Friday, December 2, 2022

Iver van der Zand’s BTP TechTalk – SAP’s Data & Analytics Strategy

BTP CTO Iver van der Zand’s recent TechTalk, posted to the SAP Community blog in “SAP Data & Analytics end-to-end vision & key differentiators – BTP CTO Tech Talk,” provides a very clear and concise vision of the path forward for the SAP Community and for organizations using SAP Analytics in particular. The SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) draws together the resources and capabilities such organizations need to formulate a comprehensive Analytics strategy and roadmap for digital transformation.

SAP Data & Analytics: Key Differentiators

Iver describes key differentiators for SAP’s Data & Analytics workflow:

• Keep things in Context
• Strong Governance & Compliance capabilities
• The Closed Loop of Planning & Analytics
• Portability of the full platform
• Richness of Eco system

Watch the video:

Keep Things in Context

Iver reminds us that digital transformation is first and foremost about the data rather than the technology. Iver’s message focuses on keeping data in context using BTP’s live connectivity capabilities, because it is only through such live connectivity that your entire organization is on the same page, using trusted data assets with assured data provenance.

Strong Governance & Compliance Capabilities

BTP emphasizes strong, central respect for the governance and compliance needs of organizations and their data. BTP’s strong centralized semantic approach leverages the security and governance of non-SAP data assets to ensure the organization’s governance and compliance standards are upheld, right down to row-level security.

The Closed Loop of Planning & Analytics

Business Intelligence, Planning, and Predictive Analytics form the closed loop of planning and analytics within an integrated SAP Analytics environment. This closed loop requires the uninterrupted availability of current and historical data – budgets and actuals for instance. Iver’s consistent message is that focus needs to be placed on the data to achieve effective digital transformation.

Portability of the Full Platform

With more and more organizations moving to the Cloud, SAP’s objective is to ensure its customers can work with their hyperscaler of choice, whether AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud platform, Ali Baba, or the SAP Cloud platform, and any combination of these platforms. This means being able to ingest data from these platforms, but also being able to push data out to these platforms.

Richness of Eco System

Iver’s final key differentiator is the richness of the SAP BTP Eco System. Organizations committed to creating a comprehensive Analytics strategy on the SAP Business Technology Platform can be confident that all of their requirements are in scope, because the Partner Eco System provides the specialized assistance sometimes needed to realize such requirements.

It has always been the role of the SAP Partner Eco System to cater to the very specific and individual needs of organizations, and this has not changed with digital transformation. If anything, the role of the SAP Partner Eco System has grown as transformation accelerates.

APOS is a long-time member of the open Partner Eco System that Iver describes, beginning with SAP BusinessObjects and carrying through to the current SAP Analytics environment with:

• APOS Live Data Gateway
  Expand, simplify and unify your data connectivity for SAP environments and other analytics landscapes to leverage the important benefits of live data connectivity.
• APOS Publisher for Cloud
  Automate processes for bursting personalized SAP Analytics Cloud stories to end users with dynamic, security driven processes ensuring users receive only the data to which they are entitled.
• APOS Insight for Cloud
  Maintain your SAP Analytics Cloud deployment’s performance, compliance, and audit-readiness. Track and monitor the health of your SAP Analytics Cloud system processes.