#askSAP Analytics Innovations Community Call: Reimagine Predictive Analytics for the Digital Enterprise Webcast Recap Part 1

Reimagine Predictive Analytics for the Digital Enterprise Webcast Recap Part 1: This was an SAP webcast held last week

The usual legal disclaimer applies

Source: SAP

SAP’s Ashish Morzaria started with Predictive Use cases, how the digital economy has changed

The internet has moved from a push to a peer-to-peer network

Enterprises have invested to connect suppliers, systems, every transaction is recorded and digitized.

This information is shared with people in the supply chain.

Source: SAP

New economy encourages enterprises to turn digitize assets to their advantage

Inject predictive processes into help improve processes and decisions

How create new products, services and models?  Use algorithms to analyze data that you have to develop a competitive edge.

Source: SAP

Companies embracing these technologies are winning

Companies who have invested in algorithms have more revenue, more profitable, more competitive

Source: SAP

Predictive Analytics accelerates process using automated techniques

Faster, without a single line of code, and models can be reused by analysts in organization

You can apply a segmentation to them to create derivatives of models

Workflows are repeatable, with guided algorithms

The data scientists can use guided workflow and do additional configuration and parameter tuning to understand results

Supports HANA and Hadoop and can push calculations down to HANA and Hadoop to reduce data transfer required

Source: SAP

HANA can run R scripts, an open source library

The issue with R is that it runs outside of HANA and this is inefficient

To solve, SAP created PAL, and PAL follows 80/20 – you can create algorithm using R, but common ones are run natively in HANA to enable in-memory execution

APL (automated predictive library) for relational sources, now in HANA

HANA can use native algorithms, APL, and automated capabilities to run

Predictive Analytics use all of this with one interface

Source: SAP

On the left you have traditional analytics

Bring into warehouse, analytical source, each step has a data extraction

Using HANA, with Predictive Analytics, federate queries/calculations to HANA layer

Flexibility of using R algorithm, mix and match between APL, PAL, R

Source: SAP

Smart data streaming includes the capability to apply scoring algorithm to streams, apply scoring “on the fly”

Source: SAP

Traditional data solutions start sampling, reducing efficiency and accuracy

When using Hadoop with a single source, limited by system with analytic engine

Hadoop + Spark allows doing things across a large number of nodes

Native spark modeling federates calculation to the model itself; have Predictive Analytics software orchestrate in Spark

Source: SAP

This is a deeper diagram showing how it works

The Spark engine is running underneath

Traditional analytics was using code

New predictive analytics has a wizard approach; workflow is similar to using a relational source

Source: SAP

Tool that works for both the data scientist and citizen data scientist

Source: SAP:

Predictive analytics is part of an analytical environment

Traditional analytics answers the questions on the left; very descriptive types of questions answering

What promotions should I run (on the right)

With predictive, understand pattern of past to apply to the future

Source: SAP:

Predictive analytics is part of an analytical environment

Traditional analytics answers the questions on the left; very descriptive types of questions answering

What promotions should I run (on the right)

With predictive, understand pattern of past to apply to the future

Source: SAP

Embedding in a workflow

Start with Predictive, create model, export model, and apply directly to a database (HANA, Oracle, etc.)

Once exported, any application using SQL will get a recordset out

Now any tool that can access database can report on it.

Every BI user can access score in this example

Source: SAP

Batch scoring; creating a retention campaign, address customers who are likely to leave

Take data that represents customers

Apply predictive model, take the score

Your BI user filters on those likely to churn

Questions:
Q: Are there any plans to make R scripts first class citizens by embedding them in HANA?
A: Plans to bring them to HANA, due to legal issues, will run on HANA but still be a separate process
No plans to make it an in-memory engine inside HANA itself
Q: BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics a separate license?
A: Separate product, licenses are included in BusinessObjects Enterprise Premium announced at SAPPHIRENOW
Capabilities exist in BusinessObjects Cloud for Predictive – more of an embedded case
Q: How Graphx – plan to embed in HANA?
A: Able to do link analysis in HANA using tools

Poll: Source: SAP