SAP on the Cloud

Software as a Service: The Right Fit for Your Business?

March 23, 2012 by Michael Brenner

According to IDC, software as a service (SaaS) is quickly becoming a mainstream way to deliver applications to business of all sizes. This is no surprise, given the considerable benefits – cost savings, scalability, access to continually upgraded application software, and fast time to value. However, cloud services may not be the best choice for all customers in all situations.

Read “Software as a Service: A Transformative Way to Deliver Applications” from IDC to better understand the SaaS architecture and business model – and to determine if it’s the right fit for your business.

SaaS is a software delivery model in which business users “rent” functionality as a web-based service over the cloud. SaaS allows companies on any budget to access powerful software for less than the cost of licensed applications – with pricing based on a monthly fee. Because the software is hosted remotely, users don’t need to invest in expensive hardware, maintenance, or upgrades.

In addition to SaaS, two other “as a service” options are gaining popularity:

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) provides the ability to access processing, storage, and networking resources over the cloud.

Platform as a service (PaaS) delivers the ability to access application development and deployment resources over the cloud.

SaaS includes IaaS and PaaS since they’re both essentially cloud services that map to software categories like storage, security, database, and middleware. That’s why SaaS represents approximately 70% of public cloud revenue.

While SaaS can offer many benefits – from cost savings to increased competitiveness – it may not be the best choice for all customers in all situations. Some customers are concerned about limited customization, security and privacy issues, and conflicts with previous investments. IDC advises organizations to evaluate their application needs, and to understand that some IT environments require a mix of on-premise and SaaS applications to thrive.

Originally posted at http://blogs.sap.com/innovation/cloud-computing/software-as-a-service-0856

Making Digital Technology – and the Cloud – Work for You

March 20, 2012 by Michael Brenner

Advances in cloud computing are now making it possible for every company to be a digital competitor.

Because of the cloud, huge investments in software and systems are no longer necessary – so even small companies can afford to compete. And there are benefits for large businesses as well, as they are able to reduce their costs and gain greater flexibility.

So how do you get your company into the cloud? One way is to adopt a policy of “try, buy, and scale,” gradually integrating cloud services into your internal processes and IT services.

Download “The New Digital Economy: How it Will Transform Business” from Oxford Economics to learn more.

Over the years, economies have been shaped and reshaped by groundbreaking inventions – and the internet is perhaps the most revolutionary of them all, benefitting both developed and developing economies.

One of the best descriptions of the internet comes from David Reed, one of its early conceptualizers. The internet, according to Reed, consists of three conceptual clouds: the connectivity cloud – for the transfer of information; the resource cloud – for the storage of data; and the social cloud – for networking and collaboration. These clouds, which can be public, private, or semi-private, provide the infrastructure for the digital economy.

According to Oxford Economics, executives will likely adopt a hybrid cloud computing strategy that combines both private and public clouds. Adopting a policy of “try, buy, and scale,” gradually integrating cloud services into existing internal processes and IT services, is a safe, gradual way for small and midsize companies to approach cloud. Larger corporations, however, should more rapidly explore the cloud’s potential for reducing costs, boosting flexibility, and improving data flow – to compete with a new range of cloud-enabled competitors.

Read more about cloud computing in established and emerging markets in this information-packed report.

Originally posted at http://blogs.sap.com/innovation/cloud/<Making-Digital-Technology-Work-For-You

Social Applications for the Enterprise – It’s more SAP-like than you might think

March 1, 2012 by Sven Denecken

Social Web Applications are truly revolutionizing the way we all collaborate on the Web. However, there’s actually a lot more to it than just connecting with other users. These so called “Social Web Applications” also incorporate some very powerful software design attributes, which facilitate information sharing and user-centric design like never before.  This makes individuals more knowledgeable about what’s happening around them; in their personal network of Facebook friends, in their LinkedIn business network and in their network of Twitter followers.

(more…)

Needed to share this here, very powerful: #SuccessFactors Partners on #SAP Acquisition

February 16, 2012 by Sven Denecken

The integration of enterprise cloud applications and go-to-market resources promises new business opportunities for partners worldwide

In conjunction with the close of the acquisition by SAP, SuccessFactors today announced broad support for the deal from its global partner ecosystem. SuccessFactors has always partnered with industry-leading companies from around the world to help extend the value of its Business Execution (BizX) suite through complementary partner product and service offerings or helping open up new markets. Now, in concert with SAP, SuccessFactors and its partners are able to provide a vast array of new offerings that promise new value for customers as they optimize how they execute their businesses.

(more…)

SAP Travel OnDemand goes General Availability #SAPTravelOD

February 15, 2012 by Sven Denecken

Last month, we spoke to you about SAP Travel OnDemand in the context of design thinking and co-innovation (link).  This month, we’d like to update you on the fact that this service has successfully completed beta testing and is now generally available.

(more…)

Co-Innovation – Best Practices That Bring On-Demand Solutions to Market More Quickly , or – Innovating a New Product Is Only Half the Battle

February 4, 2012 by Sven Denecken

If you have an urgent business need for an cloud / on-demand solution, see an opportunity for first-mover advantage, or personally want to see a specific app be built, then this Co-Innovation@SAP-Whitepaper is for you. Here you’ll learn how companies like yours partner with SAP to bring their software ideas to life – and benefit by gaining fast access to world-class, cloud/on-demand solutions from SAP.

Are you ready to shape and influence the next cloud solutions from SAP?

You’re invited to the table – because at SAP, it all starts with the voice of the customer. And by participating, you not only get to prioritize functionality and user interfaces but also benefit from high user acceptance, reduced project risk, and access to functionality well ahead of your competition. Innovation happens when creative ideas are transformed into new products, services, or processes and they successfully penetrate the market.

(more…)

Recap SAP Influencer Summit 2011 Highlights

January 30, 2012 by Sven Denecken

As some of you know, the eighth annual SAP Influencer Summit took place on December 13-14, 2011, in Boston, MA. Over 130 key influencers including industry analysts, business thought leaders, journalists, bloggers, SAP  Mentors and university professors were welcomed on-site.

Over 3,000 additional virtual attendees from around the globe joined to hear keynote presentations featuring Jim Hagemann Snabe, Vishal Sikka, Sanjay Poonen, and Raj Nathan as well as deep dive and breakout sessions with SAP executives, experts, customers, and partners.

During the two day event, SAP provided influencers with an clear view of 5 key strategic areas – core (Line of Business), mobility, in-memory/HANA, analytics, and cloud, which was then validated extensively by the in-depth stories and engaging Q&A opportunities of 25 on-site customers and partners.

Check out the virtual platform and social media activities via #SAPSummit . They expanded the event reach and enabled us to receive real-time interaction and feedback.

The video below features highlights from the keynotes and customer panel discussions. It is also available to be viewed on the SAP YouTube Channel

Looking forward to your feedback, regards Sven Denecken (@SDenecken)

Related articles

• Influencer summit – some highlights on cloud (blogs.sap.com)

Importance of Co-Innovation to design the next generation of Talent Management applications

January 12, 2012 by Sven Denecken

In our previous blog “Understanding the employee – or in tech speak: the end-user is the currency“, we have talked about the importance if being people centric. With this blog we want to emphasize the importance of co-innovation when designing the next generation of talent management applications.

Image via CrunchBase

Understanding what will be the present and the future of Talent Management and build the next generation of applications in that space, is a combination of SAP experience in the Human Resources market, where SAP has been leader for years, a deep understanding of trends and the competitors landscape and Co-Innovation with SAP customers – a program which is unique in the industry.

Co-Innovation offers the opportunity to expose the design and development of applications, specially the next generation, to customers and partners, where feedback is continuously incorporated whilst those applications are built. The vendor, in this case SAP, becomes a extension of the customer delivering the right product in the right moment, covering the right needs. Next generation solutions tend to be very forward thinking, therefore co-innovation delivers the right amount of innovation that the end user expects, making sure that adoption is not compromised.
(more…)

How to gain competitive advantage by using Cloud Computing

January 5, 2012 by Peter Laemmer

Competitive advantage occurs when an organization acquires or develops an attribute or combination of attributes that allows it to outperform its competitors. Within the context of cloud computing I would see competitive advantage

-if a company can grow revenue, e.g. through a faster product development cycle

-if a company can improve their cash flow, e.g. through cost savings

-if a company can improve effectiveness, e.g. through speeding up processes.

Managers can use Cloud Computing to outperform their competitors in different areas:

#1: Productivity

Companies often use allocated development in different areas, e.g. for the development of new products. Let´s assume you have to consider design features and technical features. For that you have a design office in Berlin and the technical department is based in Shanghai. In this case you have to share a lot of information between both facilities. If companies want to offer this service internally they have to invest in hardware and manpower in order to maintain the service.

There exist cloud-based services, where a company can share all sorts of files and information in order to accelerate the time to bring the product to the market. They do not need to set-up such a time and cost intensive environment. They buy the required service and according to Christensen´s law they gain competitive advantage with a faster product launch.

#2: Information

Companies need to select the right data that deliver the right information to make decisions, evaluate investments, support actions and a lot more.  There exist cloud services that deliver the appropriate hardware and algorithms that have the capacity to exactly do that. Companies can focus on their business while choosing the required service in the cloud to support it.

Often these services are used to select and analyze a huge amount of customer data. SAP currently announced the partnership with C2B Company NetBase. This company specialized on the analysis of social media data that is produced from customers. With these insights companies can gain “socialknowledge” and at the end can outperform their competitors (see Blog from Sven Denecken)

#3: Platform as a Service (PaaS) as development framework

Companies need to standardize their processes and applications even more when they decide to transfer parts of their IT in the cloud. They should do that to use cloud services with a maximum benefit. But nevertheless, they have to develop own applications for their business.  They can do that on their own infrastructure, set-up the required servers, configure it, and maintain it. Or they can use cloud based development frameworks. The developed applications are deployed by the owner of the PaaS and made available via a store. The SAP Business ByDesign Studio is an example where a developer community can work on a cloud-based PaaS in order to deploy and distribute their software – even  via a portal called SAP Store. Customers get access to the store in order to download the required services.

Globalizing Your SAP Cloud Services Business

January 4, 2012 by Schalk Viljoen

Guest Blog by Jacqueline Vanacek, SAP Vice President, Cloud Computing Evangelist, and US CLOUD2 Commissioner

SAP has a growing list of partners who are delivering or will deliver a variety of cloud services to SAP customers – both in the US and abroad.

Gartner predicts that the cloud computing market will grow from $74B in 2012 to $177B in 2012, and Forrester predicts that the cloud computing market will grow from $27B in 2010 to $118.17B by 2014. In either scenario, new business opportunities abound for everyone in the cloud ecosystem.

In light of the massive growth predicted, many SAP users are looking to expand their own business, and better serve their own customers, by accessing the agility and IT cost benefits of the cloud. Accordingly, they will need access to proven and transparent cloud computing services all over the world.

Therefore, I wanted to make the SAP community aware of a new resource that can help SAP partners grow their cloud services business overseas, especially those partners with limited in-house resources available to fully explore the global cloud computing opportunity. (more…)