Lumira & Explorer

The Only SAP Lumira 2.0 Feature That Matters

SAP Lumira Discovery 2.0 Splash Screen

Yesterday, SAP unveiled SAP Lumira 2.0 at the SAP Insider BI2017 conference in Orlando, Florida.

SAP BusinessObjects Lumira and SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio are coming together under a single name, retaining 2 user experiences but on a common technology platform. Learn about the next step in SAP’s convergence strategy.

from SAP Insider breakout session description

This year’s conference has an interesting vibe. The stories from the keynote stage are about SAP BusinessObjects Lumira 2.0 and SAP BusinessObjects Cloud. Customers on the showroom floor are telling different stories – stories of more time and energy spent using SAP BusinessObjects tools to prepare data sets for competing products.

What we know is that Lumira and Design Studio are coming together (see Blair Wheadon’s SAP Community blog), with the Lumira Desktop getting a rebranding as Lumira Discovery. Design Studio will be rebranded as Lumira Designer. Design Studio is getting a new splash screen with a smattering of new features, most importantly integration. However, the current Lumira desktop is getting quite a major UX overhaul. Gone are the prepare, visualize and compose rooms in favor of a single workspace. Also rumored to be gone are many of the pain points and limitations experienced by early Lumira adopters.

But out of all the product features that were demonstrated yesterday, there’s only ONE feature that matters.

Can Lumira 2.0 beat Tableau?

Can it clip Qlik?

And can it punch PowerBI?

Lumira 2.0 cannot just be a “better Lumira”. It must be a credible alternative to what’s currently available- and leading- in the marketplace. It’s no longer sufficient for SAP to prepare its sales force or its partners to do battle in the marketplace. The battle is being played out at customer sites around the globe. SAP must also prepare its customers to fight- and win- data discovery projects from the vendors who are landing and expanding right in front of their eyes.

For many SAP customers, it’s no longer about keeping tools like Tableau out of the enterprise. It’s already there. The game is now about keeping Tableau and its peers running in tandem with solutions from SAP. Is it time for SAP to adjust strategy and help their customers reach that goal instead?

What are your impressions of SAP BusinessObjects Lumira 2.0?

 

Dallas Marks

Dallas Marks

I am an analytics and cloud architect, author, and trainer. An AWS certified blogger, SAP Mentor Alumni and co-author of the SAP Press book SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence: The Comprehensive Guide, I prefer piano keyboards over computer keyboards when not blogging or tweeting.

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7 thoughts on “The Only SAP Lumira 2.0 Feature That Matters”

  1. Good article as usual. I think Lumira will be totally outgunned at the Gartner BI Bake Off next week.
    I’m curious where Gartner will place Lumira 2.0 as it converges the two products – Will it be under the shining light of “Modern BI” or the dark closet of “Traditional BI”, or maybe it will be divided by the two clients?

    1. Interesting. I didn’t know about the Bake Off but I’ll keep an eye out for any Lumira comments from Cindi Howson and Gartner next week.

    1. Thanks for the shout-out. I’m hopeful that Lumira 2.0 will swim but I won’t know until I can actually use the software and not just imagine a better life from SAP’s PPT slides.

  3. From what I’ve seen Lumira 2.0 still lacks the “plug and play” capabilities (to borrow a phrase from the 90s) that Tableau has. Deployment and maintenance still require a lot of IT hand holding. With Tableau I don’t have to install database drivers for SQL server or download third party plugins for MS Access. I also don’t have to push files to the desktop to configure windows AD. On the preview call with the developers there was some degree of sighing as people voiced their complaints. It seemed as if the developers knew these complaints already but knew they were powerless to do anything about them due to the long development cycle. Hopefully they are already working on Lumira 2.1. Honestly I wish SAP would spin off their BI/EIM/Hana/MDM/Sybase/Altiscale products as a separate entity so they could focus on data for the masses instead of being “ERP/CRM/SCM first”. (cross posted on Ryans linked as well)

  4. Hi Dallas,
    Do you have any feedback on this since March? I’m intrigued to hear your opinions.
    Thanks

    1. Sarah, thanks for writing. I hope to publish an updated “State of the SAP BusinessObjects Upgrade” to the SAP Community blog this week.

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