Services for Organizations

Using our research, best practices and expertise, we help you understand how to optimize your business processes using applications, information and technology. We provide advisory, education, and assessment services to rapidly identify and prioritize areas for improvement and perform vendor selection

Consulting & Strategy Sessions

Ventana On Demand

    Services for Investment Firms

    We provide guidance using our market research and expertise to significantly improve your marketing, sales and product efforts. We offer a portfolio of advisory, research, thought leadership and digital education services to help optimize market strategy, planning and execution.

    Consulting & Strategy Sessions

    Ventana On Demand

      Services for Technology Vendors

      We provide guidance using our market research and expertise to significantly improve your marketing, sales and product efforts. We offer a portfolio of advisory, research, thought leadership and digital education services to help optimize market strategy, planning and execution.

      Analyst Relations

      Demand Generation

      Product Marketing

      Market Coverage

      Request a Briefing


        ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives

        << Back to Blog Index

        SAP Consolidates Its Analytics Efforts in The Cloud



        I am happy to offer some insights on SAP drawn from our latest Value Index research, which provides an analytic representation of our assessment of how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research Value Index: Analytics and Business Intelligence 2019 is the distillation of a year of market and product research efforts by Ventana Research. We utilized a structured research methodology that includes evaluation categories designed to reflect the breadth of the real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal (RFP) and vendor selection process for analytics and business intelligence. We evaluated SAP and 14 other vendors in seven categories, five relevant to the product (adaptability, capability, manageability, reliability and usability) and two related to the vendor (TCO/ROI and vendor validation). To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each category to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on our experience and data derived from our benchmark research on analytics and business intelligence.

        Ventana_Research-Analytics_and_BI-Value_Index-GenericLast year SAP announced it was focusing on SAP Analytics Cloud, a public cloud service, as the primary solution for data discovery and presented a roadmap that combines SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise into a single hybrid solution. Consequently, our analysis is based primarily on SAP Analytics Cloud. Our analysis reveals a broad set of capabilities that supports its move to consolidate around a single product. It uses a model of importing data into the system, but also supports with some limitations live data connections to underlying data via SAP HANA and some other mechanisms.

        ABI_SAPOverall SAP ranks sixth in the Value Index. Its best rankings were third in Usability and Manageability. The product offers good support for a variety of personas ranging from IT to executives and managers. It provides a modern and clean user interface as well as robust administration and security capabilities.

        The product has strong planning, forecasting and predictive analytics as well as some nice collaboration features but needs broader functionality to match the Capability leaders. In particular, better data access and integration and better communication of the outcome of the analytics process would improve its rankings. More performance metrics and configuration options would help improve its Reliability ranking.

        This assessment was based on SAP Analytics Cloud version 2018.15.0. The company updates the product biweekly; the current release is 2019.02. In the interim enhancements have been made to the visualizations, data integration and administration (including usage analysis). Users now can also export predictive models for use in other environments.

        This research-based index is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of analytics and business intelligence software in the industry. You can learn more about SAP and others using our Value Index as an effective vendor selection and RFI/RFP tool; read the report here.

        Regards,
        David Menninger
        SVP & Research Director

        Get the full picture Read the Analytics & Business Intelligence Value Index report
        David Menninger
        Executive Director, Technology Research

        David Menninger leads technology software research and advisory for Ventana Research, now part of ISG. Building on over three decades of enterprise software leadership experience, he guides the team responsible for a wide range of technology-focused data and analytics topics, including AI for IT and AI-infused software.

        JOIN OUR COMMUNITY

        Our Analyst Perspective Policy

        • Ventana Research’s Analyst Perspectives are fact-based analysis and guidance on business, industry and technology vendor trends. Each Analyst Perspective presents the view of the analyst who is an established subject matter expert on new developments, business and technology trends, findings from our research, or best practice insights.

          Each is prepared and reviewed in accordance with Ventana Research’s strict standards for accuracy and objectivity and reviewed to ensure it delivers reliable and actionable insights. It is reviewed and edited by research management and is approved by the Chief Research Officer; no individual or organization outside of Ventana Research reviews any Analyst Perspective before it is published. If you have any issue with an Analyst Perspective, please email them to ChiefResearchOfficer@ventanaresearch.com

        View Policy

        Subscribe to Email Updates

        Posts by Month

        see all

        Posts by Topic

        see all


        Analyst Perspectives Archive

        See All