Tammy Powlas

June 22, 2015 7 minute read

ASUG BI Roadmap Webcast Notes

This was an SAP/ASUG BI Webcast earlier this month that SAP’s Ty Miller gave. Please note the usual legal disclaimer applies that things planned for the future are subject to change

Figure 1: Source: SAP

A roadmap is an execution of a strategy, including converging clients, and taking advantage more of cloud when you can

Figure 2: Source: SAP

Lumira provides access to trusted sources using universes, BEx queries, HANA views

Lumira 1.25 includes integration with BI platform

Figure 3: Source: SAP

There are multiple definitions of cloud

Lumira Cloud is an example of public cloud, software as a service

HANA Enterprise cloud is a hosted version

Regarding Lumira for HCP, look for more updates

Figure 4: Source: SAP

On premise platforms are in Figure 4

Lumira Server for teams is not in IT; for line of business data discovery. Server can be a desktop, providing web based data discovery capabilities

Lumira Server for BI Platform allows IT to administer and provide data discover capability

Lumira Server for HANA is a native HANA application

Figure 5: Source: SAP

Lumira Desktop is the initial experience for connecting data in Prepare room. It is a native HTML5 experience

In memory data engine is embedded

Make extensions available on Marketplace and looking to add support for Mac OS as the operating system

Figure 6: Source: SAP

Key principle for Lumira is to combine agility for the business with trust for IT and third area of growth is big data

Figure 7: Source: SAP

Data wrangling and blending is coming

When a business user is in the Visualize/Compose room not all business users have a good understanding of their data

SAP is adding the ability in Visualize room to blend – this is done for all source, including HANA online sources

It will allow search in Crosstab, sorting, multi-level sorts, export records from cross tab, visualization in crosstab

Location Analytics seeing significant investment – partner Nokia/ESRI – upgrading capabilities so every customer take advantage of ESRI – additional basemaps, zoom to zip code, and take advantage of polygons (bottom right, Figure 7)

Conditional formatting for charts, more precise control over visualization

Richer formula and expressions, ability combine measures and dimensions (lower left of Figure 7)

Figure 8: Source: SAP

IT side of Lumira is “trust”

Browser based data wrangling – browser based PREPARE room in the browser; Starting at the end of the year. New Lumira documents from Launchpad

Bottom right – add new extensions – enable visualizations to enable on BI Platform.

Additional data sources are planned on BI Platform, mobile BI for Lumira content, additional authentication

Linux will be added as an operating system, lifecycle management, OpenDoc to move from Lumira to another app with the context

This month there is a “ big update to Lumira connect to a BEx query”

Figure 9: Source: SAP

Big data is big, so not want to bring it all into Lumira to create visualization – want Hadoop to do processing. Building sampling capability – 1% or 10%- Lumira will take random sampling (Hive/Cloudera) and then schedule against Hadoop cluster using oozie to schedule

Figure 10: Source: SAP

BI clients make up Enterprise BI – better content, easier to use, more agile

Strategy is to simplify platform so IT can support more users, more data, leverage semantic layer

Figure 11: Source: SAP

Figure 11 shows plans for Design Studio; much of this is already in 1.5

Already 1.5 supports all relational universes

SAP is working on improved performance

Calculations at runtime are planned.

Figure 12: Source: SAP

SAP plans to improve interface, visualizations and improve integration with PowerPoint for live data and visualizations

SAP plans to improve interoperability with Lumira

Figure 13: Source: SAP

The plan is to have shared Web Intelligence objects, repository to use on Web Intelligence

The plan is to connect to HANA views without having to create universe/micro cube

Collaboration and annotations are planned to annotate specific objects and to share BI variants

Bring back concept of authored universes on BEx queries

Figure 14: Source: SAP

Android version of Lumira Mobile BI is planned

SAP plans to optimize consumption experience with gesture support and offer offline content for Lumira

PDF support is planned

Mobile BI will add support for Lumira Server BI Platform and Teams

Auto download documents and touch phone ID integration

Figure 15: Source: SAP

Planning for BI platform – continue improvement for lifecycle management

Adding more capabilities around report comparison tool

Not have to bring system down to do a patch

More extension API’s for BI platform as a whole

Linked UNX universes are coming

New data sources for Hive, Spark, and Salesforce

Q&A from the webcast

Question	Response
what is limit on number orf rows or size of data that can be pulled into Lumira?	It depends – is your data source HANA Online? If that is the case, you will get a warning for millions of rows.
can Lumira use a Microsoft Analysis Services cube (MOLAP or Tabular) without having to write MDX?	See the Idea on Idea Place https://ideas.sap.com/D25772
with lumira, how do you protect the users from ad hoc access to data without validating the data sources? Lumira seems like we’re giving the business a loaded weapon without any training.	Could you elaborate? Is this just desktop? If so see http://scn.sap.com/community/lumira/blog/2014/11/14/governing-lumira-desktop-using-bi4
Currently we are using a regualr RDBMS datasource and SAP BW. What would be limit on number of rows pulled into Lumira from these datasources?	Please look at this response from Karol from SAP – note that BW connectivity is changing in a future release http://scn.sap.com/thread/3651909
what are the advantages you see with Lumira compared to Tableau or QlikSense?	One item that stands out is integration with BI platform (Lumira) – are you looking for more?
Yes in terms of functionality within the tool	Trusted data discovery for Lumira because it comes from the same company as universes & BW & HANA – unparalled capability to connect to corporate curated data sources
My questions is platform independent. With Lumira the users can access existing cubes and produce “official-looking” reports without any data validation or report validation. I guess my real question is how do we protect the business from themselves?	On this: users still need to be given access to the BEX queries/universes on the backend, so it is still controlled that way
one of the feedback from users at Lilly gravitating to Tableau is it comes with built in geo maps — no need for ESRI — we don’t have muiltple third party to make the primary tool work; your thoughts?	Yes; one option is to use Design Studio 1.5 which does not require use of ESRI
Any plans to harmonize/unify Location analytics across all tools.Ex: Design studio and Lumira use different approaches as of today	Yes, discussing how to harmonize experience – more harmonization as move towards end of the year.
When we will be able to take Lumira into Design Studio and enhance it further?	Something SAP wants to do; need underlying “plumbing” needs to converge; look at in Lumira introduced new in memory data engine – looking at that being a component of Design Studio –
we are comparing lumira to tableau — no design studio in this comparison/conversation – comparing apples to apples	did this latest question answer – trusted data discovery, integration with BI Platform
I am hearing from different sources from SAP that there is plans to introduce in-memory VELOCITY engine to other tools like design studio. can you provide details on this Information?	Answered previously – Something SAP wants to do; need underlying “plumbing” needs to converge; look at in Lumira introduced new in memory data engine – looking at that being a component of Design Studio –
What about Analysis for OLAP? Is the direction to focus on Analysis for MO instead?	Converging into other tools, including Lumira, Design Studio
Can you elaborate on “Direct connectivity to SAP BW Queries”? Can’t we can’t already accomplish this via BICS?	That was the today slide – yes WebI can connect via BICS
can you give more details on the planned Set reporting in WEBBI?	Please take a look at this webcast from last week – it covered Web Intelligence roadmap https://www.asug.com/discussions/docs/DOC-41361 (logon to ASUG.com)
Any time line on making Information Steward available for the AIX environment?	I think you would need to ask the SAP EIM team
Regarding Analysis for MIcrosoft Office – any plan to do something similar to the webi publication setting, “One database fetch per recipient”? This way, the recipient’s authorization is taken into account when scheduling?	Yes, taking more advantage of BI Platform – also bring this question next week to June 10th Q&A webcast for Analysis Office/Design Studio
Tableau has limitation on enterprise sharing. Lumira Server for BIP on the other hand has resolved this issue.	Thank you
When can we expect to see improvements to BI upgrading and patching capabilities? Will we be able to apply upgrade w/o downtime and then simply restart SIA?	that is the goal; start to see this with BI4.1 SP6 – later this year, expect to see ramp-up for 4.2 – improve patching experience