Likelihood to Recommend Infographics derived from specific data sources appears to be well suited for development using Lumira. The development of executive level dashboards was less appropriate from my perspective. The software does not provide sufficient demonstration or samples for the users to learn from in my opinion.
Read full review Great for Technical Users. It's great for people a bit more on the technical side. It allows developers to quickly create and modify reporting templates without having to modify source code or make updates to a repository. Potentially Difficult for Non-Technical Users. Making substantial changes to the data portions of reporting can be a bit difficult for non-technical users. While Windward's tools for this are great, it still requires an understanding of the database schema which not all users will have.
Read full review Pros SAP has built in features you would expect from a data visualization package, like easy import from other SAP systems. SAP has most of the typical charts that you would expect in order to visualize your data. SAP allows you to have multiple charts on one visualization for your data. Read full review Native Office output -- not nested tables and/or horrible RTF like other tools generate. Ease of use -- once the data sources are set up, creating tables is as simple as drag and drop (okay, maybe not exactly that simple, but you can certainly create a table of data using drag and drop, then format it and manipulate it as needed). Responsive developers and support -- when I've had questions, they've been addressed VERY quickly and professionally. Read full review Cons Even though the process of creating visualizations of data is now greatly improved, it could still be a lot better as users become accustomed to this kind of tool and bring forward edge cases the developers did not anticipate. It would be awesome to have a cross platform tool that works on more than just Windows. Some options for specific graphs feel limiting. Read full review It is hard to pick out the tags if they are mixed in with a block of text. Using report variables in select statements causes the selection list of available fields to not show anything. The color themes do not match the office selection and it feels very disconnected. Read full review Usability SAP Lumira is very good self service analytical tool with powerful capabilities. However need to look into other SAP products in BI space, like SAP SAC. SAP Lumira is more used for custom and complex analytical need in business intelligence area. Also SAP Lumira is going out of maintenance in coming future replaced by SAP SAC.
Read full review For the most part, the Windward report designer is intuitive for our users; but there are a few areas where it is less intuitive. In these cases, our users need to search Windwards support wiki site, or even contact their support technicians. This can also be due to the short time we've had Windward and our lack of knowledge.
Read full review Reliability and Availability Lumira is a desktop application runs in its own JVM. It installs its own java runtime libraries to avoid any core java version conflicts. The availability of the application is completely relies on individual machine hardware configuration. On a decent desktop, it performs well and always launches in either 32 or 64 bit environment based on the hosts system's OS
Read full review Performance The performance is linear with amount of data that is being explored. We have done some benchmarks acquiring 10million data cells without having any performance problems. We need to make proper adjustments to jvm run time properties to start with higher heap size and other parameters that optimizes the run time performance
Read full review Support Rating It does not have many bugs or issues since not a lot of new features are being added. The customer support for SAP Lumira Discovery is good and anyone considering this as a self-service tool would be happy. It integrates well in the SAP BI suite of products and the overall experience is positive.
Read full review Support is something they take pride in. Once an issue is raised, they are quick to respond and provide details on a fix. No complaints on support here.
Read full review In-Person Training We did not take in-person training
Read full review Online Training Most of the user guides are pretty comprehensive and very easy to understand. The product itself is designed to be self-serve tool, did not need much of the end-user training. Most of the training we had is to how to read the data, how to explore the data, how to acquire the data etc.
Read full review Implementation Rating Installing the desktop software on end-user machines is always challenging. The machine specifications are the biggest factor when running Lumira and be able to handle large datasets during data exploration. This often demands beefy machines at least for power-users. Although Lumira software licensing is not a big problem but managing partner's extensions and keeping track of their individual licenses may be an issue. If there is a way to bundle the more popular extensions such as vSQL or vOLAP should be bundled in core product and offer them as part of Lumira license instead of a separate license which causer operational burden.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Even though
SAP Analytics Cloud is considered to be better in aspects such as data connectivity or analytics, we decided to choose Lumira as it was easier to understand, learn and use. As our business is not really that big and does not require the inclusion of large amounts of data, Lumira was overall the safest and most comfortable option. Also, some members in our team had previous knowledge so it was easier to adapt
Read full review We evaluated several other products to integrate with our new software, but Windward Studios was an obvious standout above the majority. Other applications required some level of software development knowledge and experience to create templates and a much steeper learning curve. After consideration of ease of use, as well as a cost-comparison between different products, Windward Studios was the most suitable product to meet our needs.
Read full review Scalability Enterprise wide implementation is a challenge with data security and trustedness. No easy installation can be done across the enterprise. no upgrade paths also available from SAP. They have so much of experience with desktop implementation, there it could be a controlled environment with a capital budget. These may be resolved in the upcoming releases
Read full review Return on Investment We could obtain original data from vast and detailed corporate and personal data sources. We could share visual analysis results with stakeholders via the cloud, and it could also be viewed on a tablet. It is very flexible and accurate to use. It can be used for forecasting sales, resource planning, and scheduling. Read full review As a fully integrated solution, the ROI is impacted when a client gets stickier with our solution because they see the benefit of Windward. Support has been fantastic for our development team so that as we integrate the solutions we have a clear and clean design. Read full review ScreenShots SAP Lumira Discovery Screenshots Windward Core Screenshots