Q&A from our I Love Lumira webcasts

We’ve compiled the questions from our recent I Love Lumira webcast series with Bonnie Brown and Dallas Marks. If you still have questions about SAP Lumira and whether it fits into your BI strategy, please contact us.

Q: Can we add Lumira Services to existing processing tier servers if we scale them OR is it required that Lumira services run on their own dedicated host?

The Lumira in-memory engine is designed to run on its own machine and assumes it can request up to 85% of its memory. We’ve installed it onto single-node sandboxes, but you’ll want to add at least one more node to any environment you use every day, even a development environment.

Q: What will happen to existing BO Explorer licensing with the converging of BO Explorer and Lumira? A Dashboards license automatically gave us a Design Studio license. Will this perhaps be the case for BO Explorer and Lumira?

While Explorer functionality will continue to be folded into Lumira over time, there is no direct 1:1 conversion. There are conversion opportunities available. Contact us in regards to your conversion needs and we can help set you down the right path.

Q: How about Lumira job server, how many jobs it can handle?

The Lumira scheduling service is designed just like the Web Intelligence scheduling service. It farms the actual work to the in-memory engine. Web Intelligence processing servers have to be sized for both on-demand and scheduled requests and Lumira is the same in that regard. Please note that as of the writing of this post, sizing information for this has not been published by SAP. Contact us and we can give you a pretty good swag at it.

Q: I am looking for some use cases of Lumira using Epic universes in healthcare.

We work with a significant number of hospitals, insurers, and primary care givers. Want to learn more? Let’s set up some time for a huddle to talk about it.

Q: Is the reason for separating Lumira Server just to have dedicated RAM? How does Lumira Server “Not Play Nice”?

“Not Play Nice” wasn’t the best choice of words, but yes, dedicated RAM is the primary driver although adequate CPU must be sized, too.

Q: How many EVT customers are actually using Lumira today?

We have quite a few customers both with SAP Lumira for BI4 Platform live and several customers that haven’t made the leap off of a solely desktop-based experience for their users. We expect many to get started in Q1-2016.

Q: We have BO Enterprise premium license CPU based.. can we still install Lumira?

The BI suite is only licensed by named user licenses (NUL) and concurrent access licenses (CAL).  We can talk to you about conversion credit and would love to have that conversation before the end of 2015.

Q. I am running BOE V 4.0 SP11. We don’t have Deski, so did not want to go to V 4.1.  Does V4.2 have Deski in it?

Both BI 4.1 and BI 4.2 allow users to store Desktop Intelligence content in the CMS. But Desktop Intelligence cannot be viewed, refreshed, or scheduled in the browser. With XI 3.1 going out of support at the end of 2015, the value of keeping Desktop Intelligence content in your system is almost zero.

Remember that mainstream support for both XI 3.1 and BI 4.0 end on December 31, 2015. You’re probably safe waiting for BI 4.2 and skipping BI 4.1 altogether.

Q: Is Lumira just marketing hype or is it getting traction?

The business value has certainly increased now that Lumira content can be shared on the BI platform and we see improved features and capabilities across the board. There is particular traction when the tool is applied correctly to the proper use case. When targeting users with high volume data interests, both on and off SAP HANA, the results are favorable when compared to older use cases with Web Intelligence.

Q: Any key messages about Lumira released in Las Vegas at TechEd?

Only that everyone was really excited about SAP Lumira 1.29, which was released shortly afterward on Friday, November 20. Here is an article by SAP Labs summarizing the 1.29 update. Most of the focus at TechEd was on SAP Cloud for Analytics.

Q: Can SAP Lumira map by zip codes/postal codes?

ESRI base maps are now included as part of SAP Lumira 1.29 and no longer require an ESRI license. We’ll have to take a look too!

Q: Does the predictive model requires additional license?

No. What you see in Lumira is covered by a single license. SAP offers a separate Predictive Analytics product for more advanced scenarios. We can certainly help you on that journey as well. Let’s talk about how SAP Predictive Analysis can turn your data analyst into a data scientist(ish).

Q: What book would you recommend for beginners to Lumira?

There is a book available from SAP Press; however, Lumira changes frequently. The tutorials on the SAP Learn BI site are probably the best place to learn.

Q: Can we schedule Lumira?

Yes, Lumira documents can be scheduled on the BI platform. There are some caveats and restrictions, but expect many of those to disappear as Lumira is updated throughout 2016.

Q: Can you do custom geography?

The answer is “it depends”. You can create custom visualization components using the SDK, but take a look at Lumira add-ons from ESRI, Centigon Solutions, Galigeo, and others.

Q: Does the data always need to be structured?

SAP Lumira can work with both structured and unstructured data.

Q: How do we increase the canvas size?

In SAP Lumira 1.29 which was just released on Friday November 20th, you now have more control over your page settings. You still have the standard, widescreen and continuous scrolling but you can also change it to a specific height & width.