A massive Sapphire conference is over, with a lot of excitement, energy and announcements. If you want to re-live any of the days, have a look at my posts about Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3 - or for a quick feel - check out the Storifies collected from the most marquee tweets over here.
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In case you missed it, I posted a good week before Sapphire about the broad collection of topics I wished SAP would answer at this Sapphire conference...
So I am following the structure of this post here.
Why does it matter?
In the past SAP allocated significant resources to previous company goals - 100000 customers (achieved with the acquisition of Business Objects) and 100 million users - achieved with the acquisition of Sybase and Ariba). One billion as a number will take more than only acquisitions, but significant R&D investment - which will affect current product plans, customers and the ecosystem.
It is also not clear how you can integrate on Hana - on the schema level, using SQL? Hardly the integration technologies of the 21st century. So kudos for SAP to make the where clear - Hana - a lot of questions remain how it will occur for all the products involved.
Why does it matter?
SAP is the #1 enterprise applications vendor with a tremendous install based. Any future strategy will have to find paths for that install base to move along - at some point. In the past SAP has failed addressing this (see the original post here) and it's not clear, how the Hana Cloud Platform will get there either.
On the positive side it was good to see Plattner and Sikka argue with cloud benefits - mainly in regards of direct ramp-up of a solution, the speed gained from having SAP procure the hardware, the administration, managing of data centers and software updated - already at the Hana Enterprise Cloud launch.
But to be fair, SAP has the right and weight to define their view of the cloud and get it imposed onto its customers and into its ecosystem. Many may not like it, not agree and warn, but SAP has the right to choose its path to the cloud. Many follow-up questions remain.
As a side thought: Did SAP maybe pull a marketing stunt? Obviously SAP had to do a lot of proof of concept work, to show Hana prospects that Hana really works. And given the hardware price tag, potential customers surely asked SAP to run those projects. And SAP logically wanted to be cost effective with larger machines. Could this be the start or even base of the Hana Enterprise Platform? It's plausible - the question is - how much cloud functionality did SAP add to Hana Enterprise. We will know and see soon if this was the culmination of a long planned development effort - or a very quick marketing dress-up of hardware and services that were used already for the necessary proof of concepts...
Why does it matter?
The dynamic provisioning of computing resources on large scale, with mission critical service levels and availability, is the upcoming standard for enterprise computing. As SAP states, even in the SAP cloud flavor, significant TCO reduction have manifested themselves. The capability to manage TCO on a very fluid and dynamic system and usage landscape, will determine the winners for the enterprise applications in the cloud age - and SAP's strategy to move to the cloud will decide the future success of the company in the SaaS space.
At this point I cannot discern what all of core and vertical functionality is GA - or even in the process being ported there. I trust SAP that the majority is - but the company should be very clear and should have addressed it in the many keynotes and press conferences (5 total). There was also no high level explanation, how SAP did this major engineering feat. Again I question why this was not addressed openly. And of course the question on the good old SD benchmark remains. SAP missed the chance to explain the void here and why e.g. other benchmarks are better for the Hana age.
Why does it matter...
... well you know, otherwise start reading about Hana...
If my memory does not fool me - both the McDermott and Hagemann-Snabe demos were void of anything mobile. Plattner said mobile first at one point - but it was part of the lecture, not product part of his keynote.. And yes Fiori runs on mobiles and tablets - but what about the 100+ apps shown 2 years ago? How does SAP plan to mobilize content. It's ok to say - we need to sort out some technology first and build then - the customer base will cherish that as part of the good old SAP, the one that delivered like clockwork in the past void any marketing gimmicks.
The danger is, that mobile will be seen more and more as a MDM and security play. And while it's understood Sybase has a franchise here with Afaria and SAP has capabilities, as mentioned in my Day 1 post - the partnership with Mocana shows that SAP underi nvested in Sybase / Afaria R&D. Apps in-built security should not have to be a partner opportunity afterthought for an enterprise application vendor... and while I think the choice of the MDM cloud to run on Amanzon's AWS is the right one - it begs the question why the Hana Enterprise Cloud was not used. But this new capability was absent in the keynotes. An opportunity wasted since everyone in the audience had a tablet and smartphone and most of them access critical enterprise information out of SAP systems from it. The importance to SAP is clear - the investment is prioritized somewhere else.... and last not least - affordability remains a topic. Kudos to get it right for the MDM cloud.
Why does it matter...
... did you see Google going from 400M to 900M Android applications in less than a year? There you have an enterprise reaching close to 1 billion.. with a single product.
But maybe SAP is cooking on something in the quiet - but from this Sapphire social does not seem to be a first class citizen at SAP. It's fine for SAP to say for now investment goes somewhere else - like mentioned above with mobile - but then there should be a road map when social will catch up. Better in my view - be an integral part of the Hana platform going forward. As seen by the Adobe Hana partnership. If there would be more to it - SAP and Adobe could have said it.
But again maybe SAP saved some announcements for later here... Right now - unfortunately - most users of a SAP product may pick up the (social) phone - but will find no dial tone...
Why does it matter...
The trend is there, the competition in California (Oracle, salesforce) is investing heavy - SAP should not be left standing in the rain when the social downpour will open its floodgates.
But different to the established data warehouse vendors, SAP does not have to worry about a legacy licensing business, it is re-inventing and re-creating all critical new code right now. SAP's timid approach is determined by the medium of storage for Hana - very expensive RAM.
And as we saw, Plattner even was compelled to show, how SAP can bring OLTP information into RAM at lower cost, thanks to selective column usage and compression. But the SAP execs would not dare to start the argument in regards of the unbelievable amounts of data becoming accessible through the Hadoop technology.
Again SAP may have different investment priorities, which I can even understand and support, but staying in the co-existence camp has definitively huge risks. Not investing in social and combining OLTP and Hadoop information makes SAP vulnerable for better and cheaper business insights provided by the new players that fully set on the Hadoop card.
Why does it matter...
We live in a breakthrough age of computing. For the first time ever enterprises can store all the information they want and need in an affordable way, analyse it and ask even questions they did not know at the time of the information storage.
SAP needs to understand, that while moving the acquired products to the new Hana platform is a strategic step - it still does not integrate them. Which brings us back to the question on the integration story - mentioned above.
SAP used to ridicule Oracle by saying that the DBMS vendor things all is integrated once it is in the same schema. Well SAP should not think all is integrated when all the data is in column stores either. It's not clear today, what the integration mechanism for e.g. SuccessFactors with the rest of the Business Suite will be. Especially if you consider cloud integration questions. In that sense - as great and bold as it is - the availability of SuccessFactors on Hana for instance, will increase the number of necessary integration scenarios that SAP will have to support.
Why does it matter...
This is where the bread and butter for SAP and customers is made. It needs to be addressed to make the most of the Ariba and SuccessFactors acquisitions and solidify the new joint functionality realm against any competitive poachers from the outside.
Worse - the maintenance topic had more oil poured on the fire with the (great) new Fiori applications. Not only was SAP as traditionally not clear on the pricing (a troica of Fiori, Gateway and Business Suite Extensions) - but it's also disappointing maintenance paying customers that the latest - and hopefully successful attempt - to get the eyeballs of the casual user - will not be part of the maintenance benefits, but an extra charge.
Why does it matter ...
Well speak to any SAP customer if you don't know, but don't be surprised to be yelled at.
SAP needs to stop relying on Plattner for vision. Let's not that Plattner was (and is) the technologist under the original 5 founders. It can't be up to him to create the 21st century vision for business applications. It does not come from McDermott, who is too consumed in short term sales priorities and the marketing message du jour. And it will not come from Sikka - too much a technologist himself, like Plattner. So it falls broadly on Hagemann-Snabe shoulders - I am not sure, if he will be the one to lead SAP on the topic, as he for too long has been in charge of Business Suite and all of development not to try a stab at this.
But never say never. If you think through the Darwin talk for business automation processes - what does that mean. And it looks to me that SAP is trying to bootstrap the problem with the Hana start-ups. If I caught it right that the Hana venture fund is now close to 405M - then this would be the broadest stimulation of an ecosystem ever.
But also the confirmation, that the SAP leadership thinks the next generation thinking for enterprise applications will not come from SAP - but from small start-ups. Only this has not happened since a very long time, SAP itself is the living proof of that. The last company to challenge the establishment, Siebel, ran out of though leadership runway before Oracle acquired it. That makes me skeptical to the start-up as the outlet for next generation thinking. And it's definitively sad, that SAP has delegated the challenge of its future and not taken it head on.
SAP may not like to hear it - but it behaves like and it is a technology company right now, which like it or not, SAP has to be, as it lays the foundation for its future in enterprise automation. As with any process in early stages, a lot of questions need to be answered, remain open and new ones will pop up soon.
It will be good for SAP to address them, the sooner the better. Its up to prospects, customers, partners, competitors, analyst, press and bloggers to keep probing.
Note: This is a post from the fences which means - I have not attended Sapphire, wasn't briefed in person by anybody from SAP - but used the webcast, press releases, social media to make up my mind here. Feel free to point out what's wrong or missing in the comments section!
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In case you missed it, I posted a good week before Sapphire about the broad collection of topics I wished SAP would answer at this Sapphire conference...
So I am following the structure of this post here.
The Future -Nada
This was largely asking for the direction of the company in regards of the ambition of serving one billion users by 2016. And while SAP proudly stated the fact, that it has now close to 30 million users in the cloud (detailed math would be welcome) - it wasn't clear to me, how the company wants to reach the one billion. The immediate future is certainly Hana - but I don't think you can ask the little girl to power solutions that will reach every 7th person on planet earth. So what is the plan?Why does it matter?
In the past SAP allocated significant resources to previous company goals - 100000 customers (achieved with the acquisition of Business Objects) and 100 million users - achieved with the acquisition of Sybase and Ariba). One billion as a number will take more than only acquisitions, but significant R&D investment - which will affect current product plans, customers and the ecosystem.
The Integration Story - The Where is clear, not the How
This question is targeting around how all the different SAP offerings will come together - from the older homegrown products, to the acquired ones and the newly created ones. And SAP was very clear - though implicitly - that all will come together with the Hana Cloud Platform. The older homegrown products are being ported / made available there (see GA of Business Suite), the acquired products will move there (see SuccessFactors to be expected in August this year) or being built there (see all the new products). From the keynote it was also clear, that Plattner sees this as the historic opportunity to shed product complexity both in schema and going forward. That will be an interesting process and SAP will have to be very careful and very clear what is fat and what is muscle and what can go and what will stay.It is also not clear how you can integrate on Hana - on the schema level, using SQL? Hardly the integration technologies of the 21st century. So kudos for SAP to make the where clear - Hana - a lot of questions remain how it will occur for all the products involved.
Why does it matter?
SAP is the #1 enterprise applications vendor with a tremendous install based. Any future strategy will have to find paths for that install base to move along - at some point. In the past SAP has failed addressing this (see the original post here) and it's not clear, how the Hana Cloud Platform will get there either.
Cloud - We have SAP's answer
SAP certainly answered this one. It's the Hana Enterprise Cloud, as announced a week before Sapphire. And its the SAP view and definition of the cloud, one that is by it's RAM nature not elastic (or one way elastic as we learnt from Plattner in his keynote, more in a future post), has its own views on multitenancy (only for small companies), does not need virtualization (again relevant for small companies) and requires you to bring your own license.On the positive side it was good to see Plattner and Sikka argue with cloud benefits - mainly in regards of direct ramp-up of a solution, the speed gained from having SAP procure the hardware, the administration, managing of data centers and software updated - already at the Hana Enterprise Cloud launch.
But to be fair, SAP has the right and weight to define their view of the cloud and get it imposed onto its customers and into its ecosystem. Many may not like it, not agree and warn, but SAP has the right to choose its path to the cloud. Many follow-up questions remain.
As a side thought: Did SAP maybe pull a marketing stunt? Obviously SAP had to do a lot of proof of concept work, to show Hana prospects that Hana really works. And given the hardware price tag, potential customers surely asked SAP to run those projects. And SAP logically wanted to be cost effective with larger machines. Could this be the start or even base of the Hana Enterprise Platform? It's plausible - the question is - how much cloud functionality did SAP add to Hana Enterprise. We will know and see soon if this was the culmination of a long planned development effort - or a very quick marketing dress-up of hardware and services that were used already for the necessary proof of concepts...
Why does it matter?
The dynamic provisioning of computing resources on large scale, with mission critical service levels and availability, is the upcoming standard for enterprise computing. As SAP states, even in the SAP cloud flavor, significant TCO reduction have manifested themselves. The capability to manage TCO on a very fluid and dynamic system and usage landscape, will determine the winners for the enterprise applications in the cloud age - and SAP's strategy to move to the cloud will decide the future success of the company in the SaaS space.
Hana - Some Yes, Some Not
While many participants and observers wondered, if there was a single session at Sapphire that did not mention or use the ubiquitous Hana - it was clear that SAP trusts Hana to be good enough for the GA of Business Suite. While news reports out there already speak about a rushed GA - it's really SAP's business if Hana is ready for GA - or not. It's the analyst, press and bloggers job now, to find out if this is a real GA as in past GA terms that SAP has used - or if it's a marketing, faux GA that still limits availability and functionality. What concerns me that there are only 4 customers that are live and speak to the public, one of them is SAP. I remember SAP asking for validation by around 100 or so customers before putting a product in GA. But again, this is SAP's business.At this point I cannot discern what all of core and vertical functionality is GA - or even in the process being ported there. I trust SAP that the majority is - but the company should be very clear and should have addressed it in the many keynotes and press conferences (5 total). There was also no high level explanation, how SAP did this major engineering feat. Again I question why this was not addressed openly. And of course the question on the good old SD benchmark remains. SAP missed the chance to explain the void here and why e.g. other benchmarks are better for the Hana age.
Why does it matter...
... well you know, otherwise start reading about Hana...
Mobile - Some Yes, Most Not
While mobile was prominently featured, SAP did not made clear statements as desired in this area. If you can move the Business Suite to Hana - why not move the screens to e.g. tablets? It may not make sense - as with the Business Suite - but when you labor with order of magnitude on the one side - why are you that off on mobile?If my memory does not fool me - both the McDermott and Hagemann-Snabe demos were void of anything mobile. Plattner said mobile first at one point - but it was part of the lecture, not product part of his keynote.. And yes Fiori runs on mobiles and tablets - but what about the 100+ apps shown 2 years ago? How does SAP plan to mobilize content. It's ok to say - we need to sort out some technology first and build then - the customer base will cherish that as part of the good old SAP, the one that delivered like clockwork in the past void any marketing gimmicks.
The danger is, that mobile will be seen more and more as a MDM and security play. And while it's understood Sybase has a franchise here with Afaria and SAP has capabilities, as mentioned in my Day 1 post - the partnership with Mocana shows that SAP underi nvested in Sybase / Afaria R&D. Apps in-built security should not have to be a partner opportunity afterthought for an enterprise application vendor... and while I think the choice of the MDM cloud to run on Amanzon's AWS is the right one - it begs the question why the Hana Enterprise Cloud was not used. But this new capability was absent in the keynotes. An opportunity wasted since everyone in the audience had a tablet and smartphone and most of them access critical enterprise information out of SAP systems from it. The importance to SAP is clear - the investment is prioritized somewhere else.... and last not least - affordability remains a topic. Kudos to get it right for the MDM cloud.
Why does it matter...
... did you see Google going from 400M to 900M Android applications in less than a year? There you have an enterprise reaching close to 1 billion.. with a single product.
Social - Nada
And while McDermott talked about social is the new dial tone - not only Dennis Howlett (@dahowlett) didn't fully grasp that - it was notably absent from the keynotes. Yes SAP Jam was important to get to the close to 30M crowd users - but that was the most mentioned social product fact.But maybe SAP is cooking on something in the quiet - but from this Sapphire social does not seem to be a first class citizen at SAP. It's fine for SAP to say for now investment goes somewhere else - like mentioned above with mobile - but then there should be a road map when social will catch up. Better in my view - be an integral part of the Hana platform going forward. As seen by the Adobe Hana partnership. If there would be more to it - SAP and Adobe could have said it.
But again maybe SAP saved some announcements for later here... Right now - unfortunately - most users of a SAP product may pick up the (social) phone - but will find no dial tone...
Why does it matter...
The trend is there, the competition in California (Oracle, salesforce) is investing heavy - SAP should not be left standing in the rain when the social downpour will open its floodgates.
Big Data - Coexistence
SAP made it clear, that Hana will be able to access Hadoop data, and with that took the position of the old datawarehouse vendors, the position of co-existence. As such SAP will risk (and is in good company with Terradata and SAS) to miss out on the Hadoop revolution that we are witnessing.But different to the established data warehouse vendors, SAP does not have to worry about a legacy licensing business, it is re-inventing and re-creating all critical new code right now. SAP's timid approach is determined by the medium of storage for Hana - very expensive RAM.
And as we saw, Plattner even was compelled to show, how SAP can bring OLTP information into RAM at lower cost, thanks to selective column usage and compression. But the SAP execs would not dare to start the argument in regards of the unbelievable amounts of data becoming accessible through the Hadoop technology.
Again SAP may have different investment priorities, which I can even understand and support, but staying in the co-existence camp has definitively huge risks. Not investing in social and combining OLTP and Hadoop information makes SAP vulnerable for better and cheaper business insights provided by the new players that fully set on the Hadoop card.
Why does it matter...
We live in a breakthrough age of computing. For the first time ever enterprises can store all the information they want and need in an affordable way, analyse it and ask even questions they did not know at the time of the information storage.
Line of Business - Most answered
With the GA of the Business Suite on Hana - the direction is clear. The scope available on Hana needs some clarification though. And with the press conference statements, that Ariba (no date) and Successfactors (August 2013) will run on the Hana Enterprise Cloud, the integration problem I pointed out before Sapphire are addressed - for the short time being.SAP needs to understand, that while moving the acquired products to the new Hana platform is a strategic step - it still does not integrate them. Which brings us back to the question on the integration story - mentioned above.
SAP used to ridicule Oracle by saying that the DBMS vendor things all is integrated once it is in the same schema. Well SAP should not think all is integrated when all the data is in column stores either. It's not clear today, what the integration mechanism for e.g. SuccessFactors with the rest of the Business Suite will be. Especially if you consider cloud integration questions. In that sense - as great and bold as it is - the availability of SuccessFactors on Hana for instance, will increase the number of necessary integration scenarios that SAP will have to support.
Why does it matter...
This is where the bread and butter for SAP and customers is made. It needs to be addressed to make the most of the Ariba and SuccessFactors acquisitions and solidify the new joint functionality realm against any competitive poachers from the outside.
The maintenance saga - Nada
The keynotes were void in regards of this sore topic. And while I understand the reluctance to address the issue in a keynote - and Henning-Snabe even stated that SAP sees no problem here - SAP missed the opportunity to openly speak to customers.Worse - the maintenance topic had more oil poured on the fire with the (great) new Fiori applications. Not only was SAP as traditionally not clear on the pricing (a troica of Fiori, Gateway and Business Suite Extensions) - but it's also disappointing maintenance paying customers that the latest - and hopefully successful attempt - to get the eyeballs of the casual user - will not be part of the maintenance benefits, but an extra charge.
Why does it matter ...
Well speak to any SAP customer if you don't know, but don't be surprised to be yelled at.
Vision & Thought Leadership - Nothing new
There wasn't much if anything at all in regards of how a 21st century company is run. Plattner did a good job at summarizing what SAP customers want today - but the question is what do they need tomorrow or more specific in 2020 remained open.SAP needs to stop relying on Plattner for vision. Let's not that Plattner was (and is) the technologist under the original 5 founders. It can't be up to him to create the 21st century vision for business applications. It does not come from McDermott, who is too consumed in short term sales priorities and the marketing message du jour. And it will not come from Sikka - too much a technologist himself, like Plattner. So it falls broadly on Hagemann-Snabe shoulders - I am not sure, if he will be the one to lead SAP on the topic, as he for too long has been in charge of Business Suite and all of development not to try a stab at this.
But never say never. If you think through the Darwin talk for business automation processes - what does that mean. And it looks to me that SAP is trying to bootstrap the problem with the Hana start-ups. If I caught it right that the Hana venture fund is now close to 405M - then this would be the broadest stimulation of an ecosystem ever.
But also the confirmation, that the SAP leadership thinks the next generation thinking for enterprise applications will not come from SAP - but from small start-ups. Only this has not happened since a very long time, SAP itself is the living proof of that. The last company to challenge the establishment, Siebel, ran out of though leadership runway before Oracle acquired it. That makes me skeptical to the start-up as the outlet for next generation thinking. And it's definitively sad, that SAP has delegated the challenge of its future and not taken it head on.
MyPOV
A very interesting Sapphire, much more to write about left. Some questions raised before the conference here got addressed, many not. What is clear is, that SAP is re-inventing itself around Hana. And the re-invention is in full progress, though in an early stage, maybe stage 1 of 4 or 5 total stage.SAP may not like to hear it - but it behaves like and it is a technology company right now, which like it or not, SAP has to be, as it lays the foundation for its future in enterprise automation. As with any process in early stages, a lot of questions need to be answered, remain open and new ones will pop up soon.
It will be good for SAP to address them, the sooner the better. Its up to prospects, customers, partners, competitors, analyst, press and bloggers to keep probing.
Note: This is a post from the fences which means - I have not attended Sapphire, wasn't briefed in person by anybody from SAP - but used the webcast, press releases, social media to make up my mind here. Feel free to point out what's wrong or missing in the comments section!