Cloud for Analytics: Where to find more info

[Former Member]

About a month ago, I wrote my first insights on C4A: First impression of SAP Cloud for Analytics where I showed my first impressions that I gained at SAP TechEd Las Vegas 2015. SAP Mentor r.konijnenburg also wrote down his thoughts in Cloud for Analytics, will it make a difference this time?

We know that SAP will make clients and subscribers able to log in to C4A somewhere soon (or maybe even has started them), so while looking forward to be able to test the service, I was looking for ways to get more information.

Connections from C4A:

I found out that at this moment there is only a connection available with Google applications. No further announcements has been made so far for other tools, like Office365, Prezi etc. I would like to see them, because that would give a lot of extra value to implement your graphs and stories to these kind of tools. At this moment the main focus appears to be at the own SAP products, as Google Drive and SalesForce, but I was also told, more connections will be introduced shortly and more connection options are being discussed. That all sounds very promising about the future possibilities.

Connections to C4A:

If you have HCP (HANA Cloud Platform) can use Data Services, SLT as was mentioned in a  C4A webcast. More info (though limited) can be found via the blog by tammy.powlas3/blog: SAP Cloud for Analytics Update Webcast Recap.

Ronald posted the following information:

Data Connectivity

• SAP Data Sources: HANA, BW, S/4 HANA
• Support for Oracle, SQL Server, Teradata through HANA Smart Data Access
• Planning Data Sources: BPC NW, BPC MS
• Static Data Sources: CSV, XLS
• Cloud Data Sources: salesforce.com

Data Linking

• Connect to on-premise S/4HANA, HANA, or BW systems without data replication
• Leverage the native analytical capabilities of SAP systems (hierarchy navigation, calculated KPI)
• Bi-directional integration with BPC NW/MS

The sources that are mentioned are really extensive to start with. Also when having BW and HANA as a source, this means that also on premise support will be available. I am really looking forward trying the connectivities.

Website integration:

What is also really nice feature is that it is possible to add a story to a website. However at this moment you would still need to have your own C4A account, but it is a nice feature (this should f.e. also work for sharepoint pages etc.). The moment you created a story and save it, a dialog is showing to access a URL for that story. You can embed that via an iFrame on any site.

More info:

So when looking for more documentation, the best way to start your C4A tour is on the help site for C4A. Here you can find the user guide and release notes. Also make sure to watch the YouTube channel for more tutorials. All kind of basic, but will help to get you started.

Make sure that you have registered to sapcloudanalytics.com, so you will receive a notification once public accounts become available. I sure hope to get mine soon, so we can start playing around with the functionalities.

New overview video:

Have you seen the new overview video yet?