The Best-Run Businesses Run SAP

Written by Manik N. Saha, CIO – Asia Pacific & Japan

What will APJ customers be looking for @ SAPPHIRE?

A few weeks ago, at the SAP Forum in Mumbai, I had the opportunity to host a CIO lunch. During this lunch and the conversations that followed, one theme stood out – all the companies represented at the discussion were eager to exchange ideas on enterprise innovation. I was amazed at the intensity and passion of my peers to make technology work for the success of their business and grow their footprints beyond local and regional markets (many of who were well established towards that direction).

This made me reflect on our own SAP story in the Asia Pacific & Japan (APJ) region. Over the last 25 years of SAP being present in APJ, we have grown exponentially in this region, with a diverse ecosystem of customers, partners and employees. The correlation between our growth and the growth in the industry in APJ is not a co-incidence. Operating in 12 countries, today we have over 14,000 employees and 1,400 partners in the APJ region supporting around 22,000 customers.

A pillar of our success has been SAP’s ability to innovate in different technology categories, and bring these innovations into the enterprise space. At Global IT, we strive to be early adopters of SAP’s innovations and we ourselves continually innovate our IT services and solutions.

As an example, by using our SAP Afaria platform, over the last 3 years we were able to deploy over 45K smartphones (IOS and Android based) and 5,5K BYOD mobile devices. Our large employee footprint in India and China has seen a significant adoption of BYOD for mobile phones, which validates that the consumerization of IT is real.

To support these mobile devices, we had to also innovate our IT services. We have established Enterprise Mobility Solution Centers in multiple key locations within the region, to provide a more consumer-centric support to our employees. As a result, employees get a personalized service each time they have an issue with any IT equipment, and our IT satisfaction has really grown.

Heading into SAPPHIRE next week, I’m eager to welcome and look forward to meeting our customers from APJ. Customers will be able to meet Global IT experts at the SAP Runs SAP booth on the SAPPHIRE showfloor. These experts have deep knowledge of SAP’s technology, LoB solutions and project experience. The present Global IT Management team has multiple years of experience in IT governance, strategy and management – and many of them will be available at the booth to talk to customers.

For the first time, I will personally host tours of our SAP Runs SAP booth for APJ customers and partners. The one hour walkabout tour around SAP Runs SAP will provide our customers an opportunity to meet the experts. During this tour, we would like to share our innovation practices and experiences with our customers, and learn from them what we could do differently or better.

If you are going to SAPPHIRE Orlando 2013, please drop by the SAP Runs SAP booth. I look forward to meeting you and talking more about enterprise innovation!

Manik N. Saha

CIO – Asia Pacific & Japan

SAP

 Matthias Wild has a few reminders for you before this year’s ASUG and SAPPHIRENOW in Orlando kick off.

Read his blog here.

Eileen Butler is the newest addition to the SAP Runs SAP team. In her first blog she shares her experiences of shadowing Oliver Bussmann during SAPPHIRE NOW Orlando. I had fun reading it, I hope you do too. Anita

Running Pace with Oliver Bussmann at SAPPHIRE NOW Orlando

For those of you who are not runners, you may be wondering what this headline means. “Running pace” is how long it takes to run a mile. At this year’s SAPPHIRE NOW in Orlando, I had the opportunity to run a few miles on the show floor with SAP CIO Oliver Bussmann.

In preparation for the event, Oliver gave me two tasks:

1.)    Memorize the floor plan.

2.)    Bring running shoes.

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Today, Bill Kozel shares his findings from the SAP Runs Better on SAP Sybase ASE Demo Theater at SAPPHIRE NOW Orlando. 

Presenters:

Martin Heisig, VP Enterprise Architecture, SAP AG

Jim Swartz, CIO, Sybase 

On Monday, May 14 at 3:30 p.m., this discussion theater focused on how Sybase and SAP migrated key applications to the Sybase ASE relational database management system.

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On Wednesday, May 16 at noon, Gerhard Oswald, member of the SAP Executive Board, visited the SAP Runs SAP area of SAPPHIRE NOW. In an informal presentation, he reviewed progress on SAP’s usage of key analytic and planning applications.

David Poisson, BI Manager within SAP Global IT, demonstrated how SAP Visual Intelligence enables SAP business analysts to autonomously perform all the transformations needed on raw data, and to display actionable information in aesthetically pleasing visualizations – without any technical skill or IT support. The demo coincided with Vishal Sikka’s announcement of the rollout of this new tool in his morning SAPPHIRE NOW keynote address.

In addition, Holger Faber, IT Controlling Manager at SAP Global IT, demonstrated how SAP uses SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) on the SAP HANA platform to enable high performance, scalable planning solutions. Holger presented the user interface for the acquisition of the planning data, along with possible visualizations of the overall planning figures. At the end of the demo, Holger briefly presented the first previews of a BPC iPad app.

 Author: Bill Kozel

Instead of sharing a written post today I am sharing the replay of Oliver Bussmann’s SAPPHIRE NOW SAP Runs SAP interview instead.  It gives a concise overview of the evolution of SAP Runs SAP and more.

Click here to view the clip

We didn’t want you to miss out on the SAP Runs SAP activities so our regular writer Bill Kozel shadowed many of these events to make sure you didn’t miss any of the interesting and fun things that happened.

His first piece is about the BYOD Customer Panel: Managing Personal Devices in Your Enterprise

Wednesday, May 16, 2:00 p.m.

Moderator:
Philippe Winthrop, Enterprise Mobility Foundation

Panelists:
Michael Golz, CIO, Americas, SAP
Mark Reynolds, VP IT Architecture/Infrastructure, Fossil
John Dutsar, Director, Information Technology, Pepperidge Farm

In this customer panel discussion, the topic was “bring your own device” (BYOD) policies and strategies.

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SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation 10.0, is an advanced BPC solution that harnesses the power of the SAP HANA platform to help accelerate planning, streamline financial reporting processes, and reduce risk. In other words – it’s SAP Runs SAP at its best.

If you are at SAPPHIRE NOW go to booth DT215 to see a live demo, if you are participating virtually take a look at this video from SAP Global IT Expert Holger Faber to see the solution in action. The drawings you see in the clip were also created by Holger.

Matthias Wild shares his account of his first ever SAPPHIRE NOW in this post.

SAPPHIRE NOW in Orlando is running and a team of architects and experts from SAP Global IT is in the middle of the show to tell the SAP runs SAP story. For me personally it is my first SAPPHIRE NOW and I am honestly overwhelmed in many ways. First of course just by the show floor and the pure energy of this event. But second – and much more important – by the great dialogues and discussions I had with SAP customers and partners on the first day.

Picture: SAP Runs SAP team at the SAPPHIRE NOW event

  

My (video) favorite topics these days are BW on SAP HANA, the move to scale-out SAP HANA infrastructure to achieve high-availability and sneak previews for SAP ZEN. We have David Poisson at the booth to show all kind of Analytics Apps and the brand new SAP Visual Intelligence (some videos in this blog from Timo Elliott). Holger Faber is here with the fabulous integration story for BW Integrated Planning and BPC 10 version for NetWeaver.

The Enterprise Architect Bernhard Wallner (video) can share the vision and our next steps for ECC on SAP HANA. Dirk Pluschke can show you live business scenarios on SAP HANA side-by-side in ECC, in BW, or with direct connection to SAP BusinessObjects platform 4.03. Joseph Houben (video) is available to give insights on the mobile Apps.

These are real stories to tell, these are the projects and products the SAP Global IT department deploys and runs at SAP – and we are at SAPPHIRE NOW to share our experience with you.

Martin Heisig, VP, Enterprise Architecture, is a leading ambassador for SAP Runs SAP. Bill Kozel asked for his perspectives on must-see presentations at SAPPHIRE NOW. Here are his recommendations – all of which are located in the SAP Runs SAP area of the Run Better campus.

• Sybase ASE: Hear about SAP’s experience in migrating to Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE), and the resulting benefits of this high-performance relational database management system – including a lower total cost of ownership.
• Mobility: See how SAP leverages the latest mobility solutions, including new analytic apps, SAP Leave Request, SAP Customer Briefing, and new Windows Mobile apps. Also, see a live demo of the future “Zen” analytic dashboard tool.
• New Afaria release: See the usability improvements in SAP Afaria 7.0, the latest version of SAP’s enterprise mobility management solution. These include the new self service portals for end-users that make it easier  to manage various devices.
• SAP HANA: See SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation 10.0, an advanced BPC solution that harnesses the power of the SAP HANA platform to help accelerate planning, streamline financial reporting processes, and reduce risk. Plus, see other late-breaking developments on SAP HANA.
• Cloud-based applications: See a real-world implementation of SAP Travel OnDemand, a cloud-based application that helps manage every aspect of business travel, from planning to expense reimbursements. Get also the latest news on how SAP will leverage the on-demand solutions from Success Factors highly integrated with our HR on-premise solution.
• Fujitsu presentation: On Monday, May 14 at 12:30 p.m., learn how SAP uses Fujitsu Infrastructure Solutions for SAP HANA to run its business better. (Session ID 9147)
• Analytics: Learn more about the brand new analytics front end SAP Visual Intelligence. SAP Visual Intelligence makes it easy to analyze your data and provides a complete new user-experience no matter if you are using BW, SAP HANA or any other data source.

Martin welcomes the opportunity to speak with customers. If you’d like to schedule a one-on-one meeting, stop by the SAP Runs SAP area at any time during the conference.

Author: Bill Kozel