SAP on the Cloud

Why I Don’t Care About Cloud Computing

July 17, 2012 by Brad Smith

Guest Blog Post by Chris Heffer, Social CRM Strategy Developer, SAP

I am a consumer of IT. I love technology. I couldn’t imagine a world without my iPad and I will never buy another phone unless it is prefaced by the letter I.

Every day I check my Gmail account.

I work with social media and spend my life with my head in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ etc.

Technology is a massive part of my life I live, eat and breathe it. I love it.

But……..I don’t care about cloud computing.

To me as the end user it doesn’t matter how or where these magical services are coming from. The information could be coming from a data center or from Mark Zuckerburg’s garage for all I care. It doesn’t matter to me. As an end user of all this good stuff and in the words of the late great Steve Jobs, all I care about is that:

“It just works”

I want to know I can access whatever information I need to access from where ever I want to access it from on whatever device I want to access it on. I don’t need to know or need to care where it is coming from or where it is hosted.

SUMMARY

My advice to all you techno-geeks out there who know the different between a Platform as a Service and an Infrastructure as a Service is this:

• Think about what the user does in their job and how you make it easier for them
• Understand your end user, get to know them and try to figure out how to fix the problems they are not asking you to fix
• Don’t consider if your solution should be in the cloud until you understand what is the problem. Then decide what would serve your end user the best.

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About Chris:

Chris joined MySpace in 2004 and he has lived in social media ever since. He has set up and run his own business through social media. He now is securing his place as an up and coming thought leader/speaker within social business. His work is published amongst many industry thought leaders and analysts, across publications such as thesocialcustomer.com, mycustomer.com, business2community.com and the SAP Innovation blog, as well as on his own Social Business Blog at chrisheffer.com. He currently works at SAP to promote the use of social media in business and to help businesses build better relationships with their customers by aligning social to their business strategies.

Subscribe to his blog – http://chrisheffer.com

Follow his tweets – www.twitter.com/theotherhef

Connect with him on LinkedIn – http://uk.linkedin.com/in/chrisheffer

From applications that are characterized by so called “social” features – to Social Business

December 9, 2011 by Sven Denecken

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks not only continue to grow in popularity, but they have also become symbols for a new generation of applications that are characterized by so called “social” features. Given the ever-increasing number of social networks – including the IT-giants Google and Microsoft recently announcing their own offerings – there certainly is a lot of buzz around  “Social Media” or the term “social” these days. We would like to call it simply social business.

At the same time, it clearly shows that there are some very powerful dynamics at play that significantly impact the industry, consumer as well as enterprise IT. In fact, at SAP – we believe that we are amidst industry change as social applications offer superior capabilities to have technology better support human social behavior.

What do we mean by that and what is SAP doing in this regards?

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Social Media? Social Business! integration is a great opportunity to strengthen customer relations

December 6, 2011 by Sven Denecken

• There was a time when companies were very much skeptical about whether or not to do CRM…
• Later,  actually for some companies only a few years ago, there then was a time  when companies were very much skeptical about whether or not to Web  Channel. In other words should we sell or reach out to customers via the  Internet…
• Today, we observer a very similar phenomenon around Social Media…

we would like to talk about Social Business.

Image via CrunchBase

Image via CrunchBase

Image via CrunchBase

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Interested in SAP’s Cloud Strategy – join us for a #SAPChat

November 18, 2011 by Richard Hirsch

During the keynote from Co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe’s at the TechEd / Sapphire in Madrid, there was a general discussion of SAP’s future strategy and details were provided concerning the Cloud, Core, Mobility and InMemory offerings. During the keynote, I exchanged a series of tweets with Sven Denecken (Vice President and Head of Co-Innovation LoB OnDemand at SAP) about the distinctions between the ‘Core’ and ‘Cloud’ offerings. During that exchange, we decided that we would meet after the keynote – perhaps during the event (which we both attended) – to further talk about the topic.

After talking about such a meeting, we both decided that it would be more interesting / useful to have an open discussion about SAP’s cloud strategy in which all those interested could participate. We liked the idea of continuing the interaction on Twitter, so the @SAP team offered to host an official #SAPChat on Twitter to include as many people as possible.

What are some of the topics that we will be discussing?

• How does SAP define the ‘Cloud’?
• Does SAP’s definition of ‘Core’ include SAP’s OnDemand Core offerings?
• Why are hybrid architectures (OnPremise/OnDemand) so important in SAP’s Cloud Strategy?
• What are the differences between SAP’s OnDemand Core and Edge offerings? What are the different use cases for each?
• I’m from a SAP partner who specializes in OnPremise implementations. Should I even care about SAP’s OnDemand offerings?

What exactly is #SAPChat and how can I participate?

Think of #SAPChat as a webinar in which the speakers, rather than talking, type out their thoughts in 140 characters or less. And instead of having a one-way discussion, you, the user, will help to drive the conversation. And during a #SAPChat, rather than using a dial-in number, you follow along with your preferred Twitter app like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite or even TweetChat.com

To participate in the #SAPChat, simply log in to the Twitter client of your choice and submit your questions with the hash tag #SAPChat included. We’ll be monitoring the timeline live and responding through our @rhirsch and @SDenecken accounts. SAP’s cloud strategy will also be an important part of the upcoming SAP Influencer Summit in Boston, so any questions that arise during the tweetchat can be cleared up at the summit.

When will this take place?

On December 7, please join us from 4:00-5:00 P.M. CET (10:00 A.M. EDT) using the #SAPChat hashtag. During this hour, Sven and I will both be on Twitter answering questions about SAP’s cloud strategy. The chat will be moderated by @SAP. We look forward to seeing you there!

Social Enterprise Applications – already here

September 1, 2011 by Sven Denecken

Facebook, Twitter, and other popular networks have become symbols for a new generation of web applications, which are characterized by so called “social features”. There certainly is a lot of buzz around the term “social” these days – just check #DF11 this week here in San Francisco. While the concept is right – and we see this trend as well – it still misses some key elements to deliver true value and to reduce the “noise level”.

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