SAP on the Cloud

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http://scn.sap.com/people/sven.denecken/content

The SAP Cloud Blog has served as a great forum for expert insights, news, and analysis regarding all things SAP Cloud. It is now time for us to embark on a new journey, where we will be publishing even more fresh content utilizing the SAP Community Network and we certainly hope you will join us!

All content that has been published prior to today will remain active and viewable on this platform. Therefore, please feel free to continue researching and reading some of the great entries we have been able to publish – all thanks to our amazing team of contributors.

For more information on how to stay up-to-date with the latest and greatest surrounding SAP Cloud Solutions, you can simply click here to get started on the SAP Community Network.

Also we have several presences on Social Media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, SlideShare, and YouTube – and we would love to stay connected with you. For your convenience, a direct link to each profile has been provided below:

• SAP Cloud Solutions Facebook
• @SAPCloud Twitter
• SAP Cloud Solutions Linkedin
• SAP Cloud Solutions SlideShare
• SAP Cloud Solutions YouTube

If you have any questions about how to stay in contact please feel free to leave a message in the comment field of this post with any concerns you may have, or feel free to contact Schalk Viljoen, Senior Director, Business Development at SAP (email: schalk.viljoen@sap.com)

It has been a great run, but it is certainly far from over as we are dedicated to bringing you fresh, insightful, valuable content.

Yours Truly,

SAP Cloud Media Team

Yesterday I had the pleasure to speak at an SAP webinar covering IT strategy for cloud computing and how customers are evolving a hybrid approach. This is a topic I’ve been working on since SAPPHIRE NOW Orlando this May, and I am gratified to find there is still a lot of interest in the subject. Since you can watch the recording of the webinar yourself I won’t repeat too much here.  However, the attendees were very generous with their participation by asking several good questions and sharing their opinions in two interesting polls.

Adoption of Cloud Computing

In the first poll we asked attendees a multiple answer question about which ways their company has adopted cloud computing. As a result, some responders answered in more than one category, so each answer is a % of total respondents clicking that category, and percentages to the question will add up to more than 100%. To my surprise almost 30% of respondents said their company is not leveraging cloud computing. That seems very high for me, even for the most conservative SAP customers. I suspect if the IT department did an audit of the different systems their lines of business used, they’d find at least a few software services – and this doesn’t include services brought in virally by employees on their own. Also interesting is that 15% of attendees reported that they are already supporting their developers through a platform as a service. This isn’t far off from a recent IBM survey that finds 16% of their respondents use PaaS and see strategic potential, while an additional 33% use PaaS incidentally. Not included in either poll is any indication as to what each respondent considers to be the definition of “platform as a service.”

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Managing the HR function is a bit like driving a car.  Things are fast paced.  Potential dangers lurk around every corner.  Yet somehow we’re able to safely navigate.   That is until we’re caught off-guard.  It’s the car in our blind spot that causes the accident.  So what’s the parallel to HR?  It’s the question we didn’t ask that comes back to haunt us.  Think about it.  By the time we launch a query, we already suspect something.  All we’re doing is looking for data to validate and quantify what we already suspect.

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Audacious goals are great for channeling the passions of a large group behind one common objective.  At SAP, our stretch goal is to have one billion users by 2015.  There are numerous initiatives underway bringing us closer each day.  In this blog, I’d like to discuss the role of user experience in this context.  Specifically, I’d like to share another* proof point of design thinking:  ”Bubblegum”.

Experience it live at HRTech Europe this week in Amstedam.

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Virtually everyone talks the talk:  “The workforce is our most important asset”.  But how many companies actually walk the talk?  Why is it there always seems to be budget for classical assets like facilities, but HR has to fight an uphill battle just to keep systems up to date?  I believe, it boils down to ROI.  Boards invest where they’re confident of the return.  So how do we improve the link between talent management and workforce productivity?

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This blog continues the discussion started in Part I of Turning Cloudy Chaos into an IT Strategy and Part II – Retreading Existing Systems to Leverage Cloud Technology.  In this blog we examine how Software as a Service fits into a hybrid IT Strategy for cloud computing.

If your company has extensive investments in on premise ERP such as SAP Business Suite, then pursuing an add-on approach with Software as a Service can be an agile way for your company’s departments to roll out new systems of engagement to users. Such a strategy should consider the business needs being solved in relation to other needs within the company such as information management and integration of business processes.

Figure 1: SAP’s vision of end-to-end business processes supported by both on premise and cloud-based applications.

[Source: SAP]

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Finance has always been about improving results.  What could be achieved; however, has changed over time.  Consider now the potential impact of velocity and people centricity of cloud computing.  It is expanding finance beyond departmental optimization and fueling bottom line growth through collaboration.

Before ERP, staff meetings in my old company were lively events.  Unfortunately, the only thing we regularly agreed upon was that the organization as a whole was underperforming.  Every department had a well-documented theory as to why other departments were at fault.  We came to meetings with stacks of reports from our independent systems proving we were ahead of plan.  Invariably, we would point to the paint department where containers overflowed with scrap.  The paint department, in turn, pointed to poor surface quality from injection molding.  All agreed that purchasing was at fault for not lining up better suppliers. It was a fascinating discussion; however, it rarely yielded results.  The good news was everyone was engaged.

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Guest Blog Post by Christian Horak, Global Head of Solution Marketing for SAP Business ByDesign, SAP Financials OD at SAP AG

Hello Folks,

Maybe you have heard that we are just about to launch an exciting new member of the SAP Cloud family at SAPPHIRE NOW in Madrid in November. As we gear up for this launch, I am writing a series of blogs to formulate my thoughts about the solution.

Today I’d like to give you a basic primer on what SAP Financials OnDemand is all about and provide you with a Sneak Preview.

I think the first thing to address is the role of a modern finance department and what issues and challenges they face today that prompted us to develop a brand new solution for this space.

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