SAP Unveils Future of Analytics: Real-Time, Mobile, Social in India

4.0 Releases of Unified Business Intelligence and Enterprise Information Management Solutions from the SAP® BusinessObjects™ Portfolio Make the Real-Time Enterprise a Reality The world of business is becoming increasingly global and marked by virtual organizations using mobile technology and social networks. Organizations must be equipped to better assess and act decisively on huge volumes of data both from within and outside their businesses. In response to this transformation, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today launched the 4.0 releases of business intelligence (BI) and enterprise information management (EIM) solutions from the SAP® BusinessObjects™ portfolio, harnessing the advances of three years of software development.

Unified on a common infrastructure and with a user experience boasting the friendly usability of social networking tools, the new BI and EIM releases manifest the broad range of technology innovations that are shaping the future of analytics – in real time, with in-memory computing; instant powerful BI in users’ hands, with more mobile devices supported than ever before; across business and social data with certainty, combining structured and unstructured information and providing the tools to govern the information; and providing the best fit, right now in any deployment model, whether on-premise, on-demand, embedded in business operations, or in a “hybrid” manner.

“Since Business Objects became part of the SAP family, we have been working together on the 4.0 releases of BI and EIM solutions from SAP,” said Simon Dale, Senior Vice President, Solutions, SAP Asia Pacific Japan. “Combined with SAP HANA, customers can also have the ability to analyze massive amounts of data in real time. The feedback from early global customers has been tremendous.”

“Historically, companies have dealt with BI on a project-by-project basis, separate from each other and from their EIM initiatives, lacking the ability to bring that data together,” said Carl W. Olofson, research vice president, Application Development and Deployment, IDC. “The latest BI and EIM solutions from SAP are designed to help tackle big data, integrating structured and unstructured data and even information from social networks. New capabilities for event insight and information stewardship bring the benefits of data trustworthiness and process timeliness to customers. All of these components should provide the basis for an information environment that is nimble and responsive – one that fosters a culture of knowing, helping every person in the organization derive context and meaning, decide and act with confidence, and contribute to greater efficiency and profitability.”

Unified infrastructure Offers New Features, Heralds New Class of Analytics

The 4.0 releases help further reduce IT landscape complexity and speed deployment times by further integrating the BI and EIM environments into a single infrastructure. In addition, the consistent user experience and enhanced visualization supports end-user requirements in an easy-to-use, self-service fashion all enabled with new versions of SAP® Crystal solutions such as SAP® Crystal Reports® software, as well as other BI software such as SAP® BusinessObjects™ Explorer, SAP® BusinessObjects™ Dashboards and SAP® BusinessObjects™ Web Intelligence®, in addition to the SAP® StreamWork™ application. The 4.0 releases also provide easy integration with enterprise performance management (EPM) and governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) solutions from SAP to allow seamless visibility of performance and risk in business analytic scenarios.

New features of the 4.0 releases of BI and EIM solutions include:

• Real-time in-memory computing – Optimization for use on SAP® High-Performance Analytic Appliance (SAP HANA) software makes “business in the moment” possible by enabling customers to harness “big data” with the power of in-memory computing. Lightning-fast on massively high volumes of data, the in-memory appliance gives life to a new class of analytics that instantly transforms massive and complex data volumes into easy-to-act-on insights. To learn more about how real-time analytics is delivering value for construction company Hilti, see “Cutting-Edge Real-Time Analytics at Hilti.”
• Easy, mobile BI on any device – Across mobile platforms and devices, workers can access intuitive, real-time BI and respond instantly to events as they unfold. New interactive visualizations and user experience enhancements make it easier for users, whenever and wherever they work. The 4.0 releases also capitalize on SAP’s acquisition of Sybase, and will use the Sybase Unwired Platform to offer a comprehensive mobile BI suite that taps rich content from SAP and non-SAP business applications.
• Business and social data with confidence – Deeper text analysis integration complements traditional business insight with the thoughts and sentiment that people express in social media streams, blogs and e-mail. People can now monitor, analyze, explore, report and act with confidence in the accuracy of not only their transactional data but also with full insight into the trends and sentiments expressed in unstructured content of blogs, e-mail and social media streams. A new multi-source, multi-dimensional semantic layer and a new common authoring experience simplify ad-hoc analyses and content creation, providing users with faster time to a more holistic meaning.

Key elements of the 4.0 releases include the following software:

o    SAP® BusinessObjects™ Data Services software, which helps consolidate any data source, assess the quality, profile and enhance it, then integrate the improved data into any BI or application environment. It is also optimized for operational data integration scenarios like data-migration, data-synchronization and data-hubs

o    SAP® BusinessObjects™ Information Steward, new software that gives end users the power to analyze, monitor and rate their data sources for completeness, accuracy and consistency, and to share key performance indicator (KPI) scorecards

o    SAP® BusinessObjects™ Event Insight, new software that helps people understand the impact of business events — for example financial market fluctuations and network traffic patterns — as they happen throughout an entire business network, putting complex scenarios and large data volumes into actionable context with historical trends to predict future outcomes

o    SAP® BusinessObjects™ Business Intelligence, a platform for providing people with easy, self-service access to trusted information in a flexible way

• The best fit, right now – With flexible deployment options that leverage the latest 64-bit advances, virtualization and cloud methods, and provide intuitive system monitoring, alerting and auditing, the 4.0 releases help easily scale to serve all departments, thus reducing total cost of ownership (TCO). Insight can be delivered to workers within their business operations through BI that is embedded within SAP® Business Suite software and available via 26 industry- and line-of-business- specific SAP® BusinessObjects™ analytic applications.

These releases illustrate SAP’s vision to bring customers elegant, fast and easy-to-consume business software that enables SAP to drive toward its goal of reaching one billion people. With these releases, SAP is combining best-in-class analytics for all sources with the best-in-class SAP business applications.

“This product is a perfect example of what the combination of these two companies has been about, a combination of beauty and consistency — bringing in the beautiful user experience for which SAP BusinessObjects software was always famous, the elegant simplicity together with the strength of SAP software, integrated identity management, SAP NetWeaver Application Server and integrated lifecycle management — we have wonderful products to share with our customers,” said Maneesh Sharma, Head-Business Analytics and Technology, SAP India.

Ecosystem of Expertise in Next-Generation Analytics

SAP is working closely with partners including Accenture, Atos Origin, Capgemini, cundus AG, Deloitte, HP, Logica, Siemens IT Solutions and Services andTeradata to extend the power of business analytics to more organizations across different industries and lines of business. With access to special training and knowledge tools, participating partners of the SAP® Ramp-Up program for the 4.0 releases can offer their customers smooth implementations and upgrades. To preview the comprehensive set of business analytics solutions developed by SAP and partners, visit Business Analytics at SAP® EcoHub.

Read more about what partners, customers and industry analysts are saying in the following blog post from Steve Lucas, general manager of Business Analytics for SAP: “4.0 Releases of BI and EIM Solutions Feature Greater Integration.”For a closer look at the 4.0 releases of BI and EIM solutions, visit theBusiness Analytics Newsroom. Participate in the conversation on Twitter by using the #BI4 and #SAPRBT hashtags, and follow SAP BusinessObjects at@businessobjects.

About SAP

As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device – SAP empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition. SAP applications and services enable more than 109,000 customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. For more information, visit www.sap.com.