By Kumar Singh, Research Director, SAPinsider

Accelerating Digital Transformation Initiatives

Every technology leader knows that the cloud will be a business imperative in the future.  The explosion in digitalization, data, and analytics methodologies means that organizations realize that their current on-premises environments are not sustainable from a long-term perspective. And while this contemplation comes from the current pace of technology acceleration, the fact is that the pace of technology and computing power evolution will grow exponentially during this decade. And hence, it is a no-brainer that the cloud will become a major component of technology strategy for many organizations. This ties directly with digital transformation initiatives that many organizations are pursuing. Cloud will be one of the essential foundational technologies for any organization that aims for an end-to-end digital transformation. But there is another ingredient of successful digital transformation initiatives that can exponentially benefit from the cloud- analytics. To discuss the critical topics of analytics in the cloud, SAPinsider recently invited Steve McHugh, Director of Product Management, SAP, for a brief video discussion.

The Future of Data and Analytics is in the Cloud

As indicated earlier, the cloud will be a foundational component of digitally transformed organizations soon. But not all organizations are waiting for the future. A plethora of organizations have already executed multiple digital transformation initiatives, many accelerating these during the pandemic, and the cloud was an essential component in that. As Steve highlighted: "Companies that have made digital transformation important during the pandemic and have taken steps there, also leveraged cloud capabilities in their digital transformation initiatives. A piece that they found important during the pandemic was the agility that the cloud gave them. The ability to make adjustments on the fly." As platforms and applications move to the cloud, associated data and analytics infrastructure is moving there as well. It is not news for any technology professional that cloud analytics is rapidly becoming the platform of choice for analytics applications. While the key initial driver was the ability to scale quickly, lower in-house technology asset costs, and build flexibility in systems capabilities, the benefits that accrue from cloud-based solutions have now increased manyfold. Considering these aspects, all leading analytics products and services organizations are increasingly either moving their current solutions landscape to the cloud or leveraging the cloud to re-imagine and develop products that align with today's demand of continuous innovation. SAP is a prime example of an organization that saw this coming much before others. SAP BusinessObjects has been a market-leading business intelligence tool for a long time and is used by thousands of organizations across industries. However, the nuances of business analytics are changing, and the focus is now shifting towards leveraging tools that offer "augmented analytics"-essentially putting the power of business analytics in the hands of non-technical users by virtue of being "self-service" analytics tools. As an innovative organization, SAP was able to foresee this shift several years ago and hence introduced SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) as the next generation, augmented analytics-enabled, single integrated platform for all enterprise analytics needs. As Steve mentioned during the conversation, the need to develop a product that goes beyond basic insights, that aligns with the era of "information workers," is self-service, agile, offers a portfolio of various types of algorithms were aspects that SAP saw coming years ago, and that foresight was the genesis of the cloud-based, enterprise analytics offering-SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC).

Cloud augments the power of analytics

Many of the benefits of the cloud that are discussed widely translate directly to building analytics capabilities in the cloud. But the benefits obviously go beyond the infrastructure and platform aspects and spillover into the solutions arena. Keeping the cost savings aspect aside, let us review three key aspects here: Flexibility: The pandemic has highlighted the need for near real-time visibility and needs for low latency analytics and business intelligence tools. The level of flexibility that the cloud offers goes beyond scaling resources up or down to match our needs. Data integration, eliminating data silos, which in turn enhances analytics, and seamless integration to other cloud-based business applications are just a few examples of flexibility that building analytics capabilities in the cloud offers. Agility: The level of agility that the cloud provides in the domain of analytics is a dream come true for experimenting with analytics. Whether it is evaluating the quality of your dataset, running pilots immediately and as many times as desired, or leveraging the unprecedented computing power of cloud infrastructure, the level of agility that cloud provides is a dream come true for an analytics professional who likes to experiment. As this quote from Steve highlights: "The importance of cloud here that really resonates here is agility. The ability to be able to get a product out there quickly, the ability for us to be able to update it quickly, and to modify the product and innovate new innovations quickly, are all aspects of it." Another important agility feature is the rapid global deployment. In a world where almost all businesses have a global footprint, the ability to deploy your applications globally within minutes is a dream come true for technology leaders. Innovation: This ties with the two aspects discussed. The flexibility and agility are rich ingredients for innovation, and the opportunity to innovate continuously is what analytics in the cloud offers. The ability to focus on developing innovative applications vs. navigating the intricacies of physical infrastructure is one of the critical advantages that fuel innovation. Cloud allows us to experiment with new algorithms, frameworks, and hardware in seconds versus months (and sometimes years). Steve leveraged an example here to highlight how cloud fuels innovation. He highlighted that historically, in the on-premise environment, you are looking at innovation and a release every 9-12 months. And there is an associated painful upgrade process for customers who want to take advantage of that. That cycle of innovation is almost continuous when you move your analytic applications to the cloud.

Migrating to cloud-based analytics solutions

Because of technological advancements, cloud migration is also accelerating. Metering, microservices, and cloud management advances generally make it feasible to adopt a "cloud-first" deployment strategy. The development of container technology has simplified re-platforming while allowing businesses to maintain their existing investments while taking advantage of cloud benefits. To migrate analytics applications successfully to the cloud, careful planning is essential, both from a business and technical perspective, to ensure that you are comfortable with the process and confident in the results. Organizations that want to move aggressively, however, must know what analytics assets they have. Many organizations do not realize how much data, programs, and users they have. To understand how to format, migrate, and access your data and analytics capabilities in the cloud, you must understand your data and analytics assets and their use. Additionally, if the enterprise is already disciplined around model management, this helps enormously. Solution providers like SAP are also going to lengths to help facilitate the move to cloud for their customers. Steve emphasized the importance of this, when discussing the transitioning aspect of SAP BusinessObjects customers to SAC: "We do value BusinessObjects customers, and we have been working through process to make it easier for them to get to SAC." He cited feature like live data connect that allows customers to leverage the data assets they have built over years when they move to SAC. Steve also highlighted the SAP BusinessObjects Private Cloud Environment (PCE) offering, that has been designed exclusively to make the transition to cloud easier. In his words: "What this offering allows BusinessObjects customers to do is that if they want to lift and shift their current BusinessObjeccts landscape, or consolidate their landscape if they want to, and move that to a private cloud environment that is running on hyperscalers and is managed by SAP. So basically, we provide support and maintenance, and updates- all the things that have made the challenges that lot of companies have found in using an on-premise product, we take that on ourselves."

What does this mean for SAP insiders?

• Make that leap. If you are still on the fence, the recommendation is to transition your workloads to the cloud. An important first step is developing a cloud strategy. The analytics aspect will be embedded within your overall cloud strategy. When formulating your cloud strategy, you need to make sure that you align all the key strategies and key aspects like people, processes, and technologies in the process. Leverage offerings like SAP BusinessObjects PCE to mitigate your apprehensions and notion of challenges when it comes to transitioning your analytics capabilities to the cloud.
• Leverage what leading providers have to offer. You do not always have to re-invent the wheel. Whether it is innovative solutions like SAC or the portfolio of analytics, AI, and ML solutions that hyperscalers offer, the choices available today to accelerate your analytics capabilities in the cloud are plenty. Both options provide you to take the "plug and play" path for many of your analytics needs, and hence there may not be a need to build analytics capabilities from scratch in the cloud.
• Innovate through partnerships. Build partnerships with cloud innovators. Whether it is with products companies. Like SAP or hyperscalers, these strategic partnerships allow you to leverage the innovation expertise of these companies to your advantage. SAP PCE offering mentioned in the article is a great example of the advantages of building partnerships with these innovative organizations. These partnerships will not only help facilitate your move to the cloud but once you have made the move, also allow you to build unique solutions leveraging the plug and play features developed by these companies and hyperscalers.