SAP SE is getting into the Big Data analytics-on-cloud game with the launch of a new service, SAP Cloud for Analytics that’s able to digest data from multiple stores both on-premise and in the cloud.

Nic Smith, SAP senior marketing director for analytics, told CRN.com that SAP Cloud for Analytics is built natively on the company’s HANA Cloud Platform, and that it can operate as a standalone business analytics tool or in tandem with other SAP apps.

“This is an entirely new Software-as-a-Service solution that we think is going to redefine analytics,” Smith enthused. “This is built from the user-experience perspective [and] will lead to new analytic applications.”

SAP will demonstrate SAP Cloud for Analytics for the first time at its SAP TechED event in Las Vegas next week. It said the solution can be delivered to customers without the need for manual upgrades.

No doubt SAP is hoping that with Cloud for Analytics, it’ll be able to persuade its enterprise customers to just use that platform rather than moving all their data to the cloud. SAP ultimately wants to have all its customers using one analytics platform – its platform of course. To that end, SAP says Cloud for Analytics will eventually be able to unify business intelligence, budgeting, planning, predictive algorithms and integrated workflows in one place.

If SAP Cloud for Analytics sounds a mite familiar, that’s because it’s been officially renamed from its Project Orca, which was first revealed by SAP via The Wall Street Journal last week.

Interestingly, The Register claims that SAP wasn’t actually planning to release Cloud for Analytics for some time, but says the company’s hand was forced by the release of Amazon Web Services’ new Space Needle BI-analytics-as-a-service platform. It quotes SAP’s president of platform solutions Steve Lucas as saying the company was worried Amazon might steal some of its thunder.

According to The Register, SAP will make Cloud for Analytics generally available later this quarter, with more details to come next week. The service will available via subscription, though pricing has not yet been finalized.

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