This last week SAP officially launched it’s Cloud for Analytics SaaS service. Cloud for Analytics is a clean-sheet-redesign SaaS analytics platform that shares no source code with any of SAP’s other analytics products. It is born out of SAP Cloud for Planning, which has been generally available since Jan. 30. (The name Cloud for Planning goes away and instead is simply referred to as the planning capabilities of Cloud for Analytics.) Cloud for Analytics builds off the planning and analysis capabilities to provide planning, data discover, visualization, and predictive capabilities (planned for early 2016) in one product.  Further SAP intends Cloud For Analytics to service the analytic needs of the executive suite, the production line and everything in-between.

In addition to being a unified experience, Cloud For Analytics’s new design is intended to be more approachable, with a simpler consumer-app-like user interface. Cloud For Analytics will also embed calendar-based workflow and ad-hoc collaborative discussion threads to further enable organizations to gain actionable results from analysis (see figure 1). It also includes big-data integration abilities. Altogether, Cloud For Analytics includes BI (data discovery & visualization), planning, predictive analytics, risk management and on-premises data access (without replication).

Figure 1.

SAP has carefully positioned this new addition to their analytics technology portfolio as public cloud-only. It’s other analytics products including Business Objects, Lumira, Predictive Analytics are now positioned as on-premise or private cloud hosted solutions. Lumira Cloud will be retired in 2016 and SAP is now assisting Lumira Cloud customers migrate to either on-premise Lumira, Cloud For Analytics or other alternatives. That said, there is overlap in hosting options: both Cloud For Analytics and SAP’s other analytics products can be hosted on a private cloud.

SAP will also offer a version of Cloud For Analytics for executive meeting use called Digital Boardroom. This service is differentiated with multi-screen analytics displays that provide extensive interactive at-a-glance visualization of an enterprise’s entire business status. The big idea here is to move beyond laboriously pre-assembled presentation slides that are static to a real-time analysis experience that requires no cut-and-paste preparation. This way, executives can do real-time root cause analysis as needed to support faster decision-making. SAP points out that this idea of multi-screen presentation to enhance visualization can be used in call centers, shop floors and other non-executive enterprise functions. I would agree as I already use four screens on my desk.

While Cloud For Analytics covers multiple analytics use modes, it’s BI, planning, predictive analytics and boardroom services can be licensed separately. In quantities of one, BI is available for $25/user/month, including 1 GB of memory per user with no additional platform setup fees.