Chasa Ursa Major CH-7550 Scuol Switzerland
QlikView—Using Complementary Business Intelligence Software with SAP
November 2005
Helmuth Gümbel - Managing Partner Strategy Partners International Chasa Ursa Major CH-7550 Scuol
[email protected]
Text and Illustrations were compiled with utmost of care. However, the author will not take responsibility or be held liable for any possible remaining incorrect information and the resulting consequences thereof. This piece of work is protected through copyright. All rights concerning the translation, reprinting, the use of illustrations, radio broadcasting, the reproduction through photgraphic or any other means, as well the storage in dataprocessing facilities, even if only excerpts are utilized, are therefore reserved.
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Strategy Partners International SAP, R/3, mySAP and NetWeaver are brands and trademarks of SAP. QlikView and QlikTech are brands of QlikTech International AB.
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Table of Contents
Goal of this White Paper .................................................................................................................. 1 Management Summary ................................................................................................................... 1 The Special Situation of SAP-Customers..................................................................................... 2 What does an SAP-User want? ........................................................................................................ 4 QlikView – a Solution ...................................................................................................................... 5 How does QlikView meet the demands detailed above?................................................................ 6 How Compatible is QlikView with the SAP-Architecture?......................................................... 10 When is QlikView interesting for the SAP-User? ........................................................................ 10 When is QlikView a less sensible choice? .................................................................................... 11 Bottom Line .................................................................................................................................... 12 Index of Illustrations....................................................................................................................... 13
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Goal of this White Paper
We want to help CIOs making investment decisions for complimentary software in an SAP environment by supplying important background information. In particular, readers will receive information on when to select QlikView and how to position such an investment in the light of SAP’s NetWeaver strategy, as NetWeaver contains business analytics in addition to a broad range of middleware functions.
Management Summary
In a time where information needs are constantly changing, where there is an abundance of data and yet a lack of information, interest in analytical tools is growing day by day. Unfortunately it is difficult, complicated and expensive to get to quick and easy to understand information. Centralized data often originates from very different systems; even when a company has standardized on products from a single applications vendor such as SAP the environment can be very heterogeneous due to different software release levels. SAP’s product line includes a business intelligence product. Users found the product to be quite useful in a number of analytical roles and well suited for the construction of complex data warehouses, but they also were quick to recognize that it requires lengthy and expensive preparations. Among complementary software solutions, QlikView is an attractive alternative when companies need quick data analysis and do not require a complex Data Warehouse or Data Mart. As one user put it: “Using QlikView it took us a day and a half to fulfill 80% of requirements that we had not been able to satisfy in year and a half using SAP BW.” QlikView uses patented technology, which is able to process large amounts of data at a very high speed. Apart from offering important Cost-of-Ownership advantages QlikView also gives the customer more architectural flexibility:
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QlikView does not require that customers follow SAP’s proposed migration strategy to NetWeaver
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QlikView does not constitute an obstacle when implementing NetWeaver.
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Choosing QlikView does not constitute a predisposition towards any middleware stack.
In essence, QlikView is agnostic toward other data and enterprise systems. Choosing QlikView can free your business analytics decisions from strategic ballast as low cost allows for quick amortization. Hence, we recommend using QlikView whenever only analytics are required, data warehousing is not (yet) an issue and high performance as well as flexibility are desired. Of course, QlikView can be used in a Data Warehouse environment as well.
The Special Situation of SAP-Customers
At the Sapphire 2005 conference in Boston SAP America CEO Bill McDermott declared: "Clients have made their choice. Best of breed is gone." This statement, though referring to CRM competitor Siebel (recently acquired by Oracle), is meant to say that SAP believes it can handle all customer data and system requirements with its broad set of applications. In reality, it is very difficult to find SAP installations using exclusively SAP software—even in functional areas where SAP excels. At this time, SAP has only about 50% functional penetration in its customer base. The rest of the SAP installed base runs SAP in conjunction with a whole plethora of other applications. Though there are many reasons for this, they all point in the same direction: users always choose the solution that, after having deliberated all the criteria, is the most suitable for them at that moment.
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SAP Versions Installed 5/2005 2% 14%
5% 6%
7%
3.1i 4.0B 4.5B
8%
4.6B 4.6C 4.7 Core mySAP ERP
58% Source: Strategy Partners International
Figure 1: Old SAP versions prevail
SAP has sold mySAP-software-suites to a great number of customers. However, while more than 50% of the SAP customers have mySAP-softwaresuite licenses the overwhelming majority of them still use older versions. SAP wants to leverage the termination of regular maintenance at the end of 2006 to make customers migrate, but many customers will continue to first look at their own business before evaluating software vendor proposals for migration. Over 80% of SAP’s customers are expected to continue having heterogeneous software environments. SAP customers running several installations often use different versions that cannot be upgraded easily and cost effectively. Old applications are still in use due to practical and financial reasons, and though they still function adequately, they do not meet the need for a uniform technological concept, as postulated by SAP. Corporate mergers and acquisitions and the increasingly important cross-enterprise collaborations continue to add new elements into the application portfolio. Users want to establish a uniform view on their corporate data quickly and without hassles. Migrating the applications to a uniform platform, however, is difficult, risky, time consuming, and expensive.
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Such a migration would also increase the dependency on a single vendor. This is a discomforting prospect for many users. The ever increasing demand for fast data analysis is accompanied with the growing inability to consolidate all data into one system.
What does an SAP-User want?
Most SAP-Installations already have analytical tools, such as Microsoft Excel, where the basics are easily learned but whose boundaries are quickly reached when more complicated demands arise. In addition, the once praised “freedom of choice” in application selection and data access has often turned into a hard to control chaos. Today, many companies are unable to say how the data that they “only” use for decision support was created and even what tools were used for creating and analyzing that data. Most users want: •
a tool that is easy to learn and that will produce results within a few days. Simple and user-friendly, it should allow an intuitive way of working without requiring data modeling knowledge
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short implementation times allowing them to experience success quickly
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a solution that does not require waiting for the outcome of a multi-year SAP migration and upgrade plan
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the flexibility to choose freely from a variety of data sources, including older SAP versions—without having to worry about unexpected or hidden costs
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to be able to introduce SAP BW at a later stage without having to rearchitect the system or the need to buy a different business analysis tool
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a high speed of analysis that is sustainable even with rapidly growing data volumes
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a solution with low infrastructure requirements that is database independent
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business analytics that can be implemented quickly and easily without lengthy preparations
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transparent analysis with reproducible results. The majority of analysis is used for decision making. There is a general trend towards improved trackability on all levels of the decision making process (either enforced
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by law as in the case of Sarbanes-Oxley or mandated by quality assurance standards as in the cases of Six Sigma and ISO), and users increasingly want transparent analysis processes •
independence from a vendor’s technology stack (NetWeaver, WebSphere, .NET…)
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a vendor focusing totally on business analysis rather than using BI as a tool to make users buy additional applications
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a solution that is affordable, has low costs of operation, and can be budgeted predictably today and for the foreseeable future
QlikView – a Solution
Most companies have heterogeneous data and a variety of enterprise applications. Notwithstanding all attempts to consolidate, we view this state of heterogeneity as permanent. By definition heterogeneity is not constant and it is very hard to predict how it will evolve in detail. In such an environment business analysis tools that are data and application independent are very attractive. SAP, as an applications manufacturer, has a strong interest in migrating customers to newer versions of their software. To keep migration pressure high, newer SAP solutions have very limited backwards compatibility and it is often challenging to integrate new SAP solutions with older SAP software versions. That problem doesn’t exist for a data-agnostic business analysis tool like QlikView. With QlikView, all data systems and applications are treated the same. QlikView will adapt itself – it has integrated data extraction tools, which can not only access SAP systems, but will also allow access to SAP’s Business Warehouse. In addition, many other application systems are supported and, of course, extracts can be made from data of custom made applications.
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How does QlikView meet the demands detailed above?
Quick learning. QlikView employs a three-level user and role concept. General users, called “analyzers” by QlikView need only a few minutes to become familiar with QlikView. They use the product in a “read-only” mode. Professional users can build and modify the end-user interface—allowing them to build custom views of pre-defined data. Professional users need about two days’ training. The IT expert, covering all technical aspects, is called an Enterprise User, needs to have an understanding of the underlying data model as a prerequisite. Three days of training are sufficient to get started in this role. Easy to learn, QlikView is also very easy to use: analytical displays, called “Sheets”, allow for more profound analysis (“drill-down“) at any time. Changing the view on the data, slicing and dicing it differently, can be done any time without starting the analytical process from its beginning. Users can fully concentrate on the analysis without being sidetracked by procedural aspects (such as pre-defined drill down paths). Short implementation times: the highway to quick success. Typically, QlikView is implemented and fully operational within two weeks—and often within just a few days. Users are delighted to see results quickly. They can almost instantaneously start learning from their results and refine their analysis. Independence from SAP migration and upgrade plans. There is no dependence on migration or upgrade planning as QlikView is not tied to the SAP infrastructure. For instance, you do not have to wait until a Business Warehouse has been implemented or for a mySAP ERP introduction. At the same time, deploying QlikView does not preclude adding Business Warehouse at a later date. Thus, a lot of pressure is taken out of the planning. Free choice of data sources. QlikView is essentially suitable for any kind of data source. Most data types and databases can be accessed via ODBC or OLE DB connections. QlikView can also get to data from any other structured source such text-, Excel- or XML-files. Data from various ERP applications from vendors such as SAP, Intentia/Lawson, Oracle or Microsoft can be
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integrated. QlikView doesn’t have any hidden costs or unpleasant surprises either, because there are no data volume dependent fees nor are there any vendor audits. Unlike with SAP’s BW, where you need an expensive OpenHub when exchanging data with other systems, there are no such restrictions with QlikView. Using QlikView’s salient openness and data integration capabilities is free from additional license costs. No architectural restrictions. QlikView can directly access SAP data through using an interface that is also used by many ABAP programs. Alternatively, an ODBC driver may be used. Installations using SAP BW now, or that are planning to do so in the future, can use QlikView as well. BW can be used as a data source by QlikView, too. Thus, a BW-strategy remains always an option - organizations do not have to give up such plans. High speed of analysis. QlikView uses patented technology employing main memory instead of a database. This technology offers not only extreme speed, but also allows for quasi associative data access resulting in unique flexibility when designing and changing analysis. Users can construct their data views without being restricted by a schema – in fact, they do not even have to know such schemata. Data is extremely compressed when loaded into memory. As shown in a practical case, 200 million records from a 15TB Data Warehouse took only 4 GB of main memory. This high performance technology allows sustainable advantages even for large and rapidly growing data. In some situations, this technology has proven to be the only alternative to get to analysis results within an acceptable time frame. Low infrastructure requirements. QlikView is very modest in its infrastructure requirements. Depending on what product is used (QlikView, QlikView Server or Publisher) all that is required is a well equipped PC and a large amount of memory, which is not very expensive anymore. There is no need for a separate database as QlikView does all its analysis in main memory. If many users access the same data sources one or several QlikView server can be configured reducing requirements for clients further. There are no administration- and backup costs nor are there any costs for upgrading the database software as QlikView does not use a database system for its analysis.
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You only have to buy enough main memory and then you can safely forget about administration or maintenance. Fast Deployment. QlikView needs little in the way of specialized and complex infrastructure which speeds the process of deployment. You license what you need. Because QlikView is simple, the skills required to deploy it can be acquired quickly. In contrast to other systems which are typically deployed to a low percentage of the total user population, QlikView is deployed broadly in the organization. Applications can be developed quickly as the user interface is easy to understand. Multidimensional analysis does not require knowledge of the original underlying data structures. Due to the patented in-memory technology of QlikView, there is no need to know data warehouse structures as all data appears “structureless”. QlikView can also be extended using Visual Basic or Java macros and thus can leverage widely spread programming knowledge if extra functionality is required. Trackable, transparent, and reproducible analysis. QlikView supports the concept of ‘bookmarks’ concept to make analysis transparent and reproducible. These bookmarks can also be shared by several different users. The ‘bookmark’ concept is also instrumental to generate reports allowing for the generation of routine reports with a standard layout using a recurring process. Independence from technology stack vendors (NetWeaver, WebSphere, .NET…). A struggle for market shares has evolved between the larger manufacturers of these stacks. With no end in sight, this fight is anything but productive for users. For the users, flexibility and independence are key as they want to configure any way they need it. QlikView can be used to collect data, from and in all of these environments. Key focus on business intelligence as a core business. Applications vendors try to make their applications more attractive by offering business intelligence functions as a part of their portfolio. Sometimes, BI is even offered, free of charge, as an integrated part of the application package. However, the vendor can change his price model any time even for already installed software and he also will attempt to keep users within the bounds of his application
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portfolio. On the other hand, a “pure play“ BI-vendor like QlikTech will always concentrate on their core competency. The more different applications and data sources of all kinds are integrated, the more it is possible for a “pure play” vendor to show the convincing power of their integration concept. Lock-in into a certain applications portfolio is not even in a “pure play“ vendor’s interest. This makes their intentions and their business model transparent and free from hidden agendas. DWH Cost Structure
Operation/Administration 9%
Rest 2%
Hardware and Communications 13%
DWH-Software 13%
End-User Costs 35%
Other Software 0%
Implementation and ongoing upgrades 28%
Figure 2: Cost structure over a five year period based on the SPI cost model (average of 10 SAP BW customers, source: SPI)
Data Warehousing can be quite expensive. Around two thirds of the costs of an SAP BW come from implementation, upgrades and end user support. Even experienced SAP partners, who have already completed a number of successful BW implementations, estimate the costs of an analysis ‘cube’ at around 50,000 Euros. Based on Strategy Partners International’s five years’ comprehensive cost of ownership model, a 100 user SAP BW configuration can be expected to cost around 1000 US-$ per user and month. Most data warehouses are implemented for business analytics only. QlikView can fulfill this task for much lower cost on all levels, be it licenses, implementation, maintenance or ongoing operation. A customer can start a reasonable QlikView project with a budgets as low as 50000 US-$ whereas a typical initial budget for a SAP BW project is beyond
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the 500000 US-$ mark. One or two weeks after starting QlikView users can enjoy the benefits of their first key applications. Installing the SAP-connector takes about half a day.
How Compatible is QlikView with the SAP-Architecture?
QlikView can connect to SAP data using one of the many third-party connector solutions available on the commercial market (many of which SAP customers may already have), or it can use QlikTech’s own QlikView SAP Connector. The QlikView SAP Connector is based on an RFC and transfers SAP Data with ODBC to QlikView. No data is written back to the SAP database. These are the only two interfaces QlikView uses to interact with the SAP software. No part of NetWeaver is required. Nor is SAP BW, a NetWeaver component, a QlikView prerequisite. At the same time, BW does not present any obstacles – QlikView can be added to a BW environment at anytime. QlikView is compatible with the SAP R/3 environment as well as with the mySAP ERP or the mySAP Business Suite. If SAP should be forced to change their data model, QlikView would be affected – but no more so than hundreds of thousands of SAP applications.
When is QlikView interesting for the SAP-User?
QlikView is ideally suited for SAP users that need fast, uncomplicated, affordable business analytics. As QlikView can work with all SAP releases on the market from version 4.6C on due to its low interface requirements, QlikView implementation is in no way contingent on the sometimes quite complicated and tricky plans SAP users have for their application roadmap.
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QlikView lets you leave your options open regarding future SAP BW deployment and you preserve the freedom to select your middleware stack of choice. QlikView neither necessitates nor does it preclude implementation of NetWeaver.
When is QlikView a less sensible choice?
There are also situations where using QlikView might be less indicated. These fall into three basic categories. 1. Analytical results have to be written back into the ERP database. If the application requires that the results of a business analysis have to be used as input for an application then QlikView is not suitable. Of course, reports made with QlikView can be distributed via portals. The SAP portal also suitable for this purpose. 2. An Enterprise Data Warehouse or Data Mart is to be constructed. QlikView was not designed for such an application, as data warehouses require the usage of a database system. QlikView does entirely without database management software.
Instead it uses patented in-memory
technology for its analysis making it fast and easy to use. Customers can, however, use QlikView on top of the SAP Business Warehouse and, if a Data Warehouse is absolutely required, users do not have to give up the advantages of QlikView. 3. The application or the application vendor mandate a different product. It’s obvious that, for instance, SAP will always gear analytical functions to their own products, because SAP has a vested business interest to spread its own products. Applications that were written for a specific analytical target environment will only function in such a configuration. QlikView has been optimized for the analytical end user requiring a fundamentally different design. But even in this situation one doesn’t have to sacrifice QlikView, because QlikView can be used in parallel or on top of SAP BW. STRATEGY PARTNERS INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT 2005
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Bottom Line
QlikView should be as considered an attractive alternative any time users are looking for fast, uncomplicated, and affordable analytics and when easy (and, in the long run, cheaper) handling is of critical importance. The independence from the SAP strategy is an advantage. QlikView has only two interfaces with SAP giving users the option to become independent of the migration pressures of the application vendor. The option to run QlikView in an SAP BW environment is reassuring. Customers can use BW but they do not have to. Such flexibility is a rare asset these days.
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Index of Illustrations
Figure 1: Old SAP versions prevail...................................................................................................................................... 3 Figure 2: Cost structure over a five year period based on the SPI cost model (average of 10 SAP BW customers, source: SPI) ............................................................................................................................................................. 9
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