Questions and Answers for #asksap Analytics Innovation Community Call: Journey to the Cloud: SAP Strategy and Roadmap for Cloud and Hybrid Analytics Scenarios March 16, 2017 You mentioned Hybrid. What exactly do mean around Hybrid and hybrid scenarios? Hybrid BI provides a seamless experience across both on premise and Cloud. When you access content or blend data from on premise or Cloud systems, you are doing hybrid BI. A seamless experience means that business users do not have to think about where data or content is residing; on premise and Cloud clients and assets work together. On slide 8 (Digital Framework) why are Analytics and BusinessObjects (Cloud) not noted? everything else is - for eg. HANA / Ariba, etc.? No hidden meaning here. In the interest of space on the slide, and the focus of the presentation being analytics, did not see a need to call this out again. What's advantage of going on Cloud rather than incrementing native hana footprint? You won t get the combined BI, planning, and predictive capabilities that SAP BusinessObjects Cloud (BOC) offers. Also, BOC is a SaaS solution, designed with native BI, planning, and predictive services. What is the real use case for using Business Objects on cloud? If we are using a traditional SAP landscape with ECC and BW, can BOC improve performance of reports without having HANA? I want to be sure it s clear that we are not talking about running on-premise SAP BusinessObjects on cloud. This is a completely new solution developed from the ground up as a cloud native analytics solution covering BI, planning, and predictive use cases. It may improve performance against ECC and BW as we will acquire that data and put it in to BO, which is itself running on top of HANA. So in essence, you will be able to take advantage of the performance of HANA without having to purchase HANA. What is the Mobile Analytics strategy - BI Mobile / RoamBI & BoC Mobile via browser currently and via App in the future? The plan is for a native mobile experience with SAP BusinessObjects Cloud for middle 2017. Today access is available via a browser on mobile devices. What's the difference between 'Embedded analytics S4' vs 'BW/4'? Embedded analytics for S/4 are essentially targeted Fiori charts embedded in S/4 HANA. BW/4 is BW running on HANA where we are able to remove much of the traditional intermediate constructs that are normally required in a BW environment.
I see your Analytics strategy assumes S/4, but we are still in ECC, describe the BI journey to accompany the upgrade to S/4 Our analytics strategy doesn't require S/4. SAP BusinessObjects Cloud also works against ECC today, so you can do both. Can you explain the difference in what you just said about maintaining the core on premise (or private datacenter) versus components in the SAP Cloud? It means that SAP BusinessObjects Cloud (BOC) can connect to on-premise components like BW BEx queries, Universes, HANA views, BPC models, etc. And we are working on enabling more on-premise scenarios like having onpremise BI clients connect to BOC models. What is SAP's approach to optimizing performance when the big data that feeds analytics in the cloud comes from on-premise systems? When acquiring data SAP BusinessObjects Cloud uses a sample and then schedule approach to data manipulation and acquisition. For a live online connection only the data that is needed is moved between the source system and the user s browser. Data sensitivity is of high concern. The cloud seems like a risk for leakage. Cloud can be more secure than on-premise. The life of any cloud hosted SaaS solution is completely dependent on how secure it is. We spend a huge amount of resources, time, processes, certifications, compliance measures, etc. to make sure that our SaaS cloud solution is hardened. Often this is more than what any individual company can do with their own data center. That's all very well, but doesn't help when users see constant change. On premise allows us to decide when to roll out new features and train users. With such short innovation cycles, how is backward compatibility for reports guaranteed? This is a good point. For customers and users that don't want to see innovation as quickly they may want to stay on premise. We are looking at ways that we can provide options to choose more conservative update schedules. The reports are already in the tenants that are updated. Are on premise HANA, BW and ECC sources supported via BO Cloud? Yes For this to work (technically) should we be running anything specific on premise that can easily interoperate with the SAP cloud options? We have an agent that runs in your data center that communicates with SAP BusinessObjects Cloud. By when would it be possible to consume Universes (UNX Format) in BoC? Today!
Would you say that moving to cloud essentially requires identifying new, cloud-relevant use cases and business cases? So, can you can run financials on premise but move analytics to the cloud that can incorporate mobile and visualization? Not uniquely, but it is a good way to start. Yes! That's a perfect example. Will this tool replace BPC, PAL, LUMIRA, Crystal report, etc.? This tool could replace some, and most likely will compliment others in hybrid deployments Why not one consolidated App to consume all Analytics rather than three different apps? Lumira 2.0 is the latest result of the convergence of the on-premise tools. SAP BusinessObjects cloud is a single service providing all capabilities. What is the Release date for BO cloud Connector for Success Factors Learning Solution? There is no exact date right now, but we are aware of the desire and it is on our list. With focus on Hana and S4 BW, does this mean the BusinessObjects becomes a solution solely for SAP ERP customers? Absolutely not. SAP BusinessObjects Cloud supports Universes, JDBC, OData so that you can connect to all the same data sources that you can connect to today with SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise. Was there a benefit in terms of cost by moving to the cloud? The focus was not to save money; it is more to use the data to the maximum. The time we save during reporting we can now do additional, more effective analysis, which we were not able with the MS office tools. How security is handled with on-prem users? SSO, and data access rights? SSO is supported with SAML. BOC will respect the user's credentials and rights on the data source. How does the data get from an SAP ERP system into the Cloud? Data from ERP would be acquired via OData. Do we have any specific use cases (sort of sweet spots) for SAP BOC solution given that somewhere it is competing with SAP Predictive, Lumira and BPC etc.? Use can be found on https://www.sapbusinessobjects.cloud/
How is the downtime managed when there is an upgrade in a cloud service (say BOBJ is upgraded to higher version)? If Cloud customers won't be able to access BOBJ during downtime, how the cloud would be advantageous? We have published SLA s with regards to maintenance windows and downtimes. https://www.sap.com/about/agreements/cloudservices.html?search=service%20level&sort=latest_asc Does BOC support access to Ariba? This is planned for BusinessObjects Cloud in 2017. Which landing page are you recommending for hybrid solutions? We are working on a hybrid portal or catalog that will provide access to both onprem BOE and BOC and 3rd party content. This was covered in the presentation by Adrian Westmoreland. How do you go about securing the customer data? Also, given the legal requirements from more and more governments to keep data local for privacy reasons? We have many security, compliance and certifications that we adhere to that describe how we secure customer data. Additionally, our live data connectivity keeps the data where it is. It doesn't move to the cloud. Ty Miller's "No Pillar" slide - it said "LIVE CONNECTIVITY" - but there is no Live connectivity for BOBJ Universes (outside of acquisition mode) - this is a MAJOR blocker for hybrid /moving to the cloud - when will it be supported? Plan is to make live universe connectivity available this year. It s already available through our partner APOS. As an OEM partner, how can we embed and secure BusinessObjects Cloud inside our own on-premise applications? We plan to offer embedding capabilities in 2017. Why R and not python? R and python have very similar benefits. SAP has more experience with R. We need Live connections to reuse our existing Universes. This is a major blocker for moving to the cloud". Our partner APOS has already released a solution for live connectivity to.unv and.unx. SAP is working on an improved version for later this year. Does SAP have their own cloud or do you use another cloud provider such as Amazon? We use our own cloud, the SAP cloud platform to host SAP BusinessObjects Cloud.
When you transform the data, does it also directly update the source system? If it is only in the BI instance, then would it not be a data integrity issue? Data is only transformed in the SAP BusinessObjects Cloud. system. Presentation of data integration and suggested transformation/consolidation - will it possible with all data sources? Data is only transformed in the BOC system. Can you support API's from various mapping companies to add spatial capabilities? Not today, but it is something we are considering. What is the technical platform for Lumira 2.0, will it run on S/4HANA on premise, or separate? Lumira 2.0 Designer and Discovery are desktop client tools, the content created can be published to BI Platform (with LS4BIP add-on) for collaboration and continue analysis and interaction on Launchpad. Please note, BI Platform is the only platform supported for Lumira 2.0 deployment. Both discovery and designer can connect to S/4HANA as data source via Transient BEx queries running on embedded Analytic Engine. What community web site is available for BusinessObjects Cloud? Please visit https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/boc/sap BusinessObjects Cloud Any plans for a fully mobile-enabled BI launch pad and WebI? No, we don't plan to create a fully mobilized BI launchpad as the screen real estate of mobile devices doesn't lend itself to that. From on-prem perspective, custom extensions for DS, Lumira & WebI are all separate, independent with no interoperability. Any plans to move this to the platform enabling the complete tool set to leverage them seamlessly & IT to manage it centrally? Lumira 2.0 will begin this process. Would you use SDA when you say all other data sources can be integrated with BO on cloud? Yes, use of Smart Data Adaptors with SAP HANA enable live data connectivity to a host of data sources. Learn more about Smart Data Adaptors: https://blogs.sap.com/2016/06/22/smart-data-integration-available-for-hcp/ Who is the cloud provider SAP or other cloud partner(amazon./ms/google)? We use our own cloud, the SAP Cloud Platform, to host SAP BusinessObjects Cloud.
Will we be able to leverage SAP Cloud Peering (private connection avoiding the Internet) to connect our on-premise data storage into Business Objects Cloud? No, not directly. What is the difference between SAP DBaas database and HANA? Are these different. The DBaas is it not in memory database? HANA DBaaS is a database as a service running in the SAPCP. So HANA as a cloud service. How does BoC compare against other analytics tools like Power BI or Qlik.. Are there any real differentiators? The biggest differences are: 1) BOBJ Cloud is a full analytics platform for BI, planning and predictive and not just BI and 2) we are building very integrated connections to other cloud and on-premise SAP apps/sources like Fieldglass, Concur, SuccessFactors, Ariba, S/4 HANA, HANA, BW, ECC, Universes, etc. With live connections not moving data actually to cloud, would it not impact the performance? The data in a live connection is moved between the source system on premise and the browser on premise. Then performance can be better than moving data from the cloud. Ingestion topic, which technology is used to save the data saved in the cloud? The SAP Cloud Platform uses HANA as the persistence store along with associated technologies for larger data sets. File system (MapR), HANA, Sybase ASE? SAP HANA and others. It is a SaaS service, so should not impact the user of the system Can we have several BOC tenants: one for DEV, one for QA and one for PROD? And how transports are running between these tenants? Yes, you can, we support moving content between them. How does SuccessFactors WFA tie in to everything? We plan to release an OData connector that can be used to access data maintained in WFA in Q2. How will SAP deliver better value for customers by having 2 product strategy one for cloud and on premise compared to competitors like Tableau who has one product? Our product strategy is first to provide hybrid connectivity of BOC to on-premise semantic data layers like BW BEx queries, Universes and HANA views; then a cloud provisioned catalog unifying access to both on-premise content from BOE and cloud content from BOC; then enable some on-premise BI clients to connect to BOC models, starting with Analysis for Office
Do we need BW with S/4? Are analytics strategy doesn't require S/4 or BW. BusinessObjects Cloud works against either, so you can do both. Any Plan to integrate WEBI in the BO Cloud? What SAP end user tools integrate with data from web API's? We are investigating integration points between webi and SAP BusinessObjects Cloud. Lumira 2.0 provides multiple options 1) Direct connectivity from Lumira discovery using Odata 2) Connect from Lumira Discovery via UNX connecting to Web Service 3) Create your own custom data access extension. You can consume prepared data in Lumira with any of these three options in designer as well to create applications. What are the new features in Bobj and Analytics? See the what s new blog series by Carmen Choy. https://people.sap.com/carmen.choy