Analytics: The stuff magicians dream of?

DELHI, INDIA: Adam Binnie, Global VP & GM, Business Intelligence from SAP, demystifies some rabbits coming out of hats called BI and Analytics. Do they lead to a wonderland when cats like hardware conk-offs, virtualization-related hiccups, version-based industry lifecycles, elder sibling-rivalry, transactional processing hangovers etc haunt the landscape? In this interview he helps us decode some Abracadabra.

How contextual is Analytics and BI today? How well are they growing up for tomorrow?

By 2020, 75 per cent of employees would have some kind of analytics context. Mobility and analytics are of huge interest to us. Underneath the digitization layer, information will meet a new world. There is going to be a massive explosion of information and adaptive capabilities will take a new shape. How to build alignment around business and use analytics as an asset will be the new questions as we move forth.

Your new offerings like HANA have generated a lot of interest. How much of it addresses the gap between transactional processing vs. analytical processing? What new tools would be flanking it?

Everyone wants to do reporting. But transformational applications take reporting to a new level, helping you to do all that you haven’t been able to do. Now with HANA, a lot of customers are having a fresh interaction with analytics. The ability to react to information at this level and speed was not present before. They can get closer to the problem now. We are doing a lot around HANA, like bundling budgeting and planning with it.

Should customers be concerned about questions like — would HANA deliver equally well in a virtualized environment, for example the performance hit experienced with AWS because of the virtual layer (reportedly)? Or would it work on non-Intel platforms too given the assumption of multicore CPU caching factors possible only on Intel Xeon?

There are a lot of product options and at the same time there are many more configuration and deployment choices. We are aware of that and that’s why we are rigorously innovating on this technology. The really interesting part is though the excitement around it. Even if it doesn’t fit into someone’s chip or virtualization layer, people still want to embrace it for the sheer reason that it’s tremendously powerful.

Even the NetWeaver customers? How is HANA not BI?

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That’s an administration platform. Organizations using NetWeaver should feel comfortable investing in HANA. SAP would help in complicated transitions if needed. Most companies have been bound in classic OLAP models. Now there are new ways to see knowledge beyond the data paradigms. It would be reporting vs. questions. Different departments can pick from different set of tools in real time and by leveraging a new format of organizational infrastructure. HANA allows to address transformational use cases. Instead of just getting reports a business decision-maker can now dip in and ask any question required.

HANA would continue with its no-versions pattern?

It is a modern tool. Our ability to upgrade and let others consume would be relevant for future so that we keep customers moving forward. We bring in enterprise capabilities in context to a new world.

Your new portfolio must have had quite an impact on the equation between hardware and software then?

There is a dedicated diversity of hardware providers. That’s not a concern. The issue may be is that of organizational change. It’s nothing else but just a bit of skepticism which is natural. The work is on. We have got amazing stories with customers like Asian Paints who have seen a wave of transformational opportunities.