April 24, 2012
Predictive Analytics: Another Use Case for SAP HANA
SAP is adding predictive analysis software to its BI portfolio. The new software, named SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics is currently being tested by a select group of customers in the ramp-up phase, and is expected to be generally available later this year. Predictive analysis can help businesses make decisions that reduce costs, increase revenues, maximize efficiency, or improve customer satisfaction by revealing trends and cause-effect relationships from past data as well as modeling future outcomes. Areas where predictive analysis has been commonly applied include customer retention, fraud detection, and risk management.
SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics fills out the BusinessObjects portfolio, which contains a planning tool (SAP BPC) but is focused on applications that report on and offer visualizations of static past data. There is an existing BusinessObjects application for predictive modeling named SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Workbench, but it is based on IBM's SPSS modeler. SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics, as a product owned wholly by SAP, will likely replace Predictive Workbench.
SAP's new Predictive Analytics software can analyze data from a variety of sources including both SAP and non-SAP data. It supports a variety of predictive algorithms as well. BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics contains its own algorithms, but can also use algorithms from SAP HANA or from the open-source statistical computing language R, which is the most common standard for predictive analysis.
With the release of SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics, SAP aims to make predictive analysis more widely accessible by packaging it in a user-friendly interface that includes advanced data-visualization, which includes, among other things, scatter plots, cluster analyses, and parallel-processing charts as well as drag-and-drop functionality. While an intuitive interface may make predictive analysis more palatable to business users who lack the knowledge required to use a highly specialized statistical program, it remains to be seen whether the software alone will enable business users at large to make accurate and valuable business predictions. If it were easy to manage large volumes of data and accurately identify cause and effect relationships within that data, data science would not be a growing, highly-compensated profession.
SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics will be available as a standalone deployment, however, it is optimized for use with SAP HANA, SAP's in-memory database with a built-in statistical function library. Jason Kuo, Group Product Marketing Manager at SAP BusinessObjects, expects that Predictive Analytics will most commonly be adopted by customers who integrate it with an SAP HANA and BW deployment.
SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics is the latest development in SAP's gradual assembly of specific uses for its powerful but expensive new in-memory database. With the general release of SAP BW on HANA, SAP Finance and Controlling Accelerator, and pending releases of SAP BPC on HANA, and now SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis, SAP is building a comprehensive array of in-memory analytics applications, but will analytics alone be enough to make it worthwhile to adopt HANA?
SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics fills out the BusinessObjects portfolio, which contains a planning tool (SAP BPC) but is focused on applications that report on and offer visualizations of static past data. There is an existing BusinessObjects application for predictive modeling named SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Workbench, but it is based on IBM's SPSS modeler. SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics, as a product owned wholly by SAP, will likely replace Predictive Workbench.
SAP's new Predictive Analytics software can analyze data from a variety of sources including both SAP and non-SAP data. It supports a variety of predictive algorithms as well. BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics contains its own algorithms, but can also use algorithms from SAP HANA or from the open-source statistical computing language R, which is the most common standard for predictive analysis.
With the release of SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics, SAP aims to make predictive analysis more widely accessible by packaging it in a user-friendly interface that includes advanced data-visualization, which includes, among other things, scatter plots, cluster analyses, and parallel-processing charts as well as drag-and-drop functionality. While an intuitive interface may make predictive analysis more palatable to business users who lack the knowledge required to use a highly specialized statistical program, it remains to be seen whether the software alone will enable business users at large to make accurate and valuable business predictions. If it were easy to manage large volumes of data and accurately identify cause and effect relationships within that data, data science would not be a growing, highly-compensated profession.
SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics will be available as a standalone deployment, however, it is optimized for use with SAP HANA, SAP's in-memory database with a built-in statistical function library. Jason Kuo, Group Product Marketing Manager at SAP BusinessObjects, expects that Predictive Analytics will most commonly be adopted by customers who integrate it with an SAP HANA and BW deployment.
SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics is the latest development in SAP's gradual assembly of specific uses for its powerful but expensive new in-memory database. With the general release of SAP BW on HANA, SAP Finance and Controlling Accelerator, and pending releases of SAP BPC on HANA, and now SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis, SAP is building a comprehensive array of in-memory analytics applications, but will analytics alone be enough to make it worthwhile to adopt HANA?