We had the opportunity to attend the European edition of SAP’s developer conference, TechEd, held in Barcelona from November 8th till 10th 2016. The event was well attended, with an estimate 4k attendees coming from clients, prospects, partners, SAP and exhibitors.
![]()
So take a look at my musings on the event here: (if the video doesn’t show up, check here)
No time to watch – here is the 1-2 slide condensation (if the slide doesn’t show up, check here):
<Slideshare>
Want to read on? Here you go:
So take a look at my musings on the event here: (if the video doesn’t show up, check here)
No time to watch – here is the 1-2 slide condensation (if the slide doesn’t show up, check here):
<Slideshare>
Want to read on? Here you go:
Always tough to pick the takeaways – but here are my Top 3:
HANA comes in two flavors and a trial version– The major news of the conference was the announcement of HANA 2, effectively the creation of two flavors of HANA. For customers that are live with HANA based applications and don’t need any further advancements of HANA, SAP will keep HANA SPS 12 around for 3 years, freeing them from onerous re-testing of their live applications, caused by HANA innovation they don’t want to uptake. And HANA2 becomes the flavor that will exhibit new capabilities, starting with the announcement and have twice a year a new service release. Effectively SAP has declared what was formerly SPS 13 to be HANA 2 now, labelling it courageously as the platform for Digital Transformation. New capabilities coming with HANA 2 are attractive – starting with a container infrastructure, BYOL capabilities, Machine Learning and predictive Analytics capabilities are the ones that stuck out for me as being most game changing for enterprises building next generation applications. And to do that enterprises need developers who know the technology, and here SAP has done (finally) something what is a must have for any technology provider to the enterprise – offered a free development and limited runtime license for HANA – with HANA Express. Anyone can download HANA, the full version, to their machine, build application and deploy them – with memory being the gate (I believe 32 GB was the limit).
HANA Cloud Platform grows– For the first HCP has become the key product message in a SAP keynote by Bernd Leukert, where HCP was the key platform for the last third of the keynote, quite adequate for a developer conference. And there are numerous new capabilities that make a difference for HCP going forward, the one that stood out for me are a new container service (I could not figure out if is the same like HANA 2’s), BYOL capabilities, improved integration into SAP’s products, improvements of the API Business Hub, a connector to Ariba named Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway, machine learning capabilities, predictive analytics functionality. SAP has done a good job of adding more services to HCP, adding a workflow service, business rules engine with services, data quality services. Probably the most impactful services for enterprises trying to build these nature of applications, the smart data streaming capabilities will be most welcome, as streaming is always tricky, but especially when solved by an individual enterprise.
We had the chance to use HCP ourselves, building a Fiori based application, connecting it via OData / SAP Gateway to a production system, adding visualization of an address in Google Maps and using the Translation Services to have the app available in 20 or so languages, all build by a rusty developer analyst in about one hour. Available with UI5 as a mobile application. I tested 7 languages, including Hebrew, where the app changed from left to right menu as well as orientation. All without any real coding, but mostly XML script extensions and changes, a powerful proof point of where SAP HCP has come to.
SAP discovers Machine Learning– For a long time I have been giving SAP a hard time about the lack of machine learning vision, talk and product uptake. This has changed now with native machine learning capabilities coming to both HANA and HCP, a very important step forward for developers building next generation applications. On top of that SAP announced a machine learning powered Brand Intelligence solution that will use the currently ubiquitous picture and video machine learning capabilities to help marketers establish brand value. Invoice matching and bias elimination in recruiting with SuccessFactors are the other two use cases that SAP currently supports. Not surprisingly there needs to be a training effort for new technologies, and SAP is doing the right thing by starting a MooC effort. Too early to judge the uptake as the capabilities come in 2017, but SAP is doing the right things to get there. And similar SAP is launching a data science curriculum for 2017 – in true SAP style with a certification.
On the concern side SAP still needs to extend its reach to Hadoop natured storage options. In memory – no matter if with HANA or Vora / Spark remains intuitively cost prohibitive for customers to build next generation applications with SAP, as they all have a not sizeable at design time, not predictable data storage aspect. To be fair SAP acquired Altiscale recently, which could be a key enabler. But the lack of a Hadoop service from SAP hurts SAP on all levels – as a platform for both HANA and HCP, when building solutions as for IoT, when being a strategic partner, when building higher level constructs in BI / Analytics and OLTP applications and so on. Not to mention customer who have to figure this out themselves. The other source of likely confusion is between HANA Platform and HANA Cloud Platform. Agreed it is important to know that enterprises can build on HANA only if desired, but even Oracle ‘lumps’ the database into the PaaS layer. Similar challenges exist with the Hybris YaaS service vs. HANA see both on the ESA announcement. To the market, customers and prospects it doesn’t matter who build this at SAP, messaging, pricing need to be simple for enterprises not to lose time when looking at SAP development tools. Time for some message cleanup.
But overall good to see the progress on all fronts. Almost ironical that in the year where SAP started to partner for cloud IaaS (e.g. with Microsoft Azure and AWS Cloud) its up the stack products have found cloud stride in all regards, vision, speed of delivery and messaging. Exciting times ahead, stay tuned.
Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.
HANA comes in two flavors and a trial version– The major news of the conference was the announcement of HANA 2, effectively the creation of two flavors of HANA. For customers that are live with HANA based applications and don’t need any further advancements of HANA, SAP will keep HANA SPS 12 around for 3 years, freeing them from onerous re-testing of their live applications, caused by HANA innovation they don’t want to uptake. And HANA2 becomes the flavor that will exhibit new capabilities, starting with the announcement and have twice a year a new service release. Effectively SAP has declared what was formerly SPS 13 to be HANA 2 now, labelling it courageously as the platform for Digital Transformation. New capabilities coming with HANA 2 are attractive – starting with a container infrastructure, BYOL capabilities, Machine Learning and predictive Analytics capabilities are the ones that stuck out for me as being most game changing for enterprises building next generation applications. And to do that enterprises need developers who know the technology, and here SAP has done (finally) something what is a must have for any technology provider to the enterprise – offered a free development and limited runtime license for HANA – with HANA Express. Anyone can download HANA, the full version, to their machine, build application and deploy them – with memory being the gate (I believe 32 GB was the limit).
HANA Cloud Platform grows– For the first HCP has become the key product message in a SAP keynote by Bernd Leukert, where HCP was the key platform for the last third of the keynote, quite adequate for a developer conference. And there are numerous new capabilities that make a difference for HCP going forward, the one that stood out for me are a new container service (I could not figure out if is the same like HANA 2’s), BYOL capabilities, improved integration into SAP’s products, improvements of the API Business Hub, a connector to Ariba named Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway, machine learning capabilities, predictive analytics functionality. SAP has done a good job of adding more services to HCP, adding a workflow service, business rules engine with services, data quality services. Probably the most impactful services for enterprises trying to build these nature of applications, the smart data streaming capabilities will be most welcome, as streaming is always tricky, but especially when solved by an individual enterprise.
We had the chance to use HCP ourselves, building a Fiori based application, connecting it via OData / SAP Gateway to a production system, adding visualization of an address in Google Maps and using the Translation Services to have the app available in 20 or so languages, all build by a rusty developer analyst in about one hour. Available with UI5 as a mobile application. I tested 7 languages, including Hebrew, where the app changed from left to right menu as well as orientation. All without any real coding, but mostly XML script extensions and changes, a powerful proof point of where SAP HCP has come to.
SAP discovers Machine Learning– For a long time I have been giving SAP a hard time about the lack of machine learning vision, talk and product uptake. This has changed now with native machine learning capabilities coming to both HANA and HCP, a very important step forward for developers building next generation applications. On top of that SAP announced a machine learning powered Brand Intelligence solution that will use the currently ubiquitous picture and video machine learning capabilities to help marketers establish brand value. Invoice matching and bias elimination in recruiting with SuccessFactors are the other two use cases that SAP currently supports. Not surprisingly there needs to be a training effort for new technologies, and SAP is doing the right thing by starting a MooC effort. Too early to judge the uptake as the capabilities come in 2017, but SAP is doing the right things to get there. And similar SAP is launching a data science curriculum for 2017 – in true SAP style with a certification.
Analyst Tidbits
- DaaS with ESA – DaaS is a key revenue source and capability going forward and SAP partnered with ESA to bring ESA satellite pictures to enterprise, of course via HANA and the SAP Digital arm. Kudos for having a consuming customer on stage with Munich Re, the insurer wants to add geographical data to its risk assessment. The service is free till the end of the year, we will have to understand monetization then, but a good start on a differentiating data source for SAP, making the consumption of the ESA data easy for developers.
- Make it easier to build IoT apps– SAP introduced the an IoT enablement solution, that effectively connect S/4HANA (as the Digital Core) with tiered storage, in which SAP has enabled its Digital Twin capabilities (acquired assets with Fedem). It is an important step to make it easier for enterprises to build IoT applications with HCP, with storage tiering and connecting them with S/4HANA, a good move by SAP.
- KXEN DNA is alive– When SAP acquired KXEN, I was bullish on the capabilities this could bring to SAP, in terms of shrink wrapped ‘true’ analytics applications. It was longer quiet than I would have liked, but now the know how is back with a focus on helping data scientists and analytic model worker with the SAP Business Objects predictive factory. Good to see.
- YaaS now available in Germany– SAP’s hybris team, the division that early on focused on a microservice architecture on top of CloudFoundry is adding the German market (US already available). YaaS is a key strategy in the API Economy market, and key for developers to be more efficient at building their next generation applications. Available by the hybris marketplace, the ESA partnership is available through this architecture.
- Analytics– Maybe missed by me, but the SAP Digital Boardroom has been completely re-factored on SAP Business Objects Cloud, leveraging the assets of the original Cloud for Planning product and more. Good to see Analytics applications now available in 34 countries from the SAP Store. All the EPM applications are part of the portfolio and BPC is now helping to move to Continuous Accounting. And a Roambi powered mobile app is available, after SAP has done some ‘hardening’ of the solution to bring it to SAP standards.
- SAP has an assistant now - SAP recently announced its assistant - SAP CoPilot, it was demoed in the keynote, and comes from he Fiori team. It seems the team is a pursuing an open architecture, e.g. keeping their options open when it comes to speech recognition platforms. But it is early days, good to see SAP looking at this important space.
- S/4HANA makes progress– SAP keeps pushing forward with S/4HANA both on premises and in the cloud, with the major functional piece that was still missing with Manufacturing coming soon in 2017.
- SAP and Apple– The first deliverables of the partnership both vendors announced at Sapphire in May of this year are now available, there is a HCP SDK for iOS, both vendors did their first academy training partners on the SDK and shared that precision tool manufacturer MAPAL is part of the early adopter program.
MyPOV
From an announcement perspective, a very good TechEd for SAP, the product related announcements eclipsed what was announced at Sapphire this year. The keynote felt at times more like a Sapphire than a TechEd demo. But sometimes development cycles and marketing calendar are not on the same takt. Nothing a vendor can do and holding back is not an option, given the demands from enterprises. SAP could have stressed developer aspects / experience / side more, given the audience. But literally every major product line had substantial, architectural announcements, from the ‘sundeck’ of S/4HANA to the engine room with HANA. The new container and BYOL developer options for HANA and HCP stand out in my view. Good progress from SAP on the IoT side, too – where the purpose-built solutions got an important new facet with the digital twin. Good to see the push for machine learning – across multiple products, an area that SAP needs to move fast in, and has started now.On the concern side SAP still needs to extend its reach to Hadoop natured storage options. In memory – no matter if with HANA or Vora / Spark remains intuitively cost prohibitive for customers to build next generation applications with SAP, as they all have a not sizeable at design time, not predictable data storage aspect. To be fair SAP acquired Altiscale recently, which could be a key enabler. But the lack of a Hadoop service from SAP hurts SAP on all levels – as a platform for both HANA and HCP, when building solutions as for IoT, when being a strategic partner, when building higher level constructs in BI / Analytics and OLTP applications and so on. Not to mention customer who have to figure this out themselves. The other source of likely confusion is between HANA Platform and HANA Cloud Platform. Agreed it is important to know that enterprises can build on HANA only if desired, but even Oracle ‘lumps’ the database into the PaaS layer. Similar challenges exist with the Hybris YaaS service vs. HANA see both on the ESA announcement. To the market, customers and prospects it doesn’t matter who build this at SAP, messaging, pricing need to be simple for enterprises not to lose time when looking at SAP development tools. Time for some message cleanup.
But overall good to see the progress on all fronts. Almost ironical that in the year where SAP started to partner for cloud IaaS (e.g. with Microsoft Azure and AWS Cloud) its up the stack products have found cloud stride in all regards, vision, speed of delivery and messaging. Exciting times ahead, stay tuned.
More on SAP:
And more about SAP technology:
- News Analysis - SAP to unveil HANA 2 - New platform vs a fork's tine - read here
- News Analysis - Microsoft announces SAP's choice of Azure to help enterprises transform HR - The SaaS land grab is on - read here
- Event Report - SAP / Trenitalia Digital Summit - SAP is serious about IoT - read here
- First Take - SAP BW/4HANA - Data Gravity and Cloud win - read here
- Event Report - SAP SuccessFactors SConnect - Push on all fronts - read here
- Event Report - SAP Insider Vienna - HCP, BI and SuccessFactors are the takeaways - read here
- Event Report - SAP Sapphire 2016 - Top 3 Positives & Concerns: SAP changes - probably for the better - read here
- First Take - SAP Sapphire Day #2 Keynote - read here
- News Analysis - SAP and Microsoft usher in new era of partnership to accelerate digital transformation in the cloud - read here
- First Take - SAP Sapphire Bill McDermott Day #1 Keynote - read here
- Event Preview - SAP Sapphire 2016 - What to expect and look for - read here
- News Analysis - Apple & SAP Partner to Revolutionize Work on iPhone & iPad - read here
- Progress Report - SAP SuccessFactors makes good progress - now needs appeal beyond SAP - read here
- News Analysis - SAP HANA Vora now available... - A key milestone for SAP - read here
- Event Report - SAP Ariba Live - Make Procurement Cool Again - read here
- News Analysis - SAP SuccessFactors innovates in Performance Management with continuous feedback powered by 1 to 1s - read here
- Event Report - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Good Progress sprinkled with innovative ideas and challenging the status quo - read here
- News Analysis - WorkForce Software Announces Global Reseller Agreement with SAP - read here
- First Take - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Day #1 Keynote Top 3 Takeaways - read here
- News Analysis - SAP SuccessFactors introduces Next Generation of HCM software - read here
- News Analysis - SAP delivers next release of SAP HANA - SPS 10 - Ready for BigData and IoT - read here
- Event Report - SAP Sapphire - Top 3 Positives and Concerns - read here
- First Take - Bernd Leukert and Steve Singh Day #2 Keynote - read here
- News Analysis - SAP and IBM join forces ... read here
- First Take - SAP Sapphire Bill McDermott Day #1 Keynote - read here
- In Depth - S/4HANA qualities as presented by Plattner - play for play - read here
- First Take - SAP Cloud for Planning - the next spreadsheet killer is off to a good start - read here
- Progress Report - SAP HCM makes progress and consolidates - a lot of moving parts - read here
- First Take - SAP launches S/4HANA - The good, the challenge and the concern - read here
- First Take - SAP's IoT strategy becomes clearer - read here
- SAP appoints a CTO - some musings - read here
- Event Report - SAP's SAPtd - (Finally) more talk on PaaS, good progress and aligning with IBM and Oracle - read here
- News 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
- Event Prieview - SAP TechEd 2015 - read here
- News Analysis - SAP Unveils New Cloud Platform Services and In-Memory Innovation on Hadoop to Accelerate Digital Transformation – A key milestone for SAP read here
- 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
Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.