Earlier this week I had the chance to attend SAP’s developer conference in Las Vegas, SAP TechEd && dcode (SAPtd). It was a larger event than last year with over 6000 attendees - and it was more importantly the first developer event in the post Sikka era of SAP.
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Here are my top three takeaways from the event
1. Platform matters. For the longest time SAP has not been talking much, giving much room to HANA Cloud Platform (HCP). We will never know if this was because the product was not ready (the product has made remarkable progress in the last 12 months - see here) or it was a learning curve of executives, PaaS messaging and positioning was badly missed at last year’s TechEd and at SapphireNow. It was good to see that in the opening keynote of Steve Lucas the HCP message was more prominent than the HANA database message, of which we had an over-abundance at previous TechEd editions. It looks like SAP has (finally) realized in its keynote content that HANA adoption goes through HCP, at least for the majority of its installed base customers and developers (who are here at SAPtd).
A platform also attracts partner interest, and with e.g. the MongoDB (last event report here, and both vendors have partnered earlier) partnership it was made clear, that SAP can attract technology vendors. An attractive platform should also attract partial / potential competitors and the partnership with Birst (developing / supporting HANA) was a good showcase of that. ‘Battling’ cranes and giving away Super Bowl tickets and a Ford Mustang while offering drinks certainly helped the Lucas keynote for a good start of SAPtd.
And the next day keynote of Goerke rallied around one single platform with good value propositions for developers around ease of development, mobile development and some previews of API management (see below). It was great to see the return of ‘demo veteran’ Ian Kimball for the all-encompassing keynote demo - and equally impressive Goerke showing the audience he is technical enough to run the demo himself. The only major miss in the keynotes was pricing - but SAP is working on that.
Here are my top three takeaways from the event
1. Platform matters. For the longest time SAP has not been talking much, giving much room to HANA Cloud Platform (HCP). We will never know if this was because the product was not ready (the product has made remarkable progress in the last 12 months - see here) or it was a learning curve of executives, PaaS messaging and positioning was badly missed at last year’s TechEd and at SapphireNow. It was good to see that in the opening keynote of Steve Lucas the HCP message was more prominent than the HANA database message, of which we had an over-abundance at previous TechEd editions. It looks like SAP has (finally) realized in its keynote content that HANA adoption goes through HCP, at least for the majority of its installed base customers and developers (who are here at SAPtd).
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| Lucas on what SAP stands for - Apps, Network and Platform |
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| Goerke shows HCP front and center |
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| For comparison - the TechEd 2013 marketecture |
And the next day keynote of Goerke rallied around one single platform with good value propositions for developers around ease of development, mobile development and some previews of API management (see below). It was great to see the return of ‘demo veteran’ Ian Kimball for the all-encompassing keynote demo - and equally impressive Goerke showing the audience he is technical enough to run the demo himself. The only major miss in the keynotes was pricing - but SAP is working on that.
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| Finally - SAP at One Platform |
It's not too long ago when SAP had three+ go forward platforms - SAP HANA, NetWeaver, the 'lean Java Server' [My bad, it's not light but lean as Matthias pointed out below, corrected.], the Frictionless platform and the Coghead platform. Both Frictionless and Coghead went a few years ago in one shape or another. The 'lean' Java Server' is now what powers HCP and HCP and HANA have merged, with gifts from NetWeaver. Must have felt good for SAP to come down to one platform - but even more for customers and developers in the ecosystem. Let's keep fingers crossed it will remain at one for a long time going forward.
2. HANA SPS09 - This end of November shipping latest HANA release is taking care of a lot of concerns customers, developers and partner have had. Some of the most prominent ones are the new dynamic Tiering that along with the introduction of database multitenancy (see here what that means) will help reduce TCO. Streaming is a key new capability for IoT projects. SAP missed the opportunity - ok SPS09 ships only in November - to show what TCO reductions developers and enterprises using HANA can and should expect.
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2. HANA SPS09 - This end of November shipping latest HANA release is taking care of a lot of concerns customers, developers and partner have had. Some of the most prominent ones are the new dynamic Tiering that along with the introduction of database multitenancy (see here what that means) will help reduce TCO. Streaming is a key new capability for IoT projects. SAP missed the opportunity - ok SPS09 ships only in November - to show what TCO reductions developers and enterprises using HANA can and should expect.
The ability to run Hadoop user defined functions is a key step, too - given how much BigData next generation data exploration and insight chasing is done these days. Still I would like SAP to allow native map reduce processes on HANA - if customers want to use (or must) use in memory for their application - let them. In the next weeks we need to dwell down a lot more into the new announcements of SPS09 - so stay tuned.
3. API management - On the heels of the partner announcement with Apigee, a noticeable piece of the keynote was dedicated to API management. The approach makes a lot of sense for SAP, given the diverse systems SAP needs to make available for its customers, starting with good old R/3 that customers are using, the new HANA based products, all the different architecture that SAP has acquired (SuccessFactors, Ariba, Hybris, Fieldglass) or is acquiring (Concur) or will be acquiring (your bet is a good as mine). IBM has ploughed the path here with its BlueMix based PaaS (more here) - in the sense of the vision of an API economy going forward.
3. API management - On the heels of the partner announcement with Apigee, a noticeable piece of the keynote was dedicated to API management. The approach makes a lot of sense for SAP, given the diverse systems SAP needs to make available for its customers, starting with good old R/3 that customers are using, the new HANA based products, all the different architecture that SAP has acquired (SuccessFactors, Ariba, Hybris, Fieldglass) or is acquiring (Concur) or will be acquiring (your bet is a good as mine). IBM has ploughed the path here with its BlueMix based PaaS (more here) - in the sense of the vision of an API economy going forward.
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| Goerke introduces API Management |
The difference is that IBM has been straight forward in regards of ‘OEMing’ CloudFoundry - versus SAP building its own platform and having an at least two dimensional relationship with CloudFoundry: One is the one of the technology vendor, the use case being to make e.g. CloudFoundry work with HANA, the other is the one of the PaaS ‘OEMer’ (like IBM) that SAP seems to be doing for its new hybris architecture, but has been less forth coming to explain that relationship. Not surprisingly as it would create some confusion and will clearer positioning. And then equally to the HCP pricing, the API pricing story is a totally different one. As much as the API economy will help the Bill McDermott vision and mantra of a ‘simple’ SAP - as high is the potential of SAP making the API licensing ueber complex.
Overall my impression is that SAP is becoming more like Oracle and IBM, and that’s a good thing. SAP’s very data centric view of cloud computing puts it into a unique spot that bears both risks and potential benefits (see here). But by doing more things that both IBM and Oracle do, SAP hits a familiarity tone and true north alignment that technology professionals want to see across the vendor landscape to be comfortable to make investment decisions. What are the similarities - well all three vendors talk about PaaS now. SAP and IBM talk about API management and partner for cloud provisioning, given a proof point for bare metal delivery. And SAP and Oracle agree on database driven multi-tenancy and benefits of in-memory computing.
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And more about SAP technology:
Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here.
TidBits
- Social / Jam - It was good to see that the Jam platform is now reaching out to developers, after the delivery of the first work packages. As little as SAP executives mentioned PaaS, as little they talk social today, a stark contrast to e.g. Oracle executives. Getting Jam in to HCP and exposing it more with keynote airtime and prominent keynotes should only help SAP customers, developers and the vendor themselves.
- Partnering - Equally good to see partner interest, not only on the traditional (hardware side for) HANA - but also e.g. with MongoDB partnering with Lumira, and even more competitive than complementary Birst with HANA. SAP will have to attract even more cooeptitive partnerships like that - but it’s a good start.
- Ecosystem - The HANA ecosystem is doing good progress with 1700+ startups, 130+ validated solutions, 4100+ customers and 3000+ partners. It remains impressive how SAP has been able to get that setup in very short time.
- River - Unfortunately I only spent 24 or so hours at SAPtd - so I may have well missed River related news. It certainly was not part of the keynote. And as much as I hold the engineers in the SAP Israel lab in very high esteem, I think that is good news. The world does not need another programming language, especially when it takes close to 12 months to explain why River is needed (or the value proposition has not reached me). So I see that as good news - as it is good news when SAP stresses Java, Javascript, Scala, Docker and other popular development languages and vehicles.
- A new SAP logo - Oh yes - SAP has a new logo - I think long, long time ago it was black, but SAP has been blue forever… I am sure the team around Jonathan Becher has spent plenty of time (and money?) in the new color change - but it will take some time to refer to SAP as the ‘Yellow’ vendor (or wait is golden?).
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| Where SAP is heading - Globas Business Networks in the Cloud |
MyPOV
A good SAPtd - with a very different setup. Last year’s TechEd in the very setup felt like a ‘man and his team’ setup, versus this year came over as a team effort, which was well received. SAP has come a long way with HCP and HANA - it now needs to come up with a longer term roadmap for HCP, as it certainly has reached critical functionality mass for building a next generation application. Now SAP needs to work on getting the confidence of developers considering to build on HCP (and HANA) that it remains the right platform for years to come. Both developers and the executives making decision about next generation projects are looking for roadmaps, fast release iterations, proof points and success stories as the deliverables to convince them.Overall my impression is that SAP is becoming more like Oracle and IBM, and that’s a good thing. SAP’s very data centric view of cloud computing puts it into a unique spot that bears both risks and potential benefits (see here). But by doing more things that both IBM and Oracle do, SAP hits a familiarity tone and true north alignment that technology professionals want to see across the vendor landscape to be comfortable to make investment decisions. What are the similarities - well all three vendors talk about PaaS now. SAP and IBM talk about API management and partner for cloud provisioning, given a proof point for bare metal delivery. And SAP and Oracle agree on database driven multi-tenancy and benefits of in-memory computing.
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And more on overall SAP strategy and products:
- New Analysis - SAP and IBM partner for cloud success - good news - read here
- Market Move - SAP strikes again - this time it is Concur and the spend into spend management - read here
- Event Report - SAP SuccessFactors picks up speed - but there remains work to be done - read here
- First Take - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Top 3 Takeaways Day 1 Keynote - read here.
- Event Report - Sapphire - SAP finds its (unique) path to cloud - read here
- What I would like SAP to address this Sapphire - read here
- News Analysis - SAP becomes more about applications - again - read here
- Market Move - SAP acquires Fieldglass - off to the contingent workforce - early move or reaction? Read here.
- SAP's startup program keep rolling – read here.
- Why SAP acquired KXEN? Getting serious about Analytics – read here.
- SAP steamlines organization further – the Danes are leaving – read here.
- Reading between the lines… SAP Q2 Earnings – cloudy with potential structural changes – read here.
- SAP wants to be a technology company, really – read here
- Why SAP acquired hybris software – read here.
- SAP gets serious about the cloud – organizationally – read here.
- Taking stock – what SAP answered and it didn’t answer this Sapphire [2013] – read here.
- Act III & Final Day – A tale of two conference – Sapphire & SuiteWorld13 – read here.
- The middle day – 2 keynotes and press releases – Sapphire & SuiteWorld – read here.
- A tale of 2 keynotes and press releases – Sapphire & SuiteWorld – read here.
- What I would like SAP to address this Sapphire – read here.
- Why 3rd party maintenance is key to SAP’s and Oracle’s success – read here.
- Why SAP acquired Camillion – read here.
- Why SAP acquired SmartOps – read here.
- Next in your mall – SAP and Oracle? Read here.
And more about SAP technology:
- HANA Cloud Platform - Revisited - Improvements ahead and turning into a real PaaS - read here
- News Analysis - SAP commits to CloudFoundry and OpenSource - key steps - but what is the direction? - Read here.
- News Analysis - SAP moves Ariba Spend Visibility to HANA - Interesting first step in a long journey - read here
- Launch Report - When BW 7.4 meets HANA it is like 2 + 2 = 5 - but is 5 enough - read here
- Event Report - BI 2014 and HANA 2014 takeaways - it is all about HANA and Lumira - but is that enough? Read here.
- News Analysis – SAP slices and dices into more Cloud, and of course more HANA – read here.
- SAP gets serious about open source and courts developers – about time – read here.
- My top 3 takeaways from the SAP TechEd keynote – read here.
- SAP discovers elasticity for HANA – kind of – read here.
- Can HANA Cloud be elastic? Tough – read here.
- SAP’s Cloud plans get more cloudy – read here.
- HANA Enterprise Cloud helps SAP discover the cloud (benefits) – read here.