Embedded Analytics Roadmap

[Former Member]

Hi Gurus,

I am pretty new to embedded analytics and was wondering, does SAP have a roadmap for expanding the area at all?  We are just starting to set up the embedded analytics internally as a POC per the steps in ' four part blog (link to part 1), so I understand that CR and Dashboards are able to be configured for operational reporting.  I am wondering if there is a plan to expand the business suite analytics to other BOBJ reporting tools (e.g. Lumira, BOBJ Explorer, etc.).  Knowing there is a large push for HANA it would seem like expanding the capabilities to other reporting tools would be of benefit in the long run...

I will admit that I am still quite green in this area (I am more experienced with the BOBJ reporting suite, in fact) which prompted this question.  I'm hopeful someone with an ear closer to SAP might know more than me and be able to provide insight into what the future holds for embedded analytics.

Regards,

Chris

[RafkeMagic · Accepted solution]

Hey Christopher,

yes, you can work with other BO tools, which I was supposed to add in another part of the blog. Since I'm no longer full-time at the client we "experimented" with EA, that's getting more time than expected. I'll try to add another part today.

Anyways, you'll have to work with OpenDocument if you want results. Dashboards however, won't work unless you use the "old" version (xCelsius) and BCV ór you use Dashboards 4.1 (but then certain restrictions apply). I managed to get it to work with the "old" version (old installation/server was not yet removed), but not with 4.1 (as the client is on BI 4.0 SP7). An ex-colleague of mine tested the OpenDocuments for Dashboards on a BI 4.1 SP2 and he told me that worked. In our case that meant going forward with WebI instead of Dashboards. We actually got it to work apart from an issue with the "tagging" (see paragraph below). Meanwhile the project has been put "on hold" (and maybe even cancelled as it has been on hold for 2 months now).

In my opinion, SAP is not investing in this anymore at all. We have an incident open with them since February (concerning a serious bug with the tagging framework) and the last 2 months there has been no action whatsoever. I asked them at the beginning of this month  (7th or 8th) whether it would be worthwile to reopen the connections (as you can only open them for 20 days), but they didn't even bother to read that message yet.

Also, HANA Live works differently from what I've learned (from people working on it right now at a previous project of mine). From what I understand, it's merely a combination of (HANA) views on standard SAP tables (which you could extend to some way). I hope to get more details on that this weekend.

Cheers,

Raf

[erica_lailhacar · Accepted solution]

Hello All,

I am now the Solution Manager focused on our Embedded BI solutions and can share with you more information about the roadmap of analytics embedded in the SAP Business Suite.

Our embedded analytics are following the evolution of the SAP Business Suite. Today, the two main areas of focus and development are real-time analytics (powered by HANA), and bringing analytics to Fiori applications.

HANA LIVE is the operational analytics engine for real-time Business Intelligence and the foundation for real-time analytics on top of the Business Suite.

• We provide pre-built BI content (reports, dashboards, data exploration) for HANA Live via a Rapid Deployment Solution (supported content).
• There is also sample content for HANA LIVE (unsupported) built with SAP Lumira which you can download from here: http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-55966

I have a presentation with more details that I will upload to SCN in the coming days and post the link here.

Let me know if you need anything else and feel free to reach out.

Erica

[RafkeMagic · Accepted solution]

hey Erica,

I'm just wondering whether SAP realizes that (a lot of) their customers are not early adopters.

It usually takes a few months or even years before they are ready to use "new" features (in the sense of things they're not actively using yet). This seems to be very true for embedded analytics as you can tell from questions asked in this forum, but also for the HANA platform (and all it's beautiful extras). It's just not a (just) question of having the necessary budget to get the new software/hardware, but more about investing in time & resources necessary to get it to work.

To me it seems that by the time customers are (finally) ready for a certain product or feature, you have "abandoned" it already which I think is a pitty.

Cheers,

Raf

[erica_lailhacar · Accepted solution]

You brough up a good point Raf, so let me add to that because I don't want to leave you with the wrong impression.

We are not planning to deliver new pre-defined embedded content but the embedded analytics architecture (integration points) and features are still valid and will continue to be supported.

Customers that are not on HANA can continue to use them and extend with new content built by themselves or via Partners.

Innovation at SAP never stops, and we needed to address real-time analytic requirements - the market and our customers were asking for that. In embedded analytics for the SAP Business Suite we are doing that via HANA Live and Fiori. HANA is the platform where new content for the SAP Business Suite is being built on.

Having said that, our roadmap decisions are based on customer and market feedback. I will very much like to gather your feedback and new requests for ERP (without HANA) embedded analytics. Then I can have a discussion with my colleagues in the Business Suite Line of Business teams. They are ultimately the ones who decide on the pre-built content that gets shipped with their modules.

Regards,

Erica

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Erica,

Does the road map have anything for embedding analytics into 3rd party applications, like SF.com? We often get requests to embed BI reports/analytics into SF.com but the opendocument does not embed seamlessly.

thanks

Babu Krishnasamy

[TammyPowlas]

Christopher - the latest roadmap for this would be HANA Live (my take) - see Figure 9 here

Last year I attended an SAP webcast on this topic - and essentially it was presented as "today" is embedded as Raf showed, with the future/today being HANA Live.  See

I don't work for SAP and this is my opinion only.

[Former Member]

Hello Tammy,

Thank you for the prompt reply!  It appears that I'll need to do some research into HANA Live as I am not familiar with it...

I suppose my first question would be whether HANA is, or will be, a requirement for embedded analytics moving forward (I say "requirement" loosely there as I know it isn't a prerequisite).  Some of our clients don't have the resources to implement HANA so we are seeing if embedded analytics without HANA are a viable solution for their reporting needs.  As I said we are still in the process of doing a proof of concept to help answer that question.

And even though you don't work for SAP your opinion holds a lot of weight so I truly do appreciate the response

Regards,

Chris

[TammyPowlas]

My take (again):

I watched an SAP webcast today that the future of SAP is the HANA platform

That does not mean you can't use was is available today but most future work will be using HANA.