Technology Blogs by Members
Explore a vibrant mix of technical expertise, industry insights, and tech buzz in member blogs covering SAP products, technology, and events. Get in the mix!
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
vincentdechandon
Contributor

Hi guys.


When speaking with prospects, customers, partners and SAP reps almost everyday, a question I've been asked a lot this past year is "what are the differences between the Galigeo geomapping solutions and the native geomaps in Lumira?".
So I've decided to make this blog to clarify the situation getting some facts straight.


Before I begin, quick disclaimer, I work at Galigeo, but as I've mentionned, this post will stay as unbiased as possible.


If you don't know about Galigeo solutions yet (hopefully you do), take a look here:
Galigeo For SAP BI


The comparison will be made on several core geomapping topics, covering how native geomaps and Galigeo geomaps can support them.


1. Basemaps


Native geomaps
They provide 4 ESRI basemaps (Gray, Streets, Topographic, Satellite), the licensing part is already included in the licenses your purchased for Lumira.


Fig 1. You can choose between 4 ESRI basemaps in the ESRI geomaps


Galigeo geomaps
They provide exactly on one hand the same basemaps without having to purchase a license from ESRI as well, but also provide additional options from: from OpenLayers, MapBox, Stamen, ...
You also have the possibility to add your own basemap if you are not happy with it, or want to leverage your basemaps coming from your ESRI ArcGIS Server.


Fig 2. Galigeo geomaps provides more basemaps, from multiple providers. You can also bring your own basemap.


2. Default geodata


Native geomaps
They benefit from the hardcoded geodata in Lumira (Country, Regions, Subregions, and biggest world cities). You can map your KPIs on them, it's okay for basic needs.


Fig 3. Native geomaps behave like the other native geomaps in Lumira, you have access to 4 hardcoded layers.


Galigeo geomaps
They provide by default some geodata as well : Country, Regions, Biggest Cities in the world, but also more specific ones, like US Zip Codes, French Cities (all of them of course), German Kreise, ...
You can map your KPIs on every default geodata. You can also import your own geodata, see the part 3. of this blog for more detail.




Fig 4. Galigeo provides a set of default geodata for countries like USA (including ZIP Codes), Germany, France, Brazil, ... and let your bring your own geodata as well.


3. Getting geodata from ESRI ArcGIS


Native geomaps
You can configure your access to your ESRI server in the Lumira preferences.
That means that each Lumira desktop has to be configured with the correct credentials, e.g 50 configurations for 50 laptops, which can be really painful.



Fig 5. Connect to your ESRI Server from the Lumira preferences. Each desktop needs to be connected.


ESRI Servers requiring authentication by tokens are not supported.
You can import a custom geo service from a visualization, but then you can't blend your business metrics coming from your BI on the retrieved geodata. It's more like a visual support, the color display will be the one defined on ArcGIS side.



Fig 6. (Screenshot from Bert Laws) Your ESRI Custom Service can't be blended with your business data in Lumira


Galigeo geomaps

You can configure your geoservices to get data from ESRI ArcGIS Online or On-Premise using the Galigeo Manager, a free desktop tool provided with Galigeo solutions for SAP BI. You can then consume them in Galigeo For Lumira.
You can do the configuration to your services only once, and export it to all the laptops with Lumira Desktop on them.


Fig 7. You can connect to your ESRI Server from the Galigeo Manager and then consume all the services in Galigeo For Lumira. The configuration can only be done once and deploy to all Lumira desktop. ESRI geodata can be blended with your business data in Lumira.


All the layers coming from ESRI will behave like the default layers and the layers imported from shapefile or geojson, you can blend any metrics on it, create hierarchies with them, ...

4. Hierarchy Support

Natuve geomaps
Only geographical hierarchies are supported. Hierarchy can only be made from the hardcoded geodata (Country, Regions, Subregions, biggest world cities).


Fig 8. You can only drill onto the harcoded hierarchy (country to regions to subregions to cities). Ciustom services from ESRI can't be part of hierarchies.


Galigeo geomaps
Geographical hierarchies and custom hierarchies are supported, even if they come from HANA. Any layer, default or imported from ESRI, can be part of the hierarchy.



Fig 9. You can use more traditional drill path, here US ZIP (polygons) to account (points) using a custom hierarchy...



Fig 9' ...and you can also define any relevant hierarchy for your business, here regional stations (points) to railways they serve (lines). Geodata coming from ESRI or other sources can be part of hierarchies.


5. Selection tools

Native geomaps
The only selection tool available is by drawing a box on the map, then all the features within the box will be part of the selection. From this selection, you can filter, exclude and export the data to Excel/CSV using the standard functionalities of Lumira.

Fig 10. Select your data from the map using a box in native geomaps.


Galigeo geomaps
You have access to more built-in selection tools. Basic ones are single click (each time you click on a feature on the map, it goes within the selection) and freedraw (draw the shape you want on the map, behaves like the box selection from native geomaps but as you draw the shape you want, you can select more precisely the data on the map).


Fig 11. Galigeo geomaps offer more precise control to select the data from the map


You also have more advanced built-in feature to select data, like isodistance. You can also access tools like drive/walk-time (if you already bought this service to ESRI, you can even leverage your investment within Galigeo For Lumira).



Fig 12. Galigeo geomaps also offer advanced way out-of-the-box to select your data, like iso-distance, or drive-time.



6. Visualizations


I won't go into too much detail here, it's quite even: geobubbles, choropleth, pie charts... Galigeo also provides heatmaps, which is not the case for the native geomaps. Galigeo geomaps also embeds a "Smart Mapping" engine, which always try to display the best fit visuzalisations regarding your business data you are trying to see, but I don't want to to go too technical in this post.

Native geomaps


Fig 13. Visualization in native geomaps can be customized by selecting colors.


Galigeo geomaps


Fig 14. Galigeo geomaps also offer a lot of different type of representation: bivarious geobubbles, pie charts, choropleth, heatmaps, ...


Here it goes.


I think this sums up the situation we are at today:

Native geomaps can be enough if you only look for an high-level overview: turnover per country, margin growth by US States, ...
As soon as you want to go a little bit deeper: go to a more granular administrative level like ZipCodes, bring in your custom territories, pipelines, railways or anything, you will need more advanced tool to analyze, select and extract relevant data for your business, or just fully leverage your ESRI investment, Galigeo solution is the way to go.

Note that, from what we know today, the fusion between Lumira and Design Studio won't change the scope of native geomaps too much as well.

You can find more details about Galigeo solution for Lumira here: Galigeo geomaps For SAP Lumira.


Other blog posts talking about Galigeo geomapping solutions for Lumira:


• Location Analytics at your fingertips in Lumira
• Spatial Time-Series in Lumira
• Bring your own Geodata in Lumira
• Drilling-down through custom territories in Lumira

As usual, feel free to like and share this post, as well as your thoughts on the comments.


Cheers.


Vincent
My LinkedIn

1 Comment
Labels in this area