New Release: Asset Analytics Based on BW/HANA!
It's time for a new release of Asset Analytics! This one is an exciting one. For those of you that have not read my original blog on this topic, it’s available here. The upcoming release in Q1/2014 is named SAP HANA Asset Analytics rapid-deployment solution. Let’s take a look at what’s new!
BW on HANA
For the most part, the business case behind this release has not changed from the previous. With this solution, SAP is still addressing the same business requirements in the enterprise asset management area by providing the same set of KPIs that reports on asset reliability, availability, maintainability, supplies, and sustainability. Just as before, the user would start with an overview dashboard and from there navigate to more granular information to analyze preconfigured relationships between KPIs, access supplemental dashboards, and branch out to ADHOC reports to narrow the root cause(s) of a performance issue to a plant, organization unit or even down a set of equipment as a way to help drive continuous improvement initiatives -- with HANA at play, you can now do all of that with greater speed and fluidity. The SAP build team in Shanghai has made this improvement possible by modifying the original BW-based EAM data model so it can run on top of HANA as a database to catapult performance. The enhanced BI-Content (data extractors, cubes, data model, and etc.) is streamlined with BI Add-on 7.4.7.
With the BW on HANA architecture, data load performance can improve by as much as 32x and query performance by a factor of up to 471x! But worry not -- We are fully aware that a segment of our customer community is still waiting for the best juncture to introduce HANA into their technical landscape. For those customers, the new release will continue to work in pure BW mode.
Asset Analytics Goes Mobile
In addition to HANA, the new solution architecture can also leverage the latest features of the SAP BI platform 4.1 to give you greater flexibility on the frontend by making other UI options possible including HTML-5 mobile dashboards. The new mobile dashboards will allow asset managers to get immediate answers to their business questions and collaborate with stakeholders from anywhere on their iOS mobile device. Besides the benefit of mobility, having the BI Platform in the solution architecture will open the solution up to future UI possibilities such as SAP BusinessObjects Explorer or Lumira just to name a few examples! Just food for thought…
Asset Analytics Got a Makeover
Granted, the underlying ability to solve a business problem should be foremost in any business application. But, increasingly, we are also hearing from our customers and partners that the user experience is equally important and so bearing that in mind, a good part of our effort was focused on replacing the previous flash-based UI with a more contemporary Xcelsius-based user interface that extends the power of business intelligence to more users by offering visual simplicity in analysis with sleek and fluid graphics. With so many good options to choose from, a few attributes clearly set Xcelsius apart from the pack. Xcelsius is a point-and-click data visualization tool designed specifically to create interactive analytics and dashboards on secure and live connections to the data source. You can share these powerful visualizations via Microsoft Office, Adobe PDF, the Web, Crystal Reports, or the SAP BusinessObjects business intelligence (BI) portal.
Summary
If you’ve attended a recent SAP event or just tuned into any official SAP communications then it would be no surprise that HANA plays a major part in the overall SAP plan to bring value to its customers. You would have witnessed the incredible in-memory capabilities of HANA in handling vast data with great speed and precision – very few will object to that point. What is still an ongoing goal for SAP is to expand on the HANA use cases that can solve problems across lines of business and industries that can help our customers reduce time-to-value and increase ROI. SAP has clearly responded to this call with the recent wave of HANA-based applications in manufacturing, banking, healthcare, retail and much more that can deliver real-time data to support strategies and decision-making. On February 28th, 2014, the SAP HANA Asset Analytics rapid-deployment solution will join the existing HANA solution portfolio to bring never before insight into enterprise asset management with greater ease, versatility, and speed. Please inquire more about this solution at the next meeting with your SAP sales advisor or one of our trusted partners at Fujitsu
or Vesta Partners.
For additional information: