The Best-Run Businesses Run SAP

HANA, SAP’s in-memory computing engine has factored into SAP conversations for a couple of years now. Often HANA and in-memory computing are associated with “big data”, and hence associated with big companies. So the introduction of a HANA product for SAP Business One (more…)

In a previous blog post, guest contributor Cindy Jutras, president of Mint Jutras, outlined the advantages of taking a platform approach, combining applications with database and technology. But in taking such approach Cindy cautioned against sacrificing functionality or performance. In that post Cindy set the stage (more…)

Simplicity – Reduced TCO – Optimized Performance

Fast growing small and mid-size companies can and should demand more from their enterprise business software today. Never before have there been more “moving parts” to both strategic and day-to-day tactical decision-making. (more…)

You would think with all the talk about SaaS and cloud today that by now we would all be talking about the same thing. But in spite of, or perhaps because of the huge volume of discussion around SaaS and cloud computing, there remains much confusion over the terminology. (more…)

Last week I attended one of the SAP Insider events, the one that combines Financials (Financials2012), Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC2012) and Human Resource Management (HR2012). I have to admit that HR was the odd man out here. (more…)

Many have their heads in the cloud today. This goes for both individuals, as well as companies. The interest in Software as a Service (SaaS) has been steadily increasing over the past several years, led by enterprise applications such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and elements of Human Capital Management (HCM) such as recruitment, talent management and benefits administration. (more…)

Recently I had the opportunity to speak with SAP’s Senior VP of Mobile Strategies, Nick Brown to get a preview of the “mobility” announcements planned for SAPPHIRENOW + SAPTechEd, co-located in Madrid this week. As anyone that follows SAP knows, mobility is one of its three hottest topics, the other two being cloud and in-memory computing. Since May 2010 when SAP announced its intended acquisition of Sybase, the mobility buzz has been about an integrated platform and application story. (more…)

This year’s SAP TechEd was the first to feature an SME (Small to Midsize Enterprise) track. As we wrap up Las Vegas (next stop Madrid), it is time to reflect on the real relevance to SME of the themes and messages presented at TechEd. Much of the event was an excellent presentation of technology, followed by some ideas and examples of how you might use that technology.  That is the way IT departments in large enterprises might approach their IT strategy and budget. And, after all the intended audience for the event was IT in general and developers in particular. But typically there aren’t any developers in small companies and most SMEs have very limited IT staffs. So really the SME audience at TechEd was the partners that service those SMEs. (more…)

All the talk at SAPTechEd this week has been about HANA, SAP’s new in-memory computing engine. While there were plenty of “techies” at the event this week, you don’t have to be too much of a technologist to understand that processing data that is stored in memory is going to be a lot faster than processing it from disk. And results from early adopters have been more than impressive. Examples include Yodobashi who took the process of running incentive payments from 3 days down to 2 seconds. Or Nong-fu Spring who ran the same script in HANA and in an Oracle data mart and found HANA to be 200 times faster. In fact these results are so impressive, one SAP customer said to me, “It sounds too good to be true.”

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I have to admit that I was skeptical when I saw the guest keynote at SAPTechEd was going to be Jane McGonigal from AvantGame speaking about gamification. Yes Ms. McGonigal certainly has credentials that command respect: best-selling author, Oprah’s top 20 list of most inspiring women, #16 all-time most engaging TED talk… the list goes on. But to say I am not a “gamer” is a gross understatement. I come from a different generation, one that views playing games at w (more…)