Contact
NTT DATA Business Solutions
NTT DATA Business Solutions | March 5, 2015

Finding the Right SAP BI Tool for Data Discovery and Analysis on SAP HANA

business intelligence

SAP HANA is an SAP appliance containing an in-memory columnar database optimized for both transactional and analytical processing. SAP HANA enables real-time analytics even on huge volumes of data. But which SAP BI tool should you consider for Data Discovery & Analysis on SAP HANA? What about Office Integration? This blog explores these questions to provide a quick overview of recommended options.

Some available SAP BI tools connect directly to Information Models, while some also connect to tables in SAP HANA and others need a semantic layer between the SAP BI tool and the SAP HANA system.

Current options include:

  • Analysis for Office
  • Analysis for OLAP
  • BI Widgets
  • Explorer
  • Live Office
  • Lumira
  • Predictive Analysis

Based on the SAP BI Roadmap and SAP portfolio simplification, there are only two SAP BI tools left that you should consider for Data Discovery & Analysis on SAP HANA: Analysis for Office and SAP Lumira. With these SAP BI tools you can discover trends, outliers and areas of interest in your business. You can also adapt the business scenarios by combining, manipulating and enriching data. With SAP Lumira you can create a story board where you will be able to tell your story with self-service visualizations and analytics as well as use the built-in predictive analysis capabilities to predict future business.

Features of these two solutions include:

Analysis for Office

  • Fulfills self-service ad-hoc analysis and data mashup scenarios within Microsoft Excel
  • Embeds BI data into Microsoft Power Point
  • Replaces the SAP BEx Analyzer
  • Connects to SAP HANA Information Models via an ODBC layer
  • Provides easy drag and drop functionalities
  • Enables easy insertion of multiple data sources

Lumira

  • One of the newest BI tools SAP offers to discover and analyze data
  • Enables data access and visualization through a self-service tool
  • Connects directly to SAP HANA Information Models for real-time data analysis
  • SAP Lumira Desktop enables connections to different data sources to merge and manipulate data, and create a new dataset which can be used for visualizations
  • Lumira Desktop also provides full capabilities of acquiring data, enriching data, building visualizations, exploring data and different sharing options
  • Publishes a dataset as a new Information Model to SAP HANA and uses the power of SAP HANA for further purposes
  • Provides a great way to do the initial exploration and get a deep data understanding
  • Offers different versions for business requirements: Lumira Desktop, Lumira Server, Lumira Cloud and an AddOn for the SAP Business Intelligence Platform (BIP) to view Lumira content on the SAP BIP

Ultimately, your decision about the right SAP BI tool for Data Discovery & Analysis on SAP HANA depends on these questions: Would you like to use the capabilities of SAP Lumira with a new and intuitive user interface which can also be accessed via a web browser? Or, would you rather use the Microsoft Office user interface?

It all depends on your preference, and this blog cannot give you a unique answer. Please contact us at any time so we can help you select the right SAP BI Tool or version when it comes to SAP Lumira to fulfill your Discovery & Analysis requirements.