Each year in March, we are shown new analytics features and announcements as a part of SAP’s Data Unleashed event. Last year, the big announcement was SAP Datasphere, a start down a path of data modeling and insights in the cloud building on the initial success of DWC (Data warehouse cloud). Today, we learned about more great enhancements, features, and capabilities of the SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud toolsets both in the analytics and planning spaces. As a high-level recap, here are 5 key takeaways from the announcements today!
1. Building a business data fabric with AI
Building a business data fabric will be more important than ever. If you are a business that runs with SAP technology a business data fabric built using SAP Datasphere has many benefits. By using Datasphere, you get to keep all of the business context of your SAP data while also mixing that with data sourced from other providers. This allows you to save valuable time in analysis and in data context creation to make more accurate decisions on where to focus efforts. For example, when extracting SAP data to other platforms, this business context is lost and needs to be rebuilt.
2. Datasphere Knowledge Graph
The Datasphere knowledge graph was an interesting technical component announcement of Datasphere to be able to see relationships of data visually. Based on the visual below, this can be used to really look visually at where each data component is used in your data models. Use this tool to see global patterns across data across the organization, to be able to build models for business analytics better.
3. SAC Compass
There was a quick demo and announcement around SAC planning capabilities and the simulations for forecasting in your business. The ability to change metrics, change data inputs, and get real-time outputs in each of your simulations is key.
No more SAP BW/BPC loading of data models, simulation data, and waiting hours upon hours to get to the next iteration’s results. These results are available to you in real-time. This tool also includes the ability to utilize Joule to ask questions about forecasting models and outputs of the simulations. Without this, it can take hours to dig in and see why a forecast output
4. Joule Availability in Datasphere & SAC
Interestingly, when Alexa first came out, we did demos connecting Alexa to SAP BW. I thought this was the biggest game changer to analytics we had ever seen. We even looked into a new product offering called Conversational Analytics.
Security was a huge concern though, because some of the voice recognition interfaces of the time weren’t ready for business usage. Well, now, with SAP Joule, an AI assistant built within the SAP ecosystem, that time is now. With the leaps and bounds of GenAI over the past 2 years and SAP’s relentless focus on innovation, SAP Joule built into these toolsets can only make getting at data insights easier.
5. Ever-expanding data infrastructure & compatibility to build a SAP-centric data fabric
The data catalog and connections capabilities within SAP Datasphere is where I see the most potential of this toolset. This is the biggest area of growth we believe in being able to quickly utilize publicly available data sets and/or other paid data sets in your analytics platform.
