 "SAP Unveils BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis Software")
As organisations evolve their business strategies to remain competitive in ever-changing markets, they rely on today’s information to make choices for tomorrow. Empowering them with the ability to improve decision-making by predicting future outcomes, SAP AG has announced SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis software. The new offering aims to equip more people with a modern, user-friendly, graphically stunning tool for predictive modeling and advanced visualisation. The software is intended to harness and unleash the full value of “Big Data” when coupled with the power and speed of the SAP HANA platform, enabling organisations to reveal and act upon untapped opportunities and hidden risks.
Predictive modeling has traditionally been the domain of statisticians and data scientists. However, the intuitive interface and stunning visualisation of SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis are intended to bring predictive insight to an under-served user community – the business analyst. With the software, analysts can create models either by using the predictive algorithms included or can integrate and use algorithms from the widely-used R open-source data analysis and statistical language. SAP plans to enable customers to use the software for instant insight into large data volumes to anticipate future opportunities and risks. Examples include understanding how historical sales, costs and other key metrics translate to future performance or revealing the causes of customer satisfaction and employee turnover.
While SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis is planned for availability via standalone deployment, the software is also intended to uniquely unlock the value in “Big Data” when utilised with the SAP HANA database, which provides a data mining and statistical function library. Access to data sources outside of SAP HANA is planned, including universes, SAP Sybase IQ server and more.
Once data – structured, unstructured or both – is loaded into SAP HANA or an alternative data source, data and business analysts will be able to benefit from intuitive predictive modeling, beautiful advanced visualisations and data exploration, all with a drag-and-drop interface for data selection, preparation and processing.
Insights can then be delivered to dashboards, alerts and mobile devices, or accessed by other analytics solutions from SAP such as the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) platform, SAP BusinessObjects Explorer and SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence software, as well as Microsoft Office applications.
“Analytics solutions from SAP are powering a decision-making revolution for businesses that recognise the future starts a second from now, not a week or a year from now,” said John Schweitzer, senior vice president and general manager, Analytics, SAP. “That’s why predictive applications must be intuitive, where people work and powered by real-time performance. With SAP’s comprehensive approach to predictive analytics, more people in the business can explore, visualise and share insights from exploding volumes and varieties of data.”