New Gartner “Nexus” Report: SAP is Driving Analytics, Cloud and Mobility in the Nexus of Forces

The Gartner Group has just published an extremely positive and detailed report titled: “SAP is Driving Analytics, Cloud and Mobility in the Nexus of Forces.”  Gartner defines the “Nexus of Forces” as the intersection of Mobile, Cloud, Information and Social. This is the theme of Gartner’s 2012 Symposium and we expect additional reports published in this series on each mega-vendor leading up to the event. 

The report highlights how well aligned SAP’s go-to-market strategy and solution portfolio is with Gartner’s view of the Nexus. “SAP’s business strategy fits into Gartner’s Nexus as it embraces the cloud, mobile and information forces. SAP is unique in having aligned its go-to-market strategy and execution model around the Nexus by building its business strategy around applications, database and technology, mobility, cloud and analytics.”

Gartner’s believes SAP HANA is the “center” of SAP’s “Nexus Strategy”. 

• “SAP’s application infrastructure and architecture strategy (Hana Architecture) are key strengths of SAP’s business strategy in terms of Gartner’s Nexus.”

The report continues to outline SAP’s presence in each category, see highlights for Mobile, Information and Cloud below. 

INFORMATION:

• “SAP has built a strong information management base through acquisition and internal development.”
• “SAP is positioned well for information and Gartner believes SAP will continue to grow its information strategy and product set to become one of the three dominant vendors in information management.”
• “SAP’s application infrastructure and architecture strategy (Hana Architecture) shows that SAP has an advanced and progressive vision regarding the role that in-memory computing will play in this context.”

MOBILE: 

• “SAP continues to have the broadest device support among all the multichannel vendors, and the strongest mobile device management (MDM) offering, Afaria.”
• “SAP has an aggressive strategy to become the world’s most powerful vendor of enterprise mobile application platforms. Part of this strategy involves the acquisition of Syclo, a mobile application development vendor, and partnerships with Adobe Systems, Appcelerator (a mobileapplications company) and Sencha (an application frameworks, tools and cloud services company).”

CLOUD:

• “Buying Ariba will put SAP at the forefront of multi-enterprise process and integration enablement with a global network in the early stages of formation. SAP clients will benefit immediately from the deal through access to Ariba Discovery, Ariba’s online directory of suppliers.
• “These and future acquisitions form the core of the SAP Cloud and SaaS offerings. This strategy confirms SAP’s commitment to protecting its core ERP business by buying successful SaaS offerings to extend it, reducing the threat of SAP being seen as providing system-of-record products, while clients turn to specialty providers for differentiation and innovation.”

SOCIAL:

• Social Media is an area where Gartner believes SAP can improve (note:  this conclusion is derived from an analysis of our social media strategy to those of other leading vendors in this space such as Google and Apple).  Gartner relayed to us that we were one of the few (if not the only) vendor who has a strong presence in 3 out of the 4 “forces”.
• “Social media has become important in CRM, and SAP must address this to maintain a leading position in CRM applications.”

Reprint link:

http://www.gartner.com/reprints/sap-v6?id=1-1BUCUL0&ct=120828&st=sb