Monday, September 11, 2023

Advanced Analytics with High-Performance Live Data Connectivity

TDWI’s Fern Halper, in a recent TDWI Best Practices report, Achieving Success with Modern Analytics, co-sponsored by SAP, Snowflake and Streamsets, shared results of a survey of companies using moderen analytics and analyzed the differences between companies who are using modern analytics successfully and those who are not.

The report finds that companies self-identifying as successful with modern analytics differ from the less successful companies in “leadership, organizational style, data platforms, and tools used, as well as how they approach issues such as data literacy and governance.”

One of the common themes for these successful companies is the depth and breadth of the data they analyze, and how they use it. Many are using generative AI models to create diverse forms of media based on significant amounts of training data. The data comes from many sources.

For these successful organizations, data literacy is a priority – “the ability to read, write and communicate data in context, including an understanding of data sources and constructs, analytical methods and techniques applied, and the ability to describe the use-case application and resulting value” (Gartner). Fern Halper describe the need:

Today’s enterprises need meaningful, data-driven insights to answer the strategic business questions that will help them succeed. This requires the use of self-service analytics as well as more advanced analytics techniques such as predictive analytics and machine learning (PA/ML), natural language processing, and other types of artificial intelligence. Many organizations also plan to develop data products that include analytics to drive value. They are working to embed analytics. To accomplish these goals and provide value to customers and partners, organizations must move forward with analytics and advanced analytics (5).

SAP Analytics Cloud, Snowflake & APOS Live Data Gateway

SAP Analytics Cloud can be used as a best-of-breed, standalone Analytics platform, but it is also embedded within the SAP solution landscape, enabling planning, predictive analytics, machine learning and other advanced analytics capabilities. The Snowflake Cloud Data Platform is growing popularity as a means of scaling data requirements and workloads to meet modern analytics needs.

APOS partners with both SAP and Snowflake, and many of our customers are using APOS Live Data Gateway to provide high-performance, live data connectivity between SAP Analytics Cloud and the Snowflake Cloud Data Platform.

For example, a large, Europe-based retailer running multiple chains of retail stores:

APOS Systems recently became a Select tier Snowflake partner. What does that mean for the Snowflake community? It means expanded and simplified live data connectivity to Analytics platforms, particularly within, but not limited to, the SAP solution landscape.

Snowflake Principal Data Platform Architect Field CTO David Richert’s LinkedIn post highlights a video from APOS showing APOS Live Data Gateway enabling SAP Analytics Cloud to query a 288 billion row table in Snowflake Data Cloud and receive results in under 2 seconds. David calls it “insane performance,” and notes the automation that allows APOS Live Data Gateway to rewrite the SQL query on the fly.

That’s 288 Billion Rows - 10.5 TB - in a Snowflake Table!

Here’s the video David refers to: