#askSAP Community Call Wrap-Up: SAP 2018 Strategy and Roadmap for Business Intelligence

The SAP analytics team  kicked off our 2018  #askSAP Innovations Community Call series on February 15 with the topic, “SAP 2018 Strategy and Roadmap for Business Intelligence.” Nic Smith, Global VP of Product Marketing for Cloud Analytics at SAP, served as moderator, setting the table for the discussions with our panelists. Then SAP BI experts Jayne Landry, Blair Wheadon, and Adrian Westmoreland shared insights and details on the recent announcements of SAP’s business intelligence strategy, including SAP’s roadmap and vision for BI and data discovery, technology options and product strategy, developments, and planned releases for our BI solutions.

If you weren’t able to attend the live call, you can catch the replay on-demand, and download the presentation and the Q&A from our #askSAP web page. Meanwhile, here are the highlights of the three areas we discussed:

1. SAP analytics product strategy
2. SAP BI roadmap and convergence
3. SAP hybrid strategy, including SAP Analytics Hub

Be sure to check out our list of resources at the end of the blog to see where you can learn even more.

1. SAP Analytics Product Strategy

Jayne Landry, Global VP Product Management, SAP Leonardo & Analytics at SAP, started the presentation by sharing key points around SAP’s Analytics product strategy:

• All Analytics. One Platform. Deliver simplicity with all analytics capabilities together on one cloud-based product – bringing together data access, data prep, discovery, visualization, analysis, prediction, planning, what-if, all augmented by AI and Machine Learning capabilities.
• Consumer Grade – Analytics access and adoption can further support a common UX that goes across all capabilities and devices to provide one common and simple user experience which increases use and adoption.
• Hybrid – The strategy supports organizations operating in a mixed landscape with on premise and cloud or multi-cloud technologies and data with on premise to cloud interoperability and a way for the organization to manage all types of analytics across their business.
• Embedded – Embedding analytics into SAP applications and third party application allows customers to provide contextual business driven insights where their users need it most.
• Intelligent – Enabling deeper, more meaningful logic and context driven insights, providing users with technology to have their data tell them what’s happening using Machine Language (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities, bringing hidden insight and context to life.

2. SAP BI Roadmap and Convergence

Blair Wheadon, General Manager of Data Discovery at SAP, highlighted elements of our SAP Lumira roadmap and what it means to the SAP BI solution:

• Data Discovery – SAP’s primary solution for data discovery moving forward will be SAP Analytics Cloud, where you can discover, analyze, plan, predict, and collaborate in one seamless experience that integrates with both on premise and cloud-based data sources and applications.
• SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise – SAP will continue to focus on addressing the Analytic Application use case with SAP Lumira designer edition, the Reporting use case with SAP Crystal Reports and SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, and Office Integration with Analysis Office and Live Office.
• Hybrid – SAP’s strategy combines SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise into a single, seamless hybrid solution that leverages the strength of both platforms to enable rapid innovation and broaden analytics user adoption.
• Licensing – SAP’s commitment to hybrid scenarios goes beyond technology with a Cloud Extension Policy to transition maintenance of unused software licenses into cloud subscription licenses today and hybrid subscriptions with general availability for customers planned for H2, 2018.

3. SAP Hybrid Strategy

Adrian Westmoreland, Product Management, SAP Analytics Cloud, shared SAP’s strategy for Hybrid analytics that allows you to share resources between on-premise and cloud deployments:

• SAP Hybrid Strategy – Designed to ease the journey from on-premise deployments into the cloud by extending or expanding into a complimentary cloud strategy delivering a seamless, interoperable experience so that business users do not have to think about where data or content is residing.
• SAP Analytics Cloud – Brings data discovery directly to trusted data sources on premise and cloud such as SAP BW/4HANA, SAP BusinessObjects Universes, SAP S/4HANA, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, and the SAP Cloud Platform itself—without moving, caching, or persisting any part or portion of the data into the cloud.
• SAP Analytics Hub – Provides a searchable catalog for all analytics content allowing customers to bring together all analytic assets whether on premise or cloud, including SAP or third-party content.

What’s Your Question?

Attendees were interested to learn more and posed a significant number of questions to our speakers. You can find the answers to these and other questions asked during the call in the full Q&A on the #askSAP website.

Learn More

Missed the call? No worries!  You can always watch the replay on-demand, download the presentation and the Q&A, and take part in the ongoing discussion on Twitter at #askSAP.

Here are some links to key resources that will help you gain a better understanding of the SAP Analytics Strategy and BI Convergence:

• Mike Flannagan’s Blog: “A Deeper Look into SAP’s BI and Analytics Strategy”
• SAP Analytics Strategy and BI Roadmap FAQ
• SAP BI Roadmap Information
• Ask A Question on the Roadmap, SAP Lumira, or SAP BI Solutions

Mark Your Calendar

We’re busily working to identify next year’s #askSAP topics.  Watch www.sap.com/asksap for future announcements.  And if you have suggestions for #askSAP topics, drop us a note at sapanalytics@sap.com.