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Go Hybrid Now: The Case for Combining SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP BusinessObjects

IvervandeZand
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
‎11-06-2020 6:51 AM

About some challenges: cloud and the abundancy of data  


The paradigm shift to the Cloud comes with countless advantages, but also with a few challenges. One of the main challenges that companies face is possessing an abundance of data. While this can be a huge advantage, extracting valuable insights from your large datasets can be like finding a needle in a haystack.  

Transforming data into actionable insight requires the right approach. Forrester calls these companies “insight-driven businesses”—smart enterprises that use data, analytics, and software in closed, continuously optimized loops to differentiate and compete. These insight-driven businesses have a competitive edge and are on their way to dominating the market looking at $1.8 trillion annually in 2021.

With SAP Analytics Cloud, your organization is on the right path to an insight-driven enterprise. The SaaS cloud solution delivers Business Intelligence, Collaborative Enterprise Planning, and Augmented Analytics all in one place—empowering your enterprise to harness the power of embedded Machine Learning algorithms to help you find the right insights at the right moment.



The Solution: Hybrid Analytics


How can SAP BusinessObjects users harness the power of the Cloud to ensure they are well on their way to becoming an insight-driven enterprise, without losing their existing investments? The answer is hybrid analytics.

With hybrid analytics an SAP Analytics Cloud user can connect to their existing on-premise SAP BusinessObjects environment. This can be achieved by:

The above is a fantastic approach that will ensure you can best leverage your existing SAP BusinessObjects investments and benefit from all the amazing capabilities that SAP Analytics Cloud offers. By extending to SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP BusinessObjects users can seamlessly start using the new cloud analytics experience without having to make a hard transition from one tool to the other.

Check out the Extend Analytics public pages that provide best practices, use cases, and customer stories to see the benefits of this approach in action.

Strategy: About Transferring Use Cases


SAP’s strategic direction has made it clear that SAP Analytics Cloud is the way forward to a better future. The solution answers to the need for enterprises to truly become insight-driven businesses.

SAP Analytics Cloud becomes the de-facto standard for embedded analytics in our core LOB applications. However, many companies using SAP BusinessObjects simply are not ready to fully shift to cloud analytics within the short term and would rather gradually take on a few use cases. SAP respects those choices and that is why we continue investing in SAP BusinessObjects. That’s also why our hybrid strategy is focused on two key pillars:

  1. Ensure a decent and Live interoperability between SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP BusinessObjects using Live Data Connect 3.1

  2. Transfer the most important SAP BusinessObjects use cases into SAP Analytics Cloud so that enterprises that do partially transition over, can seamlessly apply the same use cases in SAP Analytics Cloud.



As mentioned, SAP is very serious about our continued investment in SAP BusinessObjects. In our Statement of Direction for BI, SAP firmly commits enterprise maintenance support for BusinessObjects BI4.3 until 2027. And there is more to come. The same Statement of Direction talks about the importance of hybrid analytics for SAP. We continue to invest significantly in this strategy so we can provide the best experience for those who are extending their SAP BusinessObjects to SAP Analytics Cloud—ensuring they get the best of both solutions.



10 Reasons to extend your SAP BusinessObjects BI capabilities with analytics powered by SAP Analytics Cloud


Let’s take a closer look at the most important reasons to extend your SAP BusinessObjects environment to SAP Analytics Cloud:

  1. Monitor, project and simulate your insights: Get access to the closed loop of Business Intelligence, Collaborative Planning and Augmented Analytics in one cloud-based environment. This means that full planning cycles can now become part of your insights.

  2. Harness self-service analytics: SAP Analytics Cloud was designed in a user-intuitive way. Easily and seamlessly connect to any data source—whether on-premise, the Cloud, and your SAP BusinessObjects server—which you can then run autonomously with your analyses, visualizations, and data exploration all in self-service mode.

  3. Discover hidden correlations: Discover hidden relationships in your data and detect the main drivers behind your KPIs. Then, take the best action using automated Machine Learning.

  4. Powerful AI-driven search: Ask questions in natural language, for example, “Show revenue for pants this year,” and SAP Analytics Cloud will instantly generate visualization to answer your questions.

  5. Intuitive data exploration: Explore existing data models with ease; point and click to filter, rank, sort and visualize, then add results to stories. All without special config needed.

  6. Simulate alternatives with What-If Analysis: Perform What-If Analysis with Value Driver Tree or by editing values directly in the BI table to better predict the outcome of your decisions.

  7. Analytics Catalog—One place for all your insights: Use the Analytics Catalog to simplify access to analytics across your organization for a seamless hybrid experience.

  8. Free pre-built business content: Leverage free business content for SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Digital Boardroom provides a quick and easy starting point for your individual analytics scenarios.

  9. Rapid cloud innovations: Acquire new enhancements and innovations every quarter, which are automatically applied to your SAP Analytics Cloud tenants.

  10. Scale with a true SaaS Cloud solution: Extend your analytic capabilities and scale instantly in the Cloud without increasing IT infrastructure and administrative maintenance costs.


You might wonder how your potential shift to extend your SAP BusinessObjects investment to SAP Analytics Cloud is supported from a commercial aspect. Here is where the hybrid commercial model comes into play allowing you to leverage un-used SAP BusinessObjects maintenance for SAP Analytics Cloud usage.

Check out the Hybrid Analytics latest webinars such as the SAP BusinessObjects BI and SAP Analytics Cloud: Best of Both Worlds to learn more about the value of combining modern BI, augmented analytics, and planning capabilities of SAP Analytics Cloud with SAP BusinessObjects BI.

Let’s go Hybrid


So, how could that look? How do we transfer uses cases as part of the Extend Analytics vision? The video below provides a tutorial of how you can access an SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence report based upon a Universe from the SAP Analytics Catalog. The video will show you how to then use SAP Analytics Cloud to access the exact Universe using a Live connection.


Related Resources


Visit the SAP BusinessObjects Virtual Tour pages if you are interested in extending to SAP Analytics Cloud. These pages provide a wealth of information as well as give you access to a dedicated community.

You can also review this webpage to learn more about how to Go Hybrid Now and review our resources on the SAP Community.

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