The enterprise tool, SAP Predictive Analysis 2.0, now integrates Predictive Analysis and SAP’s InfiniteInsight solution, and SAP thinks it will offer a strong partner play.

Today, SAP is enhancing enhanced business intelligence tools for both the SMB and enterprise markets. For the enterprise, they are announcing the general availability of the 2.0 version of SAP Predictive Analytics software. SMBs are the main focus of the other offering, Lumira, Edge edition, a new product designed to be very simple to install and use.

SAP believes that the predictive analytics market is ripe for explosion, that SAP is poised to benefit from this, and that SAP partners are in a particularly advantageous position.

“In the natural evolution of analytics, we believe the predictive market is right for disruption,” said Jayne Landry, Global VP & GM, Business Intelligence, SAP. “Until now it has been difficult for many in the organization to take advantage of it. Many of our traditional BI partners are now offering predictive capabilities as well.”

“From a go-to-market point of view, we believe 2015 will be the year of the partner, both the VAR and true OEM application supplier,” said Sven Bauszus, Global VP & GM, Predictive Analytics, SAP. “We believe the channel is going to pick it up. This will be assisted by Predictive Analytics 2.0 being entirely open for integration, which means integration for partners.”

The major enhancement to 2.0 is that it now combines the functionality of the SAP Predictive Analysis software and SAP’s InfiniteInsight solution.

“You are now dealing with one integrated workbench with two workflows,” Bauszus said. “All the stacks are now integrated in one container. This is the first time we have had a combined offering here, and it will be further developed, to implement a consistent metadata layer. Some capabilities in the solution have been enhanced but the integration is the key here.”

The new integrated software delivers capabilities like predictive processing, intuitive modeling, advanced data visualization, model automation, automatic variable reductions, scoring, model management, social network analysis and recommendations.

“This is an architectural foundation, which will support an ambitious roadmap for predictive analytics moving forward,” Bauszus said. “This is all about making predictive analytics a component of applications, and making it easy to deploy predictive models into third party applications. That’s part of this release because of the integration.”

SAP Predictive Analytics 2.0 is designed for the enterprise, but Bauszus said the need for predictive analytics is there in every industry and every size of company, because it will power every line of business, marketing, sales, and supply chain.

The second new offering announced is SAP Lumira, Edge edition, a new version of Lumira designed specifically for smaller businesses as well as users who want a simpler and faster install process.

Lumira Edge provides data visualization and infographics for business users to give more immediate and actionable insights. Users are now able to create, view, modify and share visualizations with teammates and colleagues within their browser.

“Lumira started with a desktop product, designed with business analysts in mind,” Landry said. “Data preparation was hard in many of the BI solutions in the market to give these users the format they needed for analysis.” The Lumira Cloud format now has over 70,000 users.

“Edge is now a new option, designed with SMEs in mind,” Landry continued. “It is very simple to get it up and running quickly, as it can be installed in 15 minutes. We anticipate that some users will start with Edge, but move up as their need grows. It lets you start small with a team and integrate it into a broader BI platform. Analysts can publish to Edge and make it accessible to other groups, so it is an effective collaboration tool.”

Landry indicated that Lumira Edge uses an in-memory engine based off of HANA, but that it did not require HANA to be used.

“It will run on any commodity hardware at all,” she said.