Event Information
#SAP Book Club: Mastering SAP Analytics Cloud Recap
Source: Genesis10
This book club meeting covered SAP’s Ingo Hilgefort new book, Mastering SAP Analytics Cloud, Empower your Business Users
Thanks to Genesis 10 and Kendall Tyler for hosting.
Kendall said they created SAP book club so SAP authors could have a book tour
This is Ingo Hilgefort’s 14th published book
Lots of Q&A:
Q: How long did it take to write the book?
A: 3-4 months; decided to use Kindle option to update the book
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Q:: What predict for the future
A: Embedded is a huge topic; S/4HANA
Cloud based data warehouse solution; easier to adopt changes
SAP Analytics used in NHL
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Q: Where is SAC (SAP Analytics Cloud) in the market?
A: See Gartner magic quadrant
PowerBI is leader
SAC is the complete solution for analytics with strong integration into SAP products
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Q: How do you see the position of SAC in relation with Power BI, especially when several (not SAP ) sources systems are in the landscape. Power BI is also brought the market with e free version. How do you think of that in relation of the “marketing” of SAC?
A: PowerBI is seen as “free”; see it as part of Office365
If you want to use PowerBI on corporate level need to purchase server components; not really free
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Q: Can we integrate WEBI Document /AO Documents in SAC? if you from which version of WEBI we can integrate..
A: Yes you can; explained in the book, an option for the hybrid deployment
SAC in cloud, use BusinessObjects on premise
Use the Universe as a data source or an existing WebI document – part of release 4.3
Analysis Office – cannot use the documents; SAC integrates with AO or SAC add in to MS Office
Leverage data sources and data models inside Office environment
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Q: Is SAP Data Warehouse Cloud (DWC) the next iteration of BW? Will there be content to take advantage of for quick enablement?
A: Yes, business content is a very critical part
Success criteria of BW was out of the box
DWC comes with Sample Data
DWC complements BW; not there to replace BW
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Q: Can you talk about how sac fits in landscape of data intelligence ,datahub ,Sac..
A: Data Hub and Data Intelligence same thing
Data Hub is now Data Intelligence – products came together
Data Intelligence – orchestrate pipelines
An option for ETL (over simplifies) – data ingestions
Go to DWC – Data Intelligence integrates to DWC – Data Flow is an embedded version of Data Intelligence
SAC for stories
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Q: What do you think about the digital boardroom? What do you see as the added value of this solution?
A: Digital Boardroom is an interesting experience; smart TV experience; Customers are using it, data driven
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Q: IS SAP delivered Standard Business content stories which can be readily used or enhance?
A: Yes DWC, SAC -item called Content Network – comes with samples to use the product
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Q: in terms of performance we hear and seen some slowness when using SAC with BW or Non-SAP sources, but other competitors like PowerBI are known to have better performance. Any views on it OR does SAP knows this and working on it?
A: Performance, competition; Compare apples with apples and oranges
PowerBI extracts data out of BW vs SAC connecting live to your SAP landscapes – data doesn’t leave network
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Q: With SAC capabilities, are we able to create a Lumira Dashboards / WeBi Std. Report?
A: Lumira has 2 products – Desktop and Designer – in the cloud, SAP Analytics Application Design
Web Intelligence – adding capability this year, see road map – enterprise reporting – ability to design report with repeated headers, more driven layout
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Q: For someone new to SAP thinking to get into SAC. What is the pre-requisite to learn before SAC
A: See book
Analytics – way perceive numbers
If start from scratch, start looking technology independent materials such as Stephen Few, Andy Kirk
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Q: BO is now extended more in terms of support to 2027, with SAC and BO as options this creates confusion with clients and also shows SAP is not putting the BI direction strongly for clients and changes frequently. Any views?
A: Analytics is strategic importance to SAP
Statement of Direction
BusinessObjects still supported
Moving enterprise reporting to the cloud
DWC – business layer; is counterpart to the universe
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Q: Digital Boardroom requires a separate license, right? Do you think it should be part of SAC Analytics license? SAP should give Digital Boardroom free. That can make a difference to compete with other players.
A: Yes, requires separate license
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Q: Embedded SAC editions have the same features as baseline SAC?
A: depends on version
Embedded SAC – don’t have to set up users
Limited to application for datasources
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Q: Does SAC work with all S4/HANA and BW on HANA versions ?
A: depends what “well” means
Can’t support all versions equally
See Platform Matrix
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Q: What about SAC’s scheduling feature? Comparing SAC’s scheduling and BO’s scheduling what missing in SAC and needs to be added?
A: Scheduling is not a year old
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Q: What are some SAC add-ons that customers should consider? (do they exist)?
A: Visualization – target analytics designer
Connectivity – APOS
SnapLogic delivers data sources for Data Warehouse Cloud
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Q: is SAC supports dynamic Currency /Quantity Conversion function ?
A: Yes
2 options – do conversion in SAC
Define currency, conversion rates
If you have BW – use BW currency conversion
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Q: Is it true that if we need a reporting tool on premise we need to look for Web Intelligence but if we are into Cloud then SAC is the choice? Can a customer could have both WEBI and SAC?
A: Yes
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Q: How effectual is SAC as a self-service tool…ease for users?
A: for some self-service, some just slice and dice
Some it means build a brand new dashboard
Can give people the complete freedom
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Q: Will SAC have Crystal Reports features? We are big users of Crystal Reports, especially inside SAP ERP (and it works on S/4HANA)
A: Not planned
Q: Can we use S4/HANA – Embedded Analytics Query directly in SAC
A: depends on what doing
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Q: Can you please throw some light on integrating /accessing FIORI
A: writing code vs. self-service scenario
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Q: So voice to search would be considered AI/ML?
A: more NLP – natural language processing
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Q: Does your book covers any of the Advanced Analytics features/capabilities using AI&ML?
A: SAC, talking AI/ML – augmented BI, in SAC have features
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Q: While importing data from S4/HANA what is better CDS Views or Calculation
A: CDS is preferred
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Related:
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To join for free, use code POWLASPASS (case sensitive)
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Thank you, Tammy for sharing. It was a great event and discussion yesterday!
BTW - Registered SAP Insider's event, thanks a lot for the code! What an opportunity!