SAP Bloggers Corner

SAP Broadens Analytics Reach With New Stake in Data Discovery and Visualization Market

Analytics, HANA, Innovation, Newsbyte, SME Comments Off

May 162012

ORLANDO — SAP today announced intuitive software that turns data into answers for people across organizations. SAP Visual Intelligence software allows employees, departments and lines of business to creatively visualize and analyze information and apply it to individual and group decision-making. A desktop version of SAP BusinessObjects Explorer software, SAP Visual Intelligence is powered by the SAP HANA platform and empowers users to perform data discovery regardless of technical skill level. With the new application, business users can take advantage of existing data investments that their IT organizations have built and maintained without tasking IT to produce reports. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE NOW, being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012.

No matter where users sit in a company, they want a way to easily explore, mash up and share information to make better decisions and find new opportunities — without having to task IT to deliver reports. Companies are also looking to maximize existing business intelligence (BI) investments; expanding access allows more people to take advantage of a wealth of existing data and systems to make better-informed decisions.

“The category of visual data discovery has become a must-have component of the BI tool portfolio and SAP has upped its capabilities with its latest product, SAP Visual Intelligence,” said Cindi Howson, founder, BI Scorecard. “Ease of use, time to insight and business agility are key reasons for the rapid growth of visual data discovery that provides users with greater self service with minimal IT support. SAP BusinessObjects Explorer provided ease of use, but the release of SAP Visual Intelligence brings greater flexibility and richer analysis.”

“3M is a diversified company consisting of six different businesses units operating across various industries globally. As a result, we are a data-rich organization that relies on SAP to deliver intuitive BI solutions,” said Jeff Robinson, IT manager, Global Business Intelligence, 3M. “SAP Visual Intelligence puts our people in the driver’s seat because they can truly discover data on the fly. And because SAP handles the work of combining multiple data sources backed by in-memory technology, self-service analysis hits our users’ screens in seconds.”

Empowering Users in Any Industry or Line of Business to Explore Data and Find Answers
SAP Visual Intelligence draws upon the company’s expertise in 24 industries, 10 lines of business and global footprint to deliver a product that any company can use to deliver answers to users everywhere. For example:

A loan officer at a bank might wonder how the bank is performing regionally across multiple categories of loans and demographics. Typically this would involve intensive efforts downloading and bringing together information from corporate as well as public data sources to find answers, which would be done manually each time a refresh is needed. SAP Visual Intelligence enables the loan officer to create an automated routine to download census information, combine it with regional loan data as well as additional region and state details to enrich the data. The information could be immediately plotted on a map to discover that loan business had increased 25 percent in the past two years for high-income earners in a specific zip code but new loan applications had slowed significantly. At the next meeting, the team could put together a new campaign targeting sales of loans in the high income areas.
Responsible for analyzing the numbers of defects across plants and suppliers, a business analyst at a global manufacturing firm could use SAP Visual Intelligence to pull enterprise data as well as external data files sent by suppliers. A mash up of the data might reveal that specific parts and one particular supplier are responsible for 80 percent of the defects. As a result, the engineering team could work with the supplier on correcting the issues.
A regional manager for a healthy snack company might be tasked with increasing sales of a new health bar in the western region. Working with a business analyst and SAP Visual Intelligence, the regional manager could easily access sales numbers for the last three years and combine this with point of sale data to see that the majority of sales were coming from small stores running a new campaign. On the spot, the regional manager and business analyst could expand the campaign to a broader market and eliminate poorly performing campaigns.

Fast, Engaging Way of Finding Answers Buried in Massive Amounts of Data
Building on SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, SAP Visual Intelligence leverages SAP HANA to help users ignite their creativity with beautiful and interactive visualizations, allowing them to ask any question without the need for predefined queries, reports or dashboards. SAP Visual Intelligence removes roadblocks to information so business users can find real-time answers on any volume of data. The engaging interface increases the usage of data and ability to derive answers and make better decisions. SAP Visual Intelligence enables ad-hoc discovery everywhere, across all data — from spreadsheets to sales, finance, marketing, customer, social, geo-location, third-party and other business data.

Analytics Innovations Revolutionize the Decision-Making Process
Recognized as the BI market share leader by Gartner, today’s announcement is another of example of SAP’s commitment to investing and expanding its analytics portfolio to respond to the needs of customers and the market. Recently announced SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis software is intended to help users improve decision-making by predicting future outcomes. Additional planned enhancements to SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions aim to deliver more mobile analytics options, richer insight, improved collaborative decision-making and deeper SAP applications integration. The improved capabilities are planned to help companies extract the most business value from the massive amounts of data that are generated today.

“SAP Visual Intelligence revolutionizes decision-making by offering every person in an organization a fast and extremely easy to use way of discovering answers from any data,” said John Schweitzer, senior vice president and general manager, Analytics, SAP. “SAP solutions for analytics empower people with precise information anytime and anywhere using beautiful visualizations, enabling rapid response to events as they unfold. SAP delivers a powerful and comprehensive analytics portfolio that helps companies adapt to constant change so they can achieve remarkable results.”

For more information and demos about SAP Visual Intelligence, visit www.experienceexplorer.com. For a closer look, see: “Screenshots: SAP Broadens Analytics Reach.”

For announcements, blog posts, videos and other coverage during SAPPHIRE NOW, visit the Events Newsroom.

SAPPHIRE NOW
With SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP offers its customers, partners and prospects even more opportunities to engage in dialogue with peers, participants and thought leaders around the globe. Being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012, this enhanced, real-time event connects attendees on site with global participants through state-of-the-art broadcast studios and an online experience that incorporates the latest social media and community functionality. Whether on site or online, participants can gain insight as to how SAP is delivering on its product strategy and helping organizations around the world to run better. For more information, visit www.sapphirenow.com. Follow SAPPHIRE NOW on Twitter at @SAPPHIRENOW and visit the Events Newsroom at www.events.news-sap.com.

Note to Editors:
Webcasts, announcements, media roundtables, keynote presentations and blog posts from SAPPHIRE NOW will be available in the Events Newsroom at: www.events.news-sap.com. To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visit www.sap.com/photos. On this platform, you can find high-resolution material for your media channels. To view video stories on diverse topics, visit www.sap-tv.com. From this site, you can embed videos into your own Web pages, share video via email links and subscribe to RSS feeds from SAP TV. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

For more information, press only:
Susan Miller, SAP, +1 (610) 661-9225, susan.miller@sap.com, EDT
SAP Press Office, +49 (6227) 7-46315, CET; +1 (610) 661-3200, EDT; press@sap.com
Jeff Shadid, Burson-Marsteller, +1 (214) 224-8419, jeff.shadid@bm.com, CDT

During SAPPHIRE NOW (from May 14 to 16), to speak with press contacts on site, please dial the SAP press room: +1 (610) 661-0469.

SAP HANA Essentials eBook – FREE COPY

Analytics, HANA, Innovation, Technology 4 Responses »

May 142012

Everything you want to know about SAP HANA is now available in an eBook, SAP HANA Essentials. The book provides business or technical backgrounds a broad overview of the architecture, tools, capabilities and use cases for SAP HANA. Additional chapters will be added on a regular basis.

You can get the book free via offer code: 0FED1038

Table of Contents

Chapter	Title	Timetable
1	SAP HANA Overview	Available Now
2	SAP HANA Architecture	Coming in Fall 2012
3	SAP HANA Business Cases & ROI Model	Coming in Summer 2012
4	SAP HANA Applications	Coming in Summer 2012
5	SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse on SAP	Coming in Summer 2012
6	Data Provisioning with SAP HANA	Coming in Fall 2012
7	Data Modeling with SAP HANA	Coming in Fall 2012
8	Application Development with SAP HANA	Coming in Fall 2012
9	SAP HANA Administration & Operations	Coming in Fall 2012
10	SAP HANA Hardware	Available Now
11	SAP HANA Projects & Implementation	Available Now
12	SAP HANA Resources	Coming in Summer 2012

About the Author: Jeffrey Word, Ph.D., is responsible for creating and communicating thought leadership on SAP’s In-Memory database strategy globally. Over the last 13 years at SAP, he has driven multiple topics in technology strategy and corporate innovation projects. He is also the co-author of the bestselling books, Integrated Business Processes with ERP Systems (2011) and SAP NetWeaver for Dummies (2004). His next book, Integrated Business Processes with SAP® ERP, will be released in Fall 2012.

Kraft, John Deere and Others Using SAP HANA

Analytics, Events, HANA, Innovation, Technology No Responses »

May 142012

If you wanted to learn who is using SAP HANA read a blog from Simo Said from SAP. Simo captures how well-known companies are using SAP HANA, such as Kraft, John Deere, Amerisource.

Kraft, John Deere and other customers are presenting at SAPPHIRE NOW this week. Go to the SAPPHIRE NOW Virtual Platform to watch keynotes and presentations. Below are the links to Kraft & John Deere presentations:

Deriving New Business Value with SAP HANA: Real-Life Customer Use Cases (Session ID: 7882) : 30mn Panel Discussion with Kraft Foods, Automotive Resources International and AmerisourceBergen – When: Wednesday 16^th, 4.00pm-4.30pm
Real-Time Project Management Reporting with SAP HANA: A Customer Use Case (Session ID: 7878) : 20mn Theater Presentation with John Deere – When: Tuesday 15^th, 1.00pm-1.20pm

What Oracle Won’t Tell You about SAP HANA

Analytics, HANA, Innovation, Technology No Responses »

May 012012

Steve Lucas, head of SAP database & technology at SAP wrote a blog negating claims about SAP HANA.

He goes deep into the following areas:

SAP HANA features and functionalities
SAP HANA customer use cases
Pricing for SAP HANA

Read Steve’s blog, “What Oracle Won’t Tell You about SAP HANA“.

SAP Transforms Social Collaboration With Analytics for Data-Driven Decision-Making

Analytics, Newsbyte, SME Comments Off

Apr 302012

WALLDORF — Changing the face of social software by making collaboration more pervasive in organizations and business applications and processes, SAP today announced the availability of new analytics capabilities in the collaborative decision-making application SAP StreamWork. Users can upload, explore, analyze and visualize data directly within SAP StreamWork, and collaborate with teams to make fact-based decisions. People can also connect to data stored in SAP HANA to take advantage of in-memory capabilities for rapid analysis of information.

All SAP StreamWork users can benefit from accessible, easy-to-use analytics – there is no training or prior experience required. For example, people can begin by simply uploading spreadsheets to SAP StreamWork activities via their Web browsers and using the exploration tool to quickly filter, sort and work with data. They can then create and save interactive visualizations from many offered chart types; monitor key metrics by setting visual alerts; and add social features such as pro-con tables, rankings, quick polls and checklists. Additionally, enhanced support for SAP Crystal Reports software means users can now embed, view and save interactive report data within SAP StreamWork activities, without having to download files or switch between applications.

“Collaborative work is about getting the right people, data, content and systems together at the right time, in the work context,” said industry analyst Michael Fauscette, GVP, Software Business Solutions Group, IDC. “Bringing business-contextual data together with social capabilities for hypothesizing, analyzing and making decisions enables people to get work done, which increases the relevance and business value of the system significantly.”

“Collaborative analytic capabilities are critical to how we execute our vision for what social software should be for SAP customers,” said Sameer Patel, global vice president and general manager, Social Software Solutions, SAP. “Our belief is that true collaboration to drive action goes beyond just connecting people well – it requires access to and manipulation of critical data and exception handling in business processes. As social networks become more pervasive, collaborative analytic capabilities enable our customers to bring process, data and content to where employees, customers and partners work. Business users can now easily interact with a variety of critical data, such as sales pipeline analysis, sales and operations planning, or supplier assessment and management.

For more information, visit the SAP StreamWork blog and the SAP Newsroom. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews and @sapstreamwork.

Media Contact:
Susan Miller, SAP, +1 (610) 661-9225, susan.miller@sap.com, EDT
Jeff Shadid, Burson-Marsteller, +1 (214) 224-8419, jeff.shadid@bm.com, CDT

SAP Unveils Strategy to Gain Predictive Insights From Big Data

Ecosystem, Newsbyte Comments Off

Apr 032012

WALLDORF — As organizations evolve their business strategies to remain competitive in ever-changing markets, they rely on today’s information to make choices for tomorrow. Empowering them with the ability to improve decision-making by predicting future outcomes, SAP today announced SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis software. The new offering aims to equip more people with a modern, user-friendly, graphically stunning tool for predictive modeling and advanced visualization. The software is intended to harness and unleash the full value of “Big Data” when coupled with the power and speed of the SAP HANA platform, enabling organizations to reveal and act upon untapped opportunities and hidden risks.

“There is a lot of untapped insight that could be exposed from exploding internal and external, structured and unstructured data sources,” said Dan Vesset, vice president, Business Analytics solutions, IDC. “Predictive capabilities help businesses explore and identify the opportunities and risks hiding in the sea of all that big data. SAP’s integrated approach to predictive analytics helps more users learn not only what has happened, but also understand why it happened, what might happen and what the best course of action is.”

Predictive modeling has traditionally been the domain of statisticians and data scientists. However, the intuitive interface and stunning visualization of SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis are intended to bring predictive insight to an under-served user community – the business analyst. With the software, analysts can create models either by using the predictive algorithms included or can integrate and use algorithms from the widely-used R open-source data analysis and statistical language. SAP plans to enable customers to use the software for instant insight into large data volumes to anticipate future opportunities and risks. Examples include:

Understanding how historical sales, costs and other key metrics translate to future performance
Seeing how predicted results compare with goals
Revealing the causes of customer satisfaction and employee turnover
Showing how past and emerging trends impact the bottom line
Finding correlations in data for cross-sell and up-sell opportunities
Locating anomalies and clusters for targeted analysis

Unleash the Value of Big Data With SAP HANA
While SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis is planned for availability via standalone deployment, the software is also intended to uniquely unlock the value in “Big Data” when utilized with the SAP HANA database, which provides a data mining and statistical function library. Access to data sources outside of SAP HANA is planned, including universes, SAP Sybase IQ server and more.

Once data – structured, unstructured or both – is loaded into SAP HANA or an alternative data source, data and business analysts will be able to benefit from intuitive predictive modeling, beautiful advanced visualizations and data exploration, all with a drag-and-drop interface for data selection, preparation and processing.

Insights can then be delivered to dashboards, alerts and mobile devices, or accessed by other analytics solutions from SAP such as the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) platform, SAP BusinessObjects Explorer and SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence software, as well as Microsoft Office applications.

Bring Predictive Analytics to Everyone in the Business
SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis and SAP HANA are important steps in SAP’s goal of bringing predictive insight to everyone in the organization – not just the analysts. This means extending predictive capabilities to where people work: into business applications, BI and collaboration environments, and on mobile devices.

SAP has already delivered predictive applications powered by SAP HANA to numerous industries, and is aggressively expanding its predictive applications portfolio.

Utilities companies, for example, use SAP Smart Meter Analytics software to identify energy-consumption patterns and perform customer segmentation. Retailers use predictive algorithms in SAP HANA to hone in on product relationships and their associated financial performance in achieving corporate targets, as well as view store-level performance and conduct what-if demand model scenarios. Sales teams, similarly, use predictive capabilities extended into SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions to generate up-to-date pipeline reports, drill down on individual leads and make projections for the end of the fiscal period.

“Analytics solutions from SAP are powering a decision-making revolution for businesses that recognize the future starts a second from now, not a week or a year from now,” said John Schweitzer, senior vice president and general manager, Analytics, SAP. “That’s why predictive applications must be intuitive, where people work and powered by real-time performance. With SAP’s comprehensive approach to predictive analytics, more people in the business can explore, visualize and share insights from exploding volumes and varieties of data.”

SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis is currently available via the SAP Ramp-Up program.

For more information, including a blog post by Mani Gill, vice president and general manager of business intelligence solutions, visit the SAP Newsroom. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews and @businessobjects, and participate in the conversation using the hashtag #sapanalytics.

For more information, press only:
Susan Miller, +1 (610) 661-9225, susan.miller@sap.com, EDT
Samantha Finnegan, +1 (650) 276-9350, samantha.finnegan@sap.com, PDT
SAP Press Office, +49 (6227) 7-46315, CET; +1 (610) 661-3200, EDT; press@sap.com
Jeff Shadid, Burson-Marsteller, +1 (214) 224-8419, jeff.shadid@bm.com, CDT

Five Things You Need to Know About SAP’s Move in Predictive Analytics

Newsbyte Comments Off

Apr 032012

Today SAP responded to our customers’ advanced analytics needs and ability to derive value from big data with the introduction of a new predictive analytics solution from SAP. Predictive analytics is a hot topic right now, recently cited by several industry analysts as one of the future trends in analytics.

Here are five important points to take note of regarding SAP’s approach to predictive analytics:

1) Data mining and predictive analytics have been around for a long time but with new market forces changing the landscape – more and more people in the business want to derive predictive insights from the increasing volumes of “Big Data” coming online. The market and our customers have been anxiously waiting to hear a concrete predictive strategy from SAP. The time has come and we’re announcing the ramp-up of SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis – a major milestone in SAP’s movement in predictive. The application fills a void for our customers – both Business Objects standalone and joint Business Objects and SAP. It also strengthens the completeness of our analytics portfolio.

2) Predictive analytics is still a data statistician game, but people across the organization are demanding predictive insights. We want to give all users what they need. SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis, gives statisticians what they need most….productivity. The application includes an incredibly modern, easy to use interface for designing predictive models then visualizing, discovering, and sharing insights. It includes its own predictive algorithms and integrates with the hugely successful R open-source statistical function library. To meet the needs of the broader business and its users, easily digestible predictive insight is being extended and embedded in BI and business applications where those users already work – on the web, on-demand, and on mobile devices.

3) The layering of SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis on top of SAP HANA is the one-two punch of this announcement. Coupled with SAP HANA, users can put speed and power behind their predictive strategy and deliver predictive insights from “Big Data” in real-time.

4) That being said, SAP remains committed to customers that want to layer analytics on top of non-SAP databases. SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis can access other vendor databases (such as Sybase, SQL, Oracle, etc.), can access flat files and spreadsheets, and can pull data from SAP BusinessObjects Universes. This application is another proof point of our commitment to heterogeneity that SAP made to customers almost five years ago when we acquired BusinessObjects.

5) SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis software is currently available via the SAP Ramp-Up program, so we’re just beginning. But when you look at how well SAP is performing in areas like cloud, in-memory databases, mobile, line-of business and industry applications – it isn’t hard to see how SAP could not only lead the predictive market, but change the game.

Mani Gill is vice president and general manager of business intelligence solutions at SAP.

New Executive Hire Sameer Patel to Advance Social Enterprise Strategy at SAP

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Mar 132012

This week, we took another important step in accelerating our social enterprise strategy with the hiring of social computing and technology expert Sameer Patel as global vice president, Enterprise Social Software. Sameer will lead the solutions and go-to-market for collaboration and social software from SAP.

As companies that use social technologies are more likely to be market leaders(1) and ‘improving collaboration’ is a top 10 priority for 2012 for CIOs(2), SAP is committed to enabling companies to reap the results of social technologies to drive their businesses ahead. I am pleased that Sameer will be joining us to deliver on our vision.

SAP has recognized and invested in the power of collaborative technologies for more than a decade, starting with SAP Enterprise Portal in 2001. Since then, we’ve added many key social advancements to our strategy including SAP StreamWork, Crossgate, SAP Sales OnDemand, our recent acquisition of SucessFactors Jam social technology and more. Today, more than 25,000 companies of all sizes use SAP social and collaborative solutions.

Our commitment to social and collaborative technologies is key to our company’s success and to the success of our customers. My boss, Sanjay Poonen, has passionately shared that collaboration, combined with our SAP HANA, in-memory technology, core applications, mobile solutions and analytics capabilities provides the most comprehensive approach in the industry to ensure our customers can drive the best results in an ever-changing, hyper-competitive environment.

Sameer joins us from The Sovos Group, a consulting and execution planning firm working with leading organizations to accelerate employee, customer and partner performance through the use of social and collaboration technology. Sameer was a fellow partner at Sovos where he led engagements for Fortune 500 companies such as Intel, Nike and McKesson to design business transformations via the use of social computing constructs and technology. Prior to The Sovos Group, Sameer held positions as managing director of Span and director of Strategy and Business Development at LiquidThinking and marchFIRST. Those of you entrenched in the enterprise social media arena are probably familiar with Sameer; others may want to get acquainted through his Pretzel Logic blog. We are looking forward to tapping into Sameer’s experience. Stay tuned for a future blog post from Sameer on his vision and plan for SAP’s social strategy.

John Schweitzer is senior vice president and general manager of Analytics for SAP.

Sources:

McKinsey Quarterly, The Rise of the Networked Enterprise: Web 2.0 finds its payday
InformationWeek, October 2011

SAP to Usher in New Era of Enterprise Performance Management Powered by SAP HANA

Analytics, Corporate Topics, HANA, Innovation, Newsbyte, Technology Comments Off

Mar 132012

SAP today announced support for SAP HANA from SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation, version for SAP NetWeaver.

Run Faster and Smarter with Real-Time Analytics

Newsbyte Comments Off

Feb 072012

As data volumes continue to increase and businesses shift into the next generation of data storage, analytics capabilities will be the front-end visualization technology that consumes this BIG data in real-time. To tackle this BIG data challenge SAP provides analytics capabilities that capture the power of in-memory computing technology (SAP HANA) and deliver information in meaningful ways to drive business value.