See your analytics with perfect vision

We’re pleased to announce Pyramid v2020, our latest release. It represents a major advancement in our product roadmap and brings us closer to realizing our vision: creating the self-optimizing decision platform for data-driven organizations.

Before we get into the details of what we included in the new release, I want to share a little about how and why we got here in the first place.

Standing Out in a Crowded Market

Let’s be honest, Pyramid Analytics is in a truly saturated analytics and BI market. There are literally hundreds of platforms to choose from. We don’t blame anyone for being overwhelmed by the choices.

From our vantage point, there are only a few true analytic platforms designed to be “enterprise-grade.” And there are fewer still that can truly do end-to-end analytics.

Despite the preponderance of choice, it’s a choice that must be made. No one can sit on the sidelines of the great digital transformation game. Analytics is no longer a “nice to have.”  It’s a “if you don’t have it, you will cease to be relevant.”

It’s an obvious point, and most people are sick and tired of hearing about it. Yet, it creates significant urgency to choose something—anything!—to keep from getting left behind.

We’ve seen countless examples of analytics implementations that have gone wrong after choosing a well-known vendor or a trendy new offering.

Our CTO Avi Perez likes to discuss the four crucial signs that an organization may have selected the wrong BI platform:

1. The content your analytics tool produces only tells you answers everyone already knows.
2. People are not using it.
3. The confidence in your insights and analysis is low.
4. Your tool is too simplistic to answer complex business questions; or, it’s too complicated for people to actually use.

The last symptom is particularly common. Many analytics platforms tools only cater to the casual user that lightly consumes information. Yet they disappoint the users who want more than just attractive visualizations.

Other platforms cater to the 5 percent of users who demand high-powered analytics. However, investments in these advanced analytics and ML toolsets often fail to deliver meaningful value.

The greatest threat to a failed analytics implementation is the platform that doesn’t meet the needs of the broadest set of users. For an analytics implementation to truly be successful, it needs to work for the 80 percent in the middle; those who need more than nothing, but less than everything.

As Avi says in his piece: “The art is activating the 80%.”

That’s what we’ve done with our v2020 release.

Analytics for Everyone

Data abundance is fundamentally transforming the way organizations do business. For an organization to rise above the rest, the power to make decisions should not be limited to any one single person or group of people—everyone in an organization should be empowered to decide using data.

Analytics can be a powerful, incisive tool. In the right hands it can cut through our dangerous preconceptions (and misconceptions) and lead us to better decisions. Yet a sharp blade without a handle does more harm than good. An analytics tool that balances utility and power is akin to a comfortable tool that anyone can wield.

That’s why we’ve doubled down on the idea that analytics needs to adapt to users in very specific ways. The newest version of Pyramid finds that middle ground: it provides a friendly UI that everyday users appreciate as well as sophisticated analytics that advanced users can harness to answer tough business questions.

How did we accomplish this? We added two new Discovery modes—Smart Discover and Discover Lite—to complement the re-named Discover Pro mode. In addition, we gave BI developers and administrators powerful tools to customize the user environment.

Now, Pyramid can work for anyone, whether they’re curious business users, analytics initiates, or data scientists. With Pyramid, everyone is brought together in a shared, collaborative analytics environment. It’s an enterprise analytics solution for diverse users with diverse skills.

But Wait, There’s More!

Remember the classic line from cable TV-era infomercials? It would often reveal just another version of the exact same gadget, and only served to confirm how cheap it was in the first place. While it certainly looked cool, we were naturally skeptical.

With Pyramid v2020, there really is so much more. In fact, we’ve brought along a staggering set of new data connectivity and raw analytic horsepower capabilities. Here’s just some of what’s in v2020:

• SAP BW Integration: New native integration options for SAP BW make one of the most widely used ERP data sources on the planet a first-class data source. Why SAP BW? Well, getting useful information efficiently from SAP systems has always been difficult. SAP’s own tools are usually old or under-developed, which stifles reporting and analytics. Pyramid now lets you fully leverage your investment in SAP BW (including legacy BW, BW on HANA, and BW 4HANA), bringing a fast, modern, enterprise-grade analytics solution to SAP customers.
• ETL 2.0: Our graphically based modeling tool was already comparable to some of the most powerful standalone ETL products on the market. Now, it’s even better. This isn’t some lite-ETL tool—it’s a professional-grade data wrangling tool. I’ve never seen something this powerful in an analytics and BI platform. And best of all, it comes standard.
• Augmented Analytics Server: In addition to customizing the user experience for less-technical users, we provided customization options for our advanced users. Maintaining multiple virtual machines for Python version management provides standard environments for specific machine learning projects, simplifying and managing library versions to ensure flawless execution of shared Python scripts.
• Bug Fixes, UI Improvements, New Administrative Controls: Not only did we squash bugs, we made UI improvements and tweaks that accelerate user workflows and give administrators even greater flexibility and control. In fact, we’ve packed in over 100 new enterprise-grade features and capabilities to improve the way you make data-driven decisions.

Pyramid Analytics: Better than Ever

With this release, our vendor-agnostic platform is now unapologetically full-featured. No other competing analytics and BI product packs as much analytic punch—without overwhelming users—as Pyramid.

For this major release, our goal was to make advanced BI more accessible than ever, without sacrificing analytics integrity. Now you can do more than you ever thought possible, no matter who “you” are, or what your level of analytics skill may be.

With v2020, Pyramid is changing the way decisions are made with data.