SAPPHIRE NOW 2016

By Ganpy

Most technology companies’ annual customer conferences are conglomerations (this is a longer word for assemblies) of partners, employees and most importantly customers, and broadcasters and technological evangelists and marketeers and the new breed that is hovering the internets of late calling themselves “industry experts”, and the nagging feelings & the inevitable optimism the customers pushed down their systems the day they became customers of that company’s product(s).

If you can feign even a slight nod to the above thought, then you would not be mightily surprised to know that SAPPHIRE NOW is very much all of that and more, because SAP is the largest Enterprise software in the market right now and SAPPHIRE is that conglomeration organized by SAP in Orlando, Florida.

Cogent is not going to be at SAPPHIRE this year. And the reasons are many. As much as I hate to admit that there is a bit of a withdrawal syndrome that creeps into me when I think of not being there amidst the buzzing human energy that flows through such large conferences  (all the more so, at an SAP event such as SAPPHIRE, where the fragrances emanating from the crowd are familiar ones), I don’t regret the decision we have made this year not to participate.

That doesn’t mean we are going to stay away from the event all together.  This is the biggest event SAP hosts every year and with so much happening in the tech world (yes. one that revolves around SAP), with so many acquisitions of third party products and so many unanswered questions that customers have, how could we not follow the event?

But, is this event the most anticipated event in SAP’s calendar, especially for those of us who follow SAP’s trends closely?

The answer is NO, as I have to come to learn during the past few SAPPHIRE NOW conferences. This conference has really turned into more about SAP trying to reassure its customers that they are still the biggest enterprise software out there and hence they are too big to fail now. Yes, a couple of small & surprising announcements could come out of the conference every year, but largely, it is going to be exactly along the lines of what you would expect. SAP will talk about how hard they are working to ensure that their customers continue to get the best, how much value the last big buzz word/concept/solution they introduced during the past year has added to its some “BIG-NAME-CUSTOMERS”, etc. etc.  You get the picture…

During the past few years, I actually have been more excited about going to SAPPHIRE to listen to the keynote sessions (those generic ones and not the SAP keynote sessions). Needless to add, SAPPHIRE is probably the best place to network with your past/current (and very rarely those one-off future) customers across industries and business partners whom you have done business with. So, to be there in person at SAPPHIRE is very unique and the experience of walking around the expo hall meeting people and sharing the common SAP bond is truly amazing. Nothing can come close to that.

As I get ready to follow SAPPHIRE online, what am I looking forward to this year?

Here they are, in no particular order:

1) The S/4 HANA Story – Adoption rate, Roadmap, etc.
2) HCP – HANA Cloud Platform – What is going to happen? What’s SAP’s commitment?
3) Hybris / Cloud Foundry – How confused is the marketplace?
4) Fiori – What is the future?
5) Apple/SAP Partnership – Is it just a headline grabbing announcement or is there more than what meets the eye?
6) SAP Technology – In general (what’s new, any innovative ideas, etc.)

If you are attending SAPPHIRE NOW this year in Orlando, I hope you get to enjoy the show.

PS: I hear that this little unknown band called “Coldplay” is playing on Thursday, May 19. Totally not envious of you, if are going to be there. Just sayin’.

 

Sapphire Now 2015 – Preview

By Ganpy

Sapphire NOW 2015

We at Cogent decided not to participate at Sapphire this year for different reasons. So with that said, we will definitely be keeping an eye on the conference through many channels.

What to expect at Sapphire 2015?
Here is a quick preview.

The Usual Suspects:

• Bill McDermott and Hasso Plattner – We sort of know what to expect from them. The message for this year will continue to be around “Simple” or “Run Simple” which they introduced last year. We can expect the whole venue being splashed with that Run Simple message with all customer case studies and demos being geared towards selling that message.
• Analytics, Sports Analytics, Mobility, SAP Apps on all devices including wearables like Google Glass and even Apple Watch, et al.

Some old wine in some new bottles:

• HANA – There will lots of HANA talk as SAP is definitely increasing its bets on HANA. The next couple of years could decide the future of HANA. But the HANA messages will be packaged differently. There will be many customer presentations, case studies on how S/4HANA changed their businesses by increasing their efficiency, etc.
• Fiori and Lumira. Unlike the last couple of years when both Fiori and Lumira were presented in a disjoint manner, I expect SAP to present Fiori and Lumira more & more in the context of HANA. Fiori with HANA or Fiori/Lumira with HANA.

Speculations:

• CRM – Even though SAP has been pushing its initiative “Cloud for Customer” for the past couple of years, with increased talk on Oracle having an eye on Salesforce, I speculate some action in this space. Either the “Cloud for Customer” initiative gets a brand new image or an absolutely out-of-nowhere announcement that SAP decides to make, I am expecting/speculating some big news in the CRM space.

In a few days, we will find out how I fared with my speculations.

If you are going to be at Sapphire, Do Enjoy the show!

Quick Thoughts from Sapphire Now 2014

By Ganpy

Steve and Ganpy at Sapphire 2014

If Hasso Plattner’s academic tone didn’t slap you hard with what SAP’s message for this Sapphire was, then there was every chance that Bill McDermott’s rock star like charisma got the message through.
Yes. The message was loud and clear. “Simple”. “Simplify”. “Simplify Everything. Do Anything..”.

Overall I would say there were really no ground-breaking announcements made except Fiori now being offered “Free” as part of basic licensing. From a Cogent IBS Mobility practice standpoint, that announcement was significant. We are now going to evaluate our opportunities to develop a Fiori Consulting group which can help customers to implement both standard Fiori applications as well as customized Fiori applications.

Here is my summary of what I took away from Sapphire 2014:

• Fiori now being offered free.
• But Fiori HCM suite has only 6 apps. This means customers are going to need a lot of help to develop their own custom apps.
• From what little I saw of Fiori, I have to say, there has been quite a bit of work that has gone behind UX design. But once some difficult questions were raised and corresponding responses from Fiori experts were analyzed, it is safe to consider the maturity level of Fiori “questionable”. In my assessment, it has a long way to go to deliver the demo promise and satisfy customers. But then, this is SAP we are talking about. They will find a way to convince customers they don’t have a choice, whether they are satisfied or not.
• HANA cloud and Cloud services offered through HANA platform have evolved quite a bit since last year.
• The real question is how much market penetration, HANA eventually has. If HANA doesn’t make the kind of inroads that SAP is hoping to have in the next couple of years, it should be a considered a failure. Failure not because HANA is not a great concept, but failure from the standpoint of how SAP is building a world around HANA as a platform. But for now, I am positive that HANA will get to make a small dent in the couple of years. It all depends on how Oracle fights back the ‘in-memory’ threat.
• Fiori and HR Renewal will be combined soon (makes sense and makes you wonder what was the point of confusion to begin with).
• Learned a new term “Side by Side” – For SuccessFactors/SAP HR hybrid implementations.
• Lumira is still around. Not much has changed since last year.
• No more push for SAP Mobile Platform, even though it was still talked about.
• Absolutely no reference to Sybase anymore. Not surprising.
• Absolutely no sign of SuccessFactors name or logo anywhere. If this is an indication, then by 2015, we may not hear the name “SuccessFactors” anymore.. Of course, the speakers talked about SuccessFactors using the name..but in general the reference was more generic.
• Terrific turnout. 25,000 attendees was the estimate. If true this was at least 7000 more than last year.

I see the following as Cogent’s opportunities based on the above takeaways:

• HANA Cloud – Understand how we can partner with SAP to offer HANA cloud solutions or hosting services to customers.
• Fiori – Consulting opportunities in this space.
• Determine our HANA Enterprise Analytics capabilities and build a strong case for growth.
• Mobile solutions – This is still an area of interest for many customers (especially in certain industries) as they have not even started developing mobile strategies yet. Cogent, with over 18 months of experience in this space now, can confidently move forward with a clear message. We just need to narrow down that message.

In summary, “Simply” speaking, this was a great show put up by SAP.