Journey to the Cloud for SAP BusinessObjects Explo...

former_member229978 · ‎09-02-2019

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer and SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (aka Xcelsius) have been proved as very successful and classic BI tools in the last decades. Thousands of companies worldwide have benefited from this top visualization and presentation experience.

With the increasing number of businesses starting to take advantage of SaaS offerings and the end of support for Adobe Flash Player (check https://theblog.adobe.com/adobe-flash-update/), SAP would also like to draw your attention to our new strategic analytics solution SAP Analytics Cloud.

In this blog post, we will walk you through with SAP Analytics Strategy, give you an overview of our new star product SAP Analytics Cloud and explain how it can be a much better alternative for SAP BusinessObjects Explorer and SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards and even beyond with the support of Machine Learning and Planning capabilities. In addition, we will link to detailed functional scenario guidance and provide several migration use cases among different industries to help you understand in a more practical way.

1.Current Overview of SAP Analytics Strategy

SAP’s Analytics solutions and strategic roadmap are aligned to deliver the intelligent enterprise for our customers. Thus we are delivering best-in-class analytics by combining high-speed innovation from the cloud with trusted on-premise capabilities. This integrated hybrid solution expands analytics insights without sacrificing existing on-premise investments.

The future of analytics is in the cloud. Organizations can explore, expand, and grow the way they want by having control of data, no matter where it resides. With hybrid analytics, customers can start bringing their digital strategy into the cloud along with their previous investment.

SAP Analytics Strategy allows customers to protect their investments by having the ability to continue managing their on-premise analytics systems, data sources, and existing landscapes while leveraging the latest SAP Analytics Cloud capabilities.

In the meantime, customers have the option to leverage live on-premise data sources like SAP BusinessObjects Universes, SAP S4/HANA and more.

2.High-Level Introduction of SAP Analytics Cloud

2.1 Overview of SAP Analytics Cloud

SAP would like to drive customer with better business agility. SAP Analytics Cloud is one simple public cloud solution for decision making that allows users to discover, visualize, plan and predict, all in one place. SAC basically combines in one place many capabilities: Business Intelligence, Planning, Augmented Analytics, Analytics Designer. It brings customers much more advantage not only easy-used functions but also integrated platform and secured business data management.

Latest Technology

SAP Analytics Cloud delivers new business intelligence and predictive capabilities. Augmented analytics features powered by the latest machines learning technology help customers to discover and implement with greater insights.

Designed for Business Users

SAP Analytics Cloud will break down silos and increase business growth by empowering business users with access to trusted analytics. With powerful self-service analytics tools, all departments can share information and create reports based on a single source of truth.

Integrated for Planning

SAP Analytics Cloud natively aligns plans across all business units and integrates with SAP Business Planning and Consolidation.

2.2 SAP Analytics Cloud Stories vs SAP Analytics Cloud for Analytics Designer

As a comprehensive Go-to-product, SAC offers self-service stories and IT-oriented Analytics Designer to balance different scenarios and usages. SAC Stories and Analytics Designer are both support Augmented Analytics, Planning, and Predictive features. Please check the detailed support matrix.

SAP Analytics Cloud Stories

SAC story is the best way for business storytelling. Customer data is visualized and analyzed in stories. It provides various types of chats, tables, graphs, widgets etc. End users could easily define the filters, linked analysis, interactions among widgets without any technical background. As long as they know the business, then they know how to tell the stories. In addition, customers could also build a story automatically using the Machine Learning capability. To avoid creating something from scratch, SAC stories offers customers Smart Discovery features to automatically explore the data and generalize relevant graphs.

More information please refer to:

https://www.sapanalytics.cloud/resources-storytelling-best-practices/

https://www.sapanalytics.cloud/resources-building-a-story-automatically/

https://www.sapanalytics.cloud/resources-smart-discovery-machine-learning-for-business-users/

SAP Analytics Cloud for Analytics Designer

SAC for Analytics Designer has been designed also for data analysis and data planning. It can range from simple static dashboards to highly customized applications with more possibilities for visualization and interaction. There is a dedicated design environment in SAP Analytics Cloud to create such applications. It is another alternative to create analytical content with scripting enabled and more extensions available.

More information please refer to:

https://help.sap.com/doc/00f68c2e08b941f081002fd3691d86a7/release/en-US/b0dc35b2fa3f4ffba3e68b8e85ca...

https://help.sap.com/doc/00f68c2e08b941f081002fd3691d86a7/release/en-US/25a3b8d145864d7faf7447b916e4...

Comparison Items	SAP Analytics Cloud Stories	SAP Analytics Cloud for Analytics Designer
Functionality	BI, Planning, Smart Features, Smart Predict	BI, Planning, time series forecast. Smart Predict.
Workflow	Insert a data model via widgets Drag and drop widgets Define filters and input control Define relations and link	Insert a data model via widget Drag and drop widgets Scripting filters and interactions Custom navigations and extensions. Run the Application
Technical requirement for builders	No technical skills required	JavaScript language
Business using scenario	Standard charts, widgets consume Need fast deploy Need Calendar workflow	Complex analyzing scenarios Highly integrated with third party widgets (eg. 3D etc. )
Advantages	Self-service for business users Guided experience Easy consumed smart features	Fulfill complex and highly customized requirement Highly flexibility and openness Easily leveraging AI, voice recognition through APIs.