Psst – Wanna Know The Latest? Go To These Sessions at #BI2015!

March is here and that means the beginning of the 1H2015 conference season!  Every year between March and June you are bombarded with invitations and announcements for “THE” conference you must go to and all of the things you’ll learn if you go. After June there’s a summer break and the ultra-compressed second (2H2015) season from September to November can make the rest of the year a blur.

BI2015 – The Place To Be in March

The conferences on the docket are SAPInsider’s BI2015 and HANA2015 conferences in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand from March 9-12th.  As usual, these high quality events have some must-see content including SAP’s new CTO Quentin Clark anchoring the conference keynote and a multitude of sessions given by SAP employees, customers, and partners.   For a comprehensive list of must-see sessions, Timo Elliott has already published a good list to by (My Choice of Sessions At #BI2015 #HANA2015. See You There?), but I want to highlight a few sessions of significance I’m personally presenting that could be of interest to this Lumira audience:

SAP Lumira: Current capabilities, planned enhancements, and future vision

You all (better) know what Lumira is about by now – but there’s been tons of change in the six months since last year’s conferences and now.  Compared to previous sessions you might have attended, we’re going to focus a bit more on deployment implications, Lumira Edge Server, and BI 4 integration.  What’s a “Velocity Engine” and why does it matter?  When do you want to use Lumira Edge vs Lumira Server? Come to this session to find the latest developments and where we plan on going (and why).

Advanced analytics for the non-data scientist: What you really need to know

Many of our customers see “Advanced Analytics” (in the words of Matt Smith on BBC TV’s Doctor Who)  as “sciency wiency” and maybe even a little “wibbly wobbly” that requires math PhDs and grey haired scientists.  In reality, advanced analytics is the next step in your existing BI journey – it is about going from visualizing the data you have to understanding why you have the data you do so you can make better decisions to either continue the trend or change it.  Come to this session for an eye opening look at how to benefit from data science and predictive analytics – from a business user’s perspective – no PhD or grey hair required!

SAP cloud analytics: Strategic and technical guide to current solutions and future roadmap

If you have a pulse, you likely know that SAP’s strategy is heavily focused on the cloud – but analytics in the cloud has always been tough because of data transfer, security, and administration.  Today’s cloud is a hybrid one – you know longer need to choose “on-premise” or “on-cloud” only, but can make the decisions right for your organization and make them for the right reasons. Whether you are looking for more details on how to use SAP Lumira Cloud or even how you can deploy Lumira and the entire SAP BI 4 suite on Amazon or SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, this session will clear up these sometimes “cloudy” topics.  Come to not only understand what all the acronmyns of IaaS, PaaS, HEC, and HCP mean, but how you can take advantage of the cloud for BI at your own pace.

Act Now, No Salesperson Will Call…

If you can make BI2015, you definitely should – This is your chance to get in front of SAP experts and other SAP customers to talk about the Real World.   This is also your chance to network with your peers who may have traveled the road you may be able to get on.  And don’t forget that most speakers (myself included!) are happy to have a more detailed offline conversation about their topic if what you are looking for isn’t covered in the session itself or the Q&A afterwards.

Finally, due to the relatively fewer session slots available at this year’s SAPPHIRENOW + ASUG Annual Conference, there is a high probability some sessions (including those listed above) may not be presented in Orlando this year.  There’s always a chance for ASUG’s SAP Analytics & BusinessObjects Conference which kicks off “Fall Conference Season” from August 31-September 2, 2015, but until then, there’s no better chance than BI2015.

What To Do If You Can’t Make It

If you can’t make it to Las Vegas for BI2015 this year, all is not lost.  You should follow these SCN communities to ensure you’ve always got the latest information – they are also places where you can find the latest schedules for webinars, training, and other events:

• SAP Lumira: For Lumira, this is the #1 spot for the latest roadmap, tips, tricks, and tutorials.
• SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics: No PhD required! Come and find out what’s going on in the next evolution of BI – and provide us feedback to ensure it speaks to you as a Lumira customer too!