Figure 3. Angles automatically return many logical fields into the display area. Additional fields can be added with a simple drag-and-drop, and removed or repositioned with a drag-and-release.
Recently, TEC had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Mark Knowles, vice president (VP) of Sales and Marketing of Enterprise Management Consulting Services Inc. (exclusive resellers of Every Angle for North America). This is part of what Mr. Knowles mentioned:
“Every Angle is the best kept secret in the SAP world! It is an SAP productivity tool that lies on top of SAP R3 and/or ECC products. It provides a compliment to what BI tools provide. Most BI tools provide an aggregated view of events that happened in the past, while Every Angle provides a bottoms-up or detailed view of events that are happening right now, or in the future. Every Angle has been in development for 13 years, it’s been in the market for ten years. We are SAP certified. And just recently the SAP BO team in the Netherland’s formed an external partnership with the Every Angle team in the Netherlands”.
“Every Angle is to SAP like Google is to research. I couldn’t imagine researching a product these days without using Google as a first step. We want all people in corporations that use SAP who want to know something about a customer or about a sale to use Every Angle.”
Product Strengths
It is hard to define Every Angle as a standard BI system. The Live Objects in Memory technology embedded in Every Angle enables the use of the available data from SAP to be used as a data cube for analysis purposes but it certainly could not fit under the set of traditional BI tools. Every Angle could be more suitable to track the operational process of an organization.
The Every Angle add-on resides between SAP and its business users. In this position, Every Angle makes use of its Live Objects in Memory technology to extract information directly from the SAP ERP system and use it to produce analysis sets of data (Angles). These Angles can be used for analysis and execution to solve operation issues and can also be used with data warehousing and BI tools to produce high valuable analysis data.
Here are some advantages of Every Angle:
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It’s a solution specially designed for SAP and the add-on fits completely under the ERP structure in a transparent way.
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It can use pre-existing data relations of an ERP system or build data relations that don’t exist physically in the SAP structure.
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It has a pre-established set of Angles that can be used right out of the box
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It can be used with other BI tools to improve analysis.
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It’s easy for non-technical people to use.
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Calculations are performed offline. Every Angle does not overburden the SAP platform.
Competitors
Due to its specific nature, Every Angle seems to have no direct competition neither in the ERP or BI field. But challenges could come from specific data warehouses appliances like Vertica, Neteeza, and in-house data warehouse appliances from SAP, Oracle and IBM. Also, because Every Angle is designed primarily for operations, there is some BI functionality not covered by Every Angle. This could also be challenging for Every Angle when turning to the North American market, where robust solutions for big data analysis and BI are already strong in the market. Every Angle could be entering and confronting fierce competition in the “big data vendors” market.
Despite these challenges, Every Angle can offer interesting features to gain powerful analysis functionality when using an SAP system. Every Angle can be an excellent tool for controlling daily operation and is an excellent companion for more common traditional BI tools. Every Angle empowers users by letting them gain more flexible, fast, and powerful data access.
In February 2010, Every Angle will be releasing their Every Angle 2010 Service Pack 1.
Some of the new features include
For more information, visit the product’s page.