SAP Brings Data Discovery to SMBs
NEW YORK – SAP yesterday introduced the Edge edition of its Lumira data discovery and visualization solution to small and midsized businesses during its annual global SME Summit.
SAP Lumira, Edge edition, will allow small business users to create, view, modify, and share compelling visualizations and stories with colleagues within the browsers on their desktop or laptop computers or mobile devices.
The Edge edition is designed specifically for SMBs, which SAP recently found often struggle to unlock the hidden value within their data and lack the tools to use data effectively for decision-making.
Jayne Landry, global vice president and general manager of business intelligence at SAP, noted that businesses of all sizes have adopted the SAP Lumira solution, with more than 500,000 downloads so far.
The new Edge edition, she said, "is simple to run, easy to use, and grows as the business grows."
New capabilities offered in the Edge edition of Lumira include the following:
- Agile visualization across teams and departments;
- Management services to help set up users and secure data visualizations and administration;
- Faster processes to install and begin visualization projects;
- The ability to roll out departmental projects and connect them to the business intelligence environment.
For SAP, the Lumira Edge edition is just one more way the company is making its solutions available to the SMB community, which SAP defines as businesses with fewer that 1,000 employees and less than $1 billion in annual revenue.
According to Rodolpho Cardenuto, the SMB segment represents 80 percent of SAP's customer base, or 212,500 of the 263,000 businesses that use its solutions.
SAP, he said, has "big penetration in the [SMB] market. We are continuing to develop our portfolio for small enterprises."
SAP further identified the SMB market as a $244 billion opportunity by 2018. Of particular note, SMBs are set to represent 52 percent of IT spending by 2015, according to Kevin Gilroy, senior vice president and general manager of the global SME segment and indirect channels at SAP.
To help SMBs with adoption challenges, SAP provides a choice of solutions and deployment options, including on premises, in the cloud, or as a hybrid of the two.
"SMEs are the future, and SAP offers the right solutions to help them compete and succeed," Gilroy said.
Earlier in the week, SAP announced the expansion of its solutions, including the SAP Business One app, to Amazon Web Services (AWS) to make them more accessible to SMBs. A few months ago , SAP announced a partnership with Microsoft that would make many of its business solutions available through Azure, Microsoft's cloud platform.
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