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Frequently Asked Questions: Sap Analytics Bi Statement of Direction

The document provides answers to frequently asked questions about SAP's analytics products and roadmaps. It discusses support for live data access in SAP Analytics Cloud, end of life dates for SAP BusinessObjects BI, future features after version 4.3, what is included in the BI suite, functional parity between Analytics Cloud and Web Intelligence, preserving existing investments, migration tools, licensing, migration from Lumira to Analytics Cloud, using universes in Analytics Cloud, and use cases for BI versus Analytics Cloud.

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119 views2 pages

Frequently Asked Questions: Sap Analytics Bi Statement of Direction

The document provides answers to frequently asked questions about SAP's analytics products and roadmaps. It discusses support for live data access in SAP Analytics Cloud, end of life dates for SAP BusinessObjects BI, future features after version 4.3, what is included in the BI suite, functional parity between Analytics Cloud and Web Intelligence, preserving existing investments, migration tools, licensing, migration from Lumira to Analytics Cloud, using universes in Analytics Cloud, and use cases for BI versus Analytics Cloud.

Uploaded by

Balakishore
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

SAP ANALYTICS BI STATEMENT OF DIRECTION

When will SAP Analytics Cloud augmented BI features support Live data access?
Live data access is a key ask from customers, and one of the product strengths for data
exploration. Live HANA & BW are already supported for Search to Insight. SMART predict on
live HANA will be released in Q4 2019. SMART Insights and SMART Discovery on HANA Live is
planned for early 2020 and will extend to universes in the following quarters.

Is there an End of Life (EOL) date set for the SAP BusinessObjects BI Product line?
No! The current 4.2 release maintenance extends until 2024. The release of the next version of
the BI suite, BI 4.3, is planned for mid-2020, with subsequent Support packs that will deliver
additional features and improvements, and a maintenance window that extends until at least
2027. This is already an 8-year outlook, much longer than what exists in the software industry.
And SAP doesn’t exclude a next minor version, which would extend the timeline further.

What is planned after BI 4.3?


New features, improvements and customer enhancement to the BI suite will be delivered as part
of the mainstream maintenance process, through regular support packs or minor releases.
Using the same themes as BI 4.3, the following features are considered:
• Ease of use and user productivity: improved interactive analysis in WebI, input controls
in canvas, management by exception (alerting and notifications), report templates,
geomaps improvements in Crystal reports, support High DPI screens…
• Enterprise readiness: improved mobile support, scheduling improvements, simplified
administration experience, reduced installation and TCO, improved auditing, updated
platform support (Office 2019, Data Warehouse Cloud, …).
• Hybrid and interoperability: predefined views for WebI data model, cloud readiness
assessment.

What is part of SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite?


The SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite is a software package containing server and client tools,
most notably the BI platform services, SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports,
Analysis for Office, Analysis for OLAP, Live Office (and SAP BusinessObjects Explorer and SAP
BusinessObjects Dashboards up to the 4.2.8 version, but not in BI 4.3). SAP Lumira is a
separate download, but is part of the BI Suite license after 2013.

Will there be functional parity between SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP BusinessObjects
Web Intelligence in the future?
No, the focus is on enabling common reporting use cases, not rebuilding every feature. SAP
Analytics Cloud has focused until now on self-service data exploration and automated insights,
and will now add key reporting functionality from SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence and
Crystal Reports to cover more analytic scenarios. Scheduling is planned for early 2020, with

September 20, 2019


features like pagination, sections, complex calculations, planned over the next few releases. For
complex reporting scenarios accessing multiple databases on premise, the recommendation is
to continue to use SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence or Crystal Reports.

How can I preserve my existing investments as I adopt SAP Analytics Cloud?


We are investigating the best options to leverage the existing investments in universes and
reports as many customers transition some of the use cases to SAP Analytics Cloud. The first
option is to use the SAP BI Suite side by side with SAP Analytics Cloud, in an hybrid scenario. In
BI 4.3, we are improving the interoperability by providing ways to synchronize users and to
leverage live universes and SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence data when building cloud
stories. As we build out reporting features and platform features in SAP Analytics Cloud in the
next quarters, we are investigating options to migrate existing resources to SAP Analytics
Cloud, or to convert some of these resources.

Will there be migration tools provided?


Migration and conversion possibilities are investigated for universes, SAP BusinessObjects Web
Intelligence and Crystal reports. One of the first steps will be to provide readiness assessment
tools to evaluate which scenarios can be easily transitioned to SAP Analytics Cloud. We will
provide updated plans for these tools in the next few months.

What happens from a licensing perspective?


Our objective is to allow customers to transition their users from on premises to the cloud at
their pace. With the cloud extension policy, we allow customers to get conversion credit for
unused maintenance, as they purchase a cloud subscription. We are in the process of defining
additional licensing solutions to make the adoption of SAP Analytics cloud easier and more
flexible.

What is the migration path from SAP Lumira, designer edition (formerly Design Studio) to
SAP Analytics Cloud, analytics designer?
SAP Analytics Cloud, analytics designer, allows developers to build custom analytic applications
that bring together BI, planning and predictive capabilities. The product will provide similar
features as SAP Lumira Designer over the next few quarters. While no automatic migration or
conversion features are planned at this point, customers who are leveraging the Generic
Analysis from SAP Lumira Designer will have similar capabilities in SAP Analytics Cloud out of
the box. SAP is proud of the strong partner community around SAP Analytics Cloud, who can
help customers with additional application extensions and custom developments.

Can I continue to use universes in SAP Analytics Cloud?


Yes, it is actually one of the many options available to access non-SAP data from SAP Analytics
Cloud. There is no need to buy SAP Data Warehouse Cloud to use universes in SAP Analytics
Cloud.

For which use cases should we use SAP BusinessObjects BI versus SAP Analytics Cloud?
SAP BusinessObjects BI is the right choice for customers who are not ready to move to cloud. In
addition, an enterprise reporting scenario, involving scheduling and publishing many reports to
large groups of users, is better addressed today with SAP BusinessObjects BI.

September 20, 2019

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