  

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Q:  Did the Customer Data Marts vsBW resulted in large implementation time frames and any Data Quality issues?

A:  Since not doing BW – can’t say.  

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Q:  What version of Lumira did you say is available now?

A:  1.14  

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