The day started with me traveling from Rio de Janeiro to Sao Paulo. After arriving at the convention center – I needed more time for the taxi ride from CGH to SAP Forum than for the flight Rio -> São Paulo – I stood in line to get my badge; that in fact needed less than 1 minute.
After meeting with my co-workers we attended the 1st presentation.
HANA - O caminho para analisar os negócios em tempo real (HANA, the way to analyze business in real time)
My expectation of the presentation was based on what I’ve seen at TechED Las Vegas 2010 and from what I have read here at SCN: real real time BI. You enter data into your ECC and the reports you generate are based on that data. Your BI report isn't anymore based on one day old data because of the nightly data load process (ETL) but on data that is just seconds old … and the report you see will need only a few seconds to be generated.
The presentation focused on the web enabled access to BI reports. It was shown a before scenario: log in to SAP GUI, run the report, wait for a long time, and finally see a static table. Next feature presented was the speed of the report generation. Instead of looking hours at the monitor and wait for SAP GUI to show a result, with HANA the report is ready in 2 seconds. The presentation closed with the statement that SAP HANA won’t replace the traditional SAP / BO BI solutions.
The key takeaways of the session were: HANA gives you web enabled (BO) reports and that really fast.
Maybe I’m completely wrong, but for that you don’t need HANA. Accessing BI reports via web is already possible: BEx or BO. Accelerating the generation of the reports can be achieved with BIA. The advantage in using HANA is the real time aspect: Instead of having a report generated in a few seconds but with old data, the report will be based on the latest data available in the ECC system. Instead of making a decision based on old data (yesterday) you will increase the quality of the decision made.
Mobilizando processos de negócio (mobilizing business processes)
The presenter gave the presentation from the perspective of an SAP developer. He outlined the several success stories of mobile SAP, going from MI 7 to MI 7.2, including MAM, MTS, smartphones, laptops, online and offline scenarios. The presentation ended with a live demo of a Sybase application (online) that loaded data entered into the backend. Looking beyond the demos, the nice take away for me was to hear that SAP is doing custom development for mobile solutions since 2002. Mobile solutions and development are nothing new to SAP.
Migração do Portal CSN para SAP NetWeaver Portal (Migration of the CSN portal to SAP NetWeaver Portal)
I had a special interest in this presentation as the session touches my area: SAP Portal. After the company presentation the before-scenario of the corporate portal was explained. From what I remember:
- Several different portals
- Also in use: SAP Portal
- 70.000 visits / month
- 200 to 400 mb /h transmitted
CSN migrated their portal with the goal to minimize the costs, make the change transparent to the user and to prepare their infrastructure for future projects like CRM or SRM. Problems they solved during the project:
- Design, layout: of the new portal has to be the same as before
- Implementation of an EFP
- Development of portal applications: rewritten in Java
- Content migration: lack of a migration tool.
- Tuning: Cache and EFP best practices from SAP
Before the SAP Portal as their EFP CSN didn't have a search on their web site. As the search functionality is delivered out-of-the box with the SAP Portal – with optional TREX integration – the web site now also offers a search. The transparency for the user is achieved: the web page looks exactly as before. From looking at it you cannot tell that it’s the SAP Portal.
They are not using the SAP Web Dispatcher for security reasons but a firewall. I believe they didn’t fully understand the functionality and use case of the Web Dispatcher. After the migration, the SAP Portal is the only portal platform and they can start analyzing future usages of the portal, like SRM, CRM.
If you are interested in knowing what and how they did the development, take a closer look at the source code of the public website. The public portal can be accessed here: http://www.csn.com.br
Mobilidade corporativa (corporate mobility)
This session focused on the platform concept of Sybase. As an example when you have a strong indication to use a platform he used the Gartner rule of three. For every case it was shown an examples of how Sybase can / will help, looking at it as a platform. What Sybase really can deliver in terms of applications and management was out of scope of the presentation (there were live examples running in the main hall). What wasn’t really clear is why Sybase is the platform you should use (except the fact that Sybase is an SAP company and I was at an SAP event). Instead of Sybase as a platform you can also use NetWeaver or RIM BES as a platform for connecting the backend and the browser as the frontend on the different devices. This leaves the device management as a strong plus point for Sybase. That was part of a discussion I had with a participant: what happens with your current platform? Can you integrate Sybase or is it Sybase or nothing? And what when you use a device management solution (like LinqUs) from a Telco infrastructure provider?
I won’t be surprised if at the next SAP Forum the focus of such a presentation will be at Gateway and the platform aspect won’t be so prominently placed. Many companies already have invested in their platform and are shown some resistance against a new one.
I than had to go to a private meeting and afterwards I played some Kinect games. No more presentations for me on that day.
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