SAP vs. Microsoft, Information Assets vs. End User Experience positioning

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Business Intelligist

If your company runs SAP, chances are the picture below represents your environment pretty well

The black colors represent the existing investments/business processes and the size of the bubbles represents the effort/investment $$$. Your company has made a very large investment in the SAP back-end (ERP, BW, etc.) which is represented by a large black circle on the lower left. The information worker end-user experience in SAP is represented by a relatively smaller bubble (BobJ, BEx) and we can also see a solid line that connects these two Information Assets (one could argue that this solid line is not quite as solid in reality but that’s not the point I am trying to make here). The important point that I am trying to make however is characterized by a significantly larger bubble that represents the End User experience that the information workers in your company enjoy using Microsoft tools such as Excel, PowerPoint and SharePoint.

Many IT folks seem surprised by the size of that Information Asset but if you think about the herculean work that is done every month across various groups in your organization to dump data out of SAP (BEx, etc.), link and cleanse and scrub that data and then build countless reports in Excel using HLOOKUPs, VLOOKUPs, SUMIFs and whatever other Excel black magic necessary to get the job done, it should become clear that the size of that circle is very well justified.

Unfortunately, many companies tend to completely downplay the significance of the End User experience while pouring millions of dollars in the infrastructure and back-end.

I think that there are at least two reasons why the end-user experience gets no respect from IT:

Disconnect between IT and the business audience – this is a topic that has gotten a lot of attention and coverage and is pretty universally accepted at this point and, therefore, I am not going to dwell on it too much
Philosophical encampment of the SAP ideology within IT which leads to denial and rejection of anything non-SAP

The second argument is unfortunately very commonplace.

Is there a way to reframe this situation such that we can stop bickering and arguing about what vendor/technology is better and instead focus on what is the right thing to do for the company? I think there is…

I think that it is very clear that both vendors, SAP and Microsoft, are very strategic for an organization and therefore we should not think about who is better or worse but rather we should think about how do we leverage and maximize the existing investments with both vendors. It, therefore, seems pretty natural that some Microsoft Office infrastructure must be deployed to create a solid line (i.e. set up the plumbing) between the SAP back-end and front end-user tools (represented by red color on the diagram). Typically, a large organization that has an enterprise agreement with Microsoft will have most of these components already licensed and, frankly speaking, most organizations will have these components already deployed (I am talking about SQL Server, SharePoint, etc.) although not necessarily configured to enable the flow data from SAP into the hands of end users.

Having this Microsoft infrastructure does not facilitate any more replication of data than what is already taking place as the outputs (manually built Excel reports and PowerPoint decks) remain the same, so the information is already replicated from SAP and sourced into these visualizations, albeit manually. So the volume of data movement will remain the same, but all of the non-value adding work will be reduced to the bare minimum. The following is a list of some of the benefits of this approach:

Automation of manual data extracts
Governance and controllership of the information flow
Security and oversight
Build Excel reports once and refresh them from the reporting model, no manual updates necessary
Same for PowerPoint (build one deck that will refresh from the model with up to date information rendered for the individual user credentials)
Empowering end users to own content creation therefore significantly reducing the IT reporting backlog
Ultimately – giving the End Users what they want, like and expect

SAP Visual Intelligence vs. Microsoft PowerPivot and PowerView

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Business Intelligist

In this post I will review the latest version of SAP Visual Intelligence – 1.08 – and see how it stacks up against the Microsoft self-service BI tools, Excel, PowerPivot and PowerView. In the initial release, Visual Intelligence only supported SAP Hana, but in its latest iteration few other data sources are supported:

CSV File
SAP Hana
SAPBW as exposed as a view in SAP Hana
MS Excel
Freehand SQL (basically ODBC)
SAP Business Objects Universe

Just to clear some confusion that this list may generate, Visual Intelligence does not access BW objects directly, instead, Hana has some connectivity to connect to BW models, DSOs and Query Snapshots and then expose those as a Hana view, in short, Visual Intelligence knows how to plug into Hana but not BW.

Data import

Since I don’t have Hana running on my laptop, I decided to use a CSV file to load in both Visual Intelligence and PowerPivot. I used a 173MB file that contained about 1.2M records in it. It took just under 30 seconds to import the file:

After that I was able to bring the data into the pivot table and start slicing and dicing it. Loading data in Visual Intelligence wasn’t quite as smooth. Having selected the same file, I had to wait for almost 40 seconds looking at the frozen screen. Then, after the meta data have been read, I clicked on Acquire. After about a minute of looking at the spinning cursor, I was rewarded with a warning message: I was surprised to find out that the acquisition will fetch more than 30 million cells, but having been known to boldly go where no man has gone before, I took my chances and bravely hit the Yes button. Unfortunately, that was as far as this adventure would take me with respect to that data file, as the following message ended my hopes of being able to analyze a meekly 1.2M of rows of data. I have not been able to find the theoretical cell limit for Visual Intelligence, all I know is that my data file had 1.2M of rows and fewer than 30 columns, but it was clearly too much.

Lesson #1: Do not plan to use Visual Intelligence on datasets larger than 1M rows.

I therefore had to resort to a much smaller file for my testing, so I used some baseball stats CSV file with 95K rows. I was able to finally load that file into Visual Intelligence after about 20 second wait… a similar task in Excel took 7 seconds.

Data Exploration

Before I jump into data exploration, we have to take a quick pause and think about the audience for it. I think it makes sense to partition the audience up by technical vs non-technical users (IT vs the rest of the world) and I am going to ignore the technical audience altogether in this review because I think that the primary market for data exploration is the non-technical audience. Also, I have to divide that non-technical audience in two groups, Power User and Novice. I realize that most people are actually somewhere in between, but I think that reviewing these tools in the light of those two outliers will give us the best context for forming an opinion. Another thing I have to say that I am probably a PowerUser outlier within the PowerUser group and therefore it is very difficult for me sometime to just see this tool from the complete Novice perspective, but I will definitely try to do my best. So, here is what I think about my data exploration experience. Visual Intelligence does a decent job of inferring measures, attributes and hierarchies out of the data. When I say decent I mean that to somebody who has completely no clue about data, does not know how to sum data up in excel, it does a job good enough to get one going. For me, however, it was a very frustrating experience as the tool tried to do everything backwards from the way I am used to. For fairness sake, I am sure that if I spent more time using the tool, I am pretty sure I would be able to get comfortable with it. But being as it was, I was able to create a Line chart and a Bar chart that looked like this Visual Intelligence has a number of different chart types available, some of which are not available in excel:

The chart I was excited the most was the Waterfall chart as it is not offered in excel, although it is possible to create one with a trick that I will have to write about in another post. But, this is where I ran into my second biggest disappointment with the product, you can only create one chart at a time. In other words, one cannot create a dashboard that would show a trend chart and a donut chart on the same page.

Lesson #2: Visualizations are limited to only one chart at a time.

Modeling

This is my biggest disappointment with the product which, frankly speaking renders it virtually useless for a power user. Modeling is practically not existent in Visual Intelligence. Although the tool does a good enough job for a Novice level user with some basic calculations and hierarchies, it is impossible to add additional data to the model. In my case, I was able to load the batting data into Visual Intelligence, but I was not able to load any team related information as a dimension so I could slice the batting data by team attributes. Essentially, the only way to do this would have been to add all of the team attributes to the batting file, but that would dramatically increase the number of cells in the data set and we already know that the tool does not like that very much.

Lesson #3: Visual Intelligence offers virtually no modeling capabilities outside of basic calculations and hierarchies.

Collaboration

After one creates a particularly good looking chart (we already know that anything beyond that is not supported in VI) one has find a way to share one’s work with the world. In the Microsoft world, an Excel file that contains both a PowerPivot model (data) and traditional excel charts or PowerView dashboards/reports, that file can be simply saved into SharePoint that then will render all of the visualization to and end user as a web page. No such luck with Visual Intelligence as its visualizations are saved as just in image in to the Streamwork portal and the end user will not be able to interact with it online. Lesson #4: Visual Intelligence is a fat client solutions, no collaboration or online viewing is available.

Random tidbits

Calculations in VI are very simple, nothing like PowerPivot with respect to time intelligence, financial intelligence, balance sheet logic, etc.
Charts in VI are not drillable, they are in PowerView
No drilling to detail in VI, there is one in Excel
No dimensional modeling in Visual Intelligence, there is on in PowerPivot
Tree map is available in VI, not in Excel, heat maps are available in both, although more intuitive in VI than excel (conditional formatting)

…. More things to come later tonight…

Customizing PowerView in PowerPoint

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Business Intelligist

Although “customizing” may be too strong of a word, there are few things that we can tweak to improve the look and feel of PowerView slides that had just been exported from SharePoint. The first thing to do after the fresh export is to adjust the size of the exported image. For some reason as you can see in the image below, the PowerView image does not take up the entire slide, leaving some white edges around which would not be a problem if the PowerView image has a white background, but in my case, I have used a grey background in PowerView and it does not look good on a white PowerPoint background.

Luckily, this can be easily remedied by just clicking on the image and resizing it to fit the entire slide. That helps while presenting the static slide, however, after one clicks the “Interact” button the, unsightly white lines come back again around the edges of the slide.

The only way that I found to make that white space go away is to do the following:

Right click on the PowerView image and click on Property Sheet
A property screen will come up with the following parameters: ViewMode=CachedPreview,ReportSection=ReportSection2,AllowSectionNavigation=False,Fit=True,PreviewBar=False,BackgroundColor=White,Border=True,AllowEditViewMode=False,AllowFullScreenViewMode=False,Trace_HostApplication=Powerpoint
Note that the BackgroundColor is set to White which is why we are see those white lines on the edges of our visualization
Change the background to black or any other color that matches the background of your PowerView slide
Don’t forget to hit save

That should be all you need to do to make sure that your PowerView looks nice in PowerPoint if its background is anything but white.

The rest of the parameters are interesting as well…

For example, by default, each PowerView view is exported into a separate slide, so one needs to physically move from one slide to another and click on “Interact” again and again. Setting the AllowSectionNavigation to True allows us to navigate from one PowerView view to another from the same slide, which is similar to the end-user experience in SharePoint. Both, Thumbnail button, Font Selection as well as the Navigation Arrows now become available

Microsoft BI ranks highest in ability to execute by Gartner

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Business Intelligist

Microsoft once again is ranked the highest in its ability to execute by Gartner in its magic quadrant for Business Intelligence. The report is pretty long and boring, but if I were distill it down to a few salient points, I would choose the following:

Companies see a dramatic improvement in BI capabilities going from SQL Server 2008 R2 to SQL Server 2012
Microsoft got a node for some of the upcoming stuff including Explorer, GeoFlow and PolyBase
Gartner mentioned “shortening product update cycles” for Microsoft SQL, Office and Sharepoint
“it is widely deployed in large enterprises as a standard with among the highest data volumes and user counts”
Microsoft is dinged on basically two fronts, mobility and CPM.

Some comments on the CTP of the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 With PowerView For Multidimensional Models

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Business Intelligist

I have had a pretty frustrating experience with it so far. I think that the only way get it to work is to have it deployed as a SSRS Service Application inside SharePoint and then configure PowerView. In other words, if you are planning to install a multidemensional instance of the CTP, install your OLAP cube and then enjoy some PowerView magic from Excel (which is pretty close to what I was hoping I should be able to do), you are likely to experience the same level of frustration and dissapointment that I just have.

I wish this link was a little bit more descriptive with respect to what PowerView functionality will and will not be supported with this release.

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 With PowerView For Multidimensional Models is available in CTP

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Business Intelligist

Microsoft demonstrated PowerView on top of the Multidimensional model in Analysis Services several weeks ago at SQL PASS and now the CTP version of the product is available here.

There are two pieces of new functionality delivered with this CTP:

Update for Analysis Services engine to allow DAX support for Multidimensional models
Update for the Reporting Services Integrated mode for PowerView. One new feature is ability to create Global Filters that span multiple PowerView Tabs

PowerView Feature Comparisons

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Business Intelligist

PowerView experience will be delivered across several Microsoft products:

Excel (fat client)
Excel Services (SharePoint)
SharePoint – SQL Edition
Office 365
PowerPoint

I get a lot of questions as to what features are supported across all these deployment scenarios. Luckily Microsoft shared a slide that I will attempt to reproduce here that explains what features work where and how.

*Feature*	Excel	Excel Services	SharePoint/SQL	Office 365
All visualizations	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Power View Authoring	Yes	No	Yes	No
Cross Visualization Interactivity	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
External Images	Yes, anonymous	Yes, anonymous	Yes	Yes
Workbook or model size	Max Workbook Size	AS Limits	AS Limits	10MB
Export to PowerPoint	No	No	Yes	No
Reorder Power View views	No	No	Yes	No
Connecting to multidimensional UDM	No	No	Yes	No
Offline Mode	Yes	No	No	No
Multiple External Models	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Report Zoom	No	Browser Zoom	Browser Zoom	Browser Zoom
Reading and Presentation mode	No	No	Yes	No
Windows RT support	No	No	No	No
Windows 8 Pro support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

There are several interesting points to make here.

Microsoft thinks of “Export to PowerPoint” as a feature as opposed to thinking of PowerPoint as another environment for Power View like Excel even though the PowerPoint does support the authoring capability as it is outlined here
There seems to be some fragmentation in several important features such as ability to support multidimensional models and multiple external models
No Windows RT support is very annoying (given the fact that RT is happily supporting Flash but not Microsoft own Silverlight). I understand (although do not agree with) that Microsoft had to scale down the RT functionality in order to please its hardware partners; however, I do not understand why I do not even have an option to BUY the missing functionality such as Silverlight, Outlook, etc. (or rather the entire Office Professional) for Windows RT. As I mentioned before, I love the Surface from the hardware perspective, however, I believe that I should be able to have an option to upgrade my user experience to the full featured product for additional $$$ if I have to

Microsoft makes big announcements at SQL PASS

Posted on November 7, 2012 by Business Intelligist

I will have a more detailed write-up of everything later but still wanted to give a quick summary of the new announcements:

Updateable Column store – Project Hekaton will be released in the next major release of SQL Server and will allow us create updateable clustered column store indexes. This is huge, 20-50 performance increases without any changes to the existing hardware and/or applications
SQL Server SP1 is released – primary focus is to support the new BI features in Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013
The new version of PDW will be released in H1 of 2013 with support for Hadoop and updateable column store, read whatever you will in that date…
PowerView was shown to support OLAP cubes… More details on that will be released tomorrow

Surface RT review, part II

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Business Intelligist

I was a little surprised to see how much traffic was generated by my original post. I decided that, it would be a good idea to follow up with a review focused on the device itself.

My first experience with Windows 8 came from Samsung Series 9 tablet. I generally liked the tablet although it was a little too big and too thick and the battery life was too short to really make it a viable option to be my mobile office alternative. So when I evaluate Surface RT I do it in the context of two products, iPad (for obvious reasons)and Samsung Series 9 tablet.

Hardware-wise, the Surface is pretty close to perfect (at least for me) with respect to size and other specs. It’s just big enough to make the screen acceptable to author Word documents and build PowerPoint decks (this review is written entirely on Microsoft Word in the Surface RT), but it is also small enough to just throw in the bag and go get a cup of coffee. I would not mind if it was a bit lighter, but again, size-wise, I am pretty happy with it.

The biggest difference from the iPad is the fact that the Surface is legitimately a very viable option for content creation. I do BI for living and as it is probably apparent from my original post, the Surface RT is not there yet to replace my trusted laptop, however, for the vast majority of people who are casual users of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, Surface will work just fine. I am still trying to get used to the Space bar, and of course the Touch Cover keyboard has a completely different feel from a traditional keyboard, but I would say that overall it’s very usable…just wish that Space Bar was cooperating a little bit better with me …

I connected a USB Mouse to the Surface RT just to see if it would work and it did just fine. The Touch Cover track pad works fine, it’s just a little small, but it does support some gestures, but no track pad (and I don’t care what Apple fanatics say about their track pads) will be as good as a good mouse.

The screen resolution is OK for the size, probably it is simply good if you want to use it for work, but when I am laying in bed and using it to browse internet I sometimes wish that the resolution was a little higher, but for work related activities, higher resolution would probably make screen a little hard to read, so I think that the resolution is probably where it needs to be for this form factor.

The screen works great outside, just need to crank up the brightness a little bit. The cameras suck for taking pictures, but realistically, I would never use the Surface to take pictures. Although, I would expect better quality than what we get… Video chat quality is good, no complains there.

The biggest impression that the Surface has made on me thus far is the battery life. It is very good. I am normally paranoid to pack a charger or two for all my electronic devices even if I am leaving my office or home for just a few hours. I have a feeling I won’t be needing to worry about that much with the Surface. Surface lasts all day and what’s even more impressive, it charges very quickly. When I saw the charger first I thought “Hmmm, this thing is a little chunky”, I guess being anchored to a size of a phone charger, but even though the charger is a little bigger than the one I use for my phone, I am happy with the trade off since it charges the Surface so quickly.

So compared to the iPad the product really shines as it allows me to actually get some work done where an iPad or an Android tablet eventually gets relegated to just basically browsing the internet and watching movies. Compared to the Samsung Series 9 tablet running Windows 8, the biggest gain is the independence from the outlet. I will be the first to admit that the Samsung tablet is a lot more capable device with respect to being able to run legacy apps, but I will also have to admit that given the form factor limitations, I did not really use all those legacy apps much anyway, but again, it would be awesome if I could.

So, is the Surface a great device? It surely is. The only real shortcoming today is an incomplete App Store, but I would expect that go get better in the next few weeks. To someone who has no significant investments in either Apple or Google ecosystems, buying this device should be a no brainer. Those who are heavily invested in Xbox are also good candidates to be a perfect fit for a target audience. Those who use their iPads for work today should definitely give them to their parents or toddlers, as they will be able to do so much more with Surface than iPad without really any tradeoffs with respect to quality of content consumption.

The only people who have no real reasons to switch are those with significant investment in the competing ecosystems (and it’s a huge, huge number of people indeed).

The other category of people who are likely to be underwhelmed are power users like me. Those who need advanced content creation capabilities and ability to run resource intensive and/or legacy applications should not consider the Surface as a viable option.

I am very frustrated that today Surface is not a great device to consume certain Microsoft BI content such as PowerView, but hopefully that will be addressed soon, and that aside, I have to admit that I am liking my Surface more and more everyday, and I am also getting more dependent on it every day which I guess is not really a bad thing

No material differences with respect to BI found between the RTM and Preview versions of Microsoft Office 2013