SAP is making the new SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis available to select customers, and will presumably be releasing out the platform into general availability sometime later this year.  This latest push represents the latest piece of the HANA integration puzzle SAP has added, as a part of a much more extensive analytics vision  the company’s Sanjay Poonen described.

Cindi Howson provided her impressions:

“SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis has two components: model development and execution, and data visualization. I was impressed by the number of visualizations Predictive Analysis automatically generated to identify patterns in data. To be clear, this is not a visual discovery tool for business users that competes with the likes of SAP BusinessObjects Explorer or Tableau Software. It’s a tool for statisticians.”

Predictive Analytics integrates across points in SAP’s portfolio. It can access .UNV or .UNX (short for Universe) data models, just like HANA, and some algorithms develop via Predictive Analytics can be leveraged by SAP Smart Meter Analytics users.

This week SAP had some additional news: it’s opening up its first office in Angola, according to a report by Bloomberg. The company already provides BI software to a government-operated oil producer, and it plans on expanding its presence in the local market. Earlier this week we covered yet another move by SAP that underscored the overall goal of expanding in emerging markets.

The software maker’s CTO said that it will hire another 500 workers in the EMEA region, and will open up a c training facility that will serve to certify another 2,000 consultants.

SAP is in a very competitive market, and is looking at new trends such as the cloud, mobile, and big data to sustain its current pace of growth.