SAP : From Data to Intelligence with SAP

As organizations shift from simply extracting and storing data to gaining valuable insights, SAP customers continue to benefit from end-to-end data and analytics capabilities that work together.

SAP offers complete data and analytics solutions that provide everything you need to help your organization make faster, more intelligent decisions. We're excited to share more product innovation details that will help bring data and analytics even closer together for our customers in 2019.

Gartner recently recognized SAP as a leader in data management solution for analytics for the seventh consecutive year. We see this position as supported by a strong multi-cloud strategy, multi-model data processing engines, and machine learning and AI capabilities. The ability to process transactions and analytics on a single platform has given many organizations, including Asian Paints, information at their fingertips to better serve their customers.

SAP is also positioned as a visionary in this year's Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms. Based on SAP's cloud strategy for analytics, Gartner chose to include SAP Analytics Cloud as a standalone product in this year's Magic Quadrant, supported by the momentum of analytics customers moving to the cloud. This is the first time a cloud-based analytics product from SAP has been included as the standalone product in the Gartner Business Intelligence Magic Quadrant. We're enthusiastic for the cloud analytics momentum and wanted to provide some additional context for SAP's positioning in this report, including a look ahead to some of our development priorities in 2019.

Now in its fourth year of development, we are excited to support 2,200 customers using SAP Analytics Cloud - as of the end of 2018 - including customers like Philips Lighting and the San Francisco 49ers. Product use and adoption continue to rise as more customers take advantage of new capabilities, and SAP business applications embed analytics functionality within their offerings to provide customers with automated insights, supporting our customers' strategy to deliver an intelligent enterprise. The vision of SAP Analytics Cloud is clearly resonating, with SAP's viability rated higher than any other customer group in the survey.

Gartner also points out that the converged analytics platform provided by SAP Analytics Cloud - bringing together the three domains of BI, planning, and predictive analytics - is a market differentiator. This strategy provides customers with everything they need to discover, analyze, plan, and predict in one experience across all devices.

SAP is investing heavily in its smart analytics capabilities and is positioned for where Gartner anticipates the market is heading with augmented analytics. In the report, SAP Analytics Cloud was one of the highest rated platforms for the augmented data discovery capability with neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)-based search. Enhancements in smart search help users find the right content, and algorithms guide data discovery and pattern detection with no data scientist required.

SAP's business domain expertise with lines of business and industries - which includes data models, stories, visualization, templates, agendas, and guidance on using data sources - is packaged with SAP Analytics Cloud. Gartner highlights this domain expertise as a strength and of high value for customer adoption.

Support for hybrid scenarios is also included in the strengths section for cloud and on-premise analytics. Gartner gives credit to SAP Analytics Hub, part of SAP Analytics Cloud, as a single point of access to all analytics content - be it SAP or non-SAP content - no matter where it resides.

Quality, performance, and customer support are all continued areas of focus for the SAP Analytics Cloud team. SAP has recently shifted the product release cycle for SAP Analytics Cloud from every two weeks to quarterly release cycles. The innovation pace continues as customers have the choice of receiving new innovations with SAP Analytics Cloud at a pace that works best for their organization. You can find out about all our latest features and enhancements with the product updates for SAP Analytics Cloud.

SAP continues to invest in and grow its dedicated customer success team that supports customers in their adoption and use of the product. The team has recently expanded operations in North America and Europe and has global coverage for the LATAM and APJ regions. Customers can meet the team and get started with the Welcome Guide.

Our customers' feedback is a top priority for us and plays a decisive role in our planning. In 2019, we are also focusing on further modelling improvements, with enhancements coming in the Q1 2019 timeframe, and other developments to continue improving the overall user experience of data modelling.

On the topic of data connections, we have recently added 100 data sources via the SAP Analytics Cloud agent, providing the same level of data connectivity SAP BusinessObjects customers have had for years. These enhancements complement recent investment made in significantly increasing data source connectivity for SAP Analytics Cloud customers. In addition to this, the team has enhanced connectivity to the trusted business data sources of SAP S/4HANA, SAP Business Warehouse, and SAP BusinessObjects. Learn more about data connections in SAP Analytics Cloud.

We listened when our customers and partners asked us to provide more capabilities to embed and extend analytics. SAP Analytics Cloud is in the early stages of extending application programming interfaces (APIs) and also recently added APIs for SAP Analytics Cloud on the SAP API Business Hub, offering easier access to stories. Furthermore, SAP Analytics Cloud plans to include application design capabilities to further enhance this in the Q2 timeframe. This functionality will allow developers and partners to build, embed, and extend their intelligent analytics applications, further supporting SAP's customer strategy for the Intelligent Enterprise.

SAP can handle multiple landscapes, allowing customers to adopt the cloud at their own pace. SAP has an analytics portfolio that can support your business on-premise and in the cloud. The team is working on areas of the platform to address industry-wide concerns with cloud, such as regulated industries and public-sector customers. SAP also has licensing options for a hybrid approach and assists customers as they transition to the cloud with an approach that best fits their business needs.

What's your take on the Gartner Magic Quadrant? We'd like to hear from you. When assessing the market, it's always good to have an informed opinion and look at what other analyst firms are saying about SAP's position for analytics. SAP is ranked as a leader for Data Preparation Solution in the Q4 2018 Forrester Wave, a strong performer in the Forrester Wave for Natural Language Generation for Analytics, and 96 percent of surveyed users would recommend SAP Analytics Cloud in a October 2018 BARC BI survey.

If you are planning to attend the upcoming Gartner Data & Analytics Summits, please take the opportunity to meet with the SAP Analytics Cloud team, grab a product tour, and learn how you can take advantage of modern analytics in your current business environment. At the Summit in London, attendees will learn how Philips Lighting is using SAP Analytics Cloud to deliver an innovative new business model and reduce operational costs. In Orlando, attendees can join our sponsored session to hear how the San Francisco 49ers use SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Digital Boardroom to change the game for their fans.

Tune into the #askSAP Community Call on the SAP Analytics 2019 Strategy and Roadmap on February 28. Bring your questions and learn more about SAP's strategic areas of focus for 2019.

Gerrit Kazmaier is senior vice president for Database and Data Management & Analytics at SAP. Follow Gerrit and the SAP Analytics team on Twitter at @gerritkazmaier and @SAPAnalytics

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