SAP Analytics Cloud 2019 Roundup: the good, the bad and the ugly

2019 is almost over, so just like last year this is a good moment to look back at what happened in the SAP Analytics Cloud universe over the past 12 months. This year we got an astonishing 24 wave releases for the SAC tenants that are on the fast track schedule, so that should be enough to cover! Traditionally, I’ll do the grouping of the roundup in a good, bad and ugly manner.

The Good

This year’s SAP TechEd confirmed the statement from 2018 that SAP Analytics Cloud would eventually turn in to the single BI solution for all the SAP solutions. In Q4 the betas for the first batch of ‘embedded analytics’ started, featuring the new SAP Datawarehouse Cloud, SAP SuccessFactors and SAP Fieldglass. 

The standalone SAC solution is turning more and more into this broad enterprise BI platform which will very soon overhaul the feature set of the on-premise SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform. Let’s go through some of the changes:

Platform administration has made some improvements, for example the simple fact that we can now finally authorize on models by storing them in folders. Sharing settings on these folders also have improved with better inheritance of sharing settings. Also, we can now take the full user administration outside of SAC by mapping accounts, teams and roles to MS Azure AD groups. With this you could setup your SAC tenant in such a way that users only need to go to the SAC URL and automatically an account is created for them and assigned to the correct teams and roles: no more manual admin activities needed in SAC! Finally, there are improvements in the Transport/LCM area, where we now can directly deploy between tenants, without export and importing files. 

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Video: SAP Analytics Cloud Roambi – Pulse template [2019.4 preview]

In this video I give a walkthrough of Roambi on SAP Analytics Cloud. Roambi is SAP’s mobile first solution for BI and is a separate app in addition to the already existing SAP Analytics Cloud Mobile app. The latter one supports SAC stories and digital boardrooms, while Roambi has its own document format based on predefined templates.

In this video I demonstrate the Roambi Pulse template. Full availability of Roambi and all its templates is expected later in 2019.

SAP Analytics Cloud anno 2018: the good, the bad & the ugly

Just a few more days and the year is almost over again, which makes this a perfect time to have a look at what happened in the past 12 months in the world of SAP Analytics Cloud. With all the updates the tool got in 2018 (22 waves!), you’d almost forget that it is just 10 months ago that SAC was pushed forward as the future of BI for SAP. But the question is of course: can it already deliver on this promise? And is it really enterprise ready? So let’s have a look at the state of SAP Analytics Cloud anno 2018. I grouped my observations in a good, bad and ugly manner.

The Good

Let’s start with some important signs in addition to the famous strategy blog of February 2018. SAP Analytics Cloud will be turned into the single BI solution for all tooling within SAP. So not only as the front-end solution on top of a SAP BW or HANA system, but it will replace the built-in BI solutions that come with the several cloud solutions SAP has acquired/developed over the years. Think of SuccessFactors, Concur, Fieldglass, Cloud for Customer. This will bring in millions of potential new users. For project Blueberry, which is a future SAP BW4/HANA cloud based offering, SAC will be the BI front-end. For the on-premise tools the future looks pretty sad. They probably will be supported for another decade, but all new innovations will be done in SAC.

I also see that SAC is slowly transitioning from a BI/planning tool into a broad platform that goes further than what the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform ever delivered. Initially it only hosted the models and stories for reporting and planning, then the boardrooms and predictive scenarios were added as separate objects, and next year we will see applications, Roambi templates and Analysis Office workbooks appearing.

The Analysis Office workbooks are an interesting topic in itself and I regard this as a must have for 2019 to completely get SAC to a full “enterprise ready platform” level. Currently, Analysis Office workbooks can only consume acquired data models in SAC. To make this really work we need support for live BW/HANA models, and the option to store these workbooks on the SAC platform from within the Analysis Office software. This is all on the roadmap for 2019.

In 2018 a lot of generic SAC features were released, for example story bookmarks, offline/live data blending and proper platform usage statistics. Also many more specific features were delivered, for example on BW live connectivity where SAC is now very close to supporting the full spectrum of BEx features. This year brought the universal display hierarchy, support for two BEx structures and support for BEx conditions.

To finish the Good section, SAP is doing a lot to support organizations to manage this new normal of cloud. It will offer so-called test tenants that run a preview of the upcoming wave. This allows customers to check out new features so they are prepared for the actual release.

The Bad

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5 crazy SAP BI predictions for 2018

2017 is over, 2018 is here, so it is time to make some crazy (or maybe not so crazy) predictions for the SAP BI universe this year!

1. SAPcoin

SAP will launch its own cryptocurrency based on the blockchain technology, to simplify transactions between and within organizations that run SAP software. The coin will probably be called SAPcoin, The Walldorf or The Hasso. At the end of 2018, the market capitalization of SAPcoin will be larger than that of SAP itself.

2. SAP Lumira Cloud

In the yearly SAP BI naming shuffle, SAP Analytics Cloud will be renamed once more. After Cloud for Analytics, SAP BusinessObjects Cloud and SAP Analytics Cloud, the new name will now leverage the stronger and more unique Lumira brand. Therefore, the tool will be called SAP Lumira Cloud (at least for the remainder of the year).

3. SAP Lumira Mobile

The three (!!!) mobile BI apps that we currently have (SAP BusinessObjects Mobile, SAP Analytics Cloud Mobile and SAP Roambi) will merge into a single app. Obviously, this app will be called the SAP Lumira Mobile app (at least for this year). Navigation in the app will be based on content from the SAP Analytics Hub, and will support all the document types that the current apps support (Lumira applications and stories, Crystal Reports, Webi, Analytics Cloud and even Xcelsius dashboards). Roambi will disappear as a standalone product, and will be integrated into SAP Analytics Cloud as a (mobile) template provider. Instead of spreadsheets, these templates will use the SAP Analytics Cloud models as a data source. The SAP community decides to call them “Roambies”, to keep this lovely tool in remembrance.

4. Interoperability!

Infinite interoperability! SAP Analysis Office workbooks can be hosted on SAP Analytics Cloud, to eliminate the need for a SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform. This way, long-time SAP BI customers can completely switch to the cloud solution, without completely alienating their beloved Excel users of the finance department. Furthermore, on-premise Lumira applications and stories can use SAP Analytics Cloud models as a datasource, and it will be possible to import a SAP Analytics Cloud story into Lumira Designer as a composite.

5. SAP Community

SAP Community is closed down, and replaced by either a basic, Reddit-like forum with structure, or a third-party starts a completely new SAP community platform that makes sense.