Since its inception in 2015 as SAP Cloud for Analytics, one of the features of SAP Analytics Cloud has been its rapid release strategy, with new versions of the product being released about every two weeks. An agile release strategy has many benefits for a new product coming into the marketplace. And certainly a cloud-based product can be updated more easily if the vendor is doing most of the heavy lifting.
But a hectic release schedule also has drawbacks, which I wrote about earlier in a piece entitled What we learned from 31 releases of SAP Lumira. In that article, I advocated that SAP should take a two-track approach to cloud releases, much as Microsoft does with Office and its Office Insider early adopter program.
Starting with version 2018.19 of SAP Analytics Cloud released last month, SAP is moving to a quarterly release schedule to “align with SAP’s global strategy for cloud application releases.” And to continue to satisfy early adopters, SAP is offering a Fast-Track subscription for organizations that continue to want to receive bi-weekly updates.
There’s more details and an FAQ on the SAP Analytics Cloud web site. You’ll also want to check out the video that I’ve embedded above. This new release schedule is great news for SAP Analytics Cloud users.
What are your experiences so far with SAP Analytics Cloud? And what do you think about the new quarterly release schedule? Leave a comment in the section below.
What is the adoption rate for SAC? Are many BOBJ customers even leveraging?
Al, thank you for your questions. As a consultant and not an SAP employee, I can tell you that several of our customers are performing evaluations. Your SAP sales executive would be the best source of information as to similar organizations in your industry that are adopting SAP Analytics Cloud.