The big data is here to stay and, little by little, all the big software companies are shoring up their portfolio of big data solution as leaders of this new paradigm. Predictive analytics uses statistical models to look for correlations and patterns that might provide clues about the behavior of customers, market trends, etc.
SAP has started the development of its own internal tools for predictive analysis, a movement which took concrete form with the release of BO Predictive Analysis. Since the release of the R statistical library, many publishers have also engaged in similar efforts.
SAP has now announced the purchase of KXEN that specializes in predictive analytics for business users and analysts. IDC said with increased demand for actionable insights from ever-growing volumes of data, broader access to predictive analytics is key. KXEN supports this objective by moving predictive analytics into the cloud and inside of the enterprise applications most popular with end users.
Technologies developed by KXEN supplement the capabilities of predictive analysis tools and respond to the needs of scientific data management, analysts and business users’ specific lines.
The compelling combination of KXEN with market-leading analytics and business intelligence solutions from SAP intends to deliver the capability organizations need to innovate for growth in high-volume data environments. KXEN will allow SAP to bring predictive analytics to more business users, enabling easier-to-adopt solutions and the delivery of greater value via SAP solutions. KXEN tools are designed to be easy to use, and complete the current predictive analytics offering of SAP.
It is estimated that the market for predictive analytics software is valued at $2 billion and is expected to exceed US$3 billion in 2017. The combination of KXEN with business intelligence capabilities, visualization and advanced analysis of SAP with SAP HANA platform will help companies to take full advantage of big data. This makes possible the automation of analytical tasks, key modeling and enable faster adoption and deployment.
KXEN’s predictive technology can be used to improve the value of SAP core applications for operations management, customer relationships, supply chains, risk and fraud. SAP said in a nutshell, power users define a broad set of reusable business components, called analytical records, which can be applied over and over again to automatically create the analytical data sets used for modeling.