What boggles the mind of an IT academic?
In addition to his day job as Professor of Management at Grand Valley State University, Simha Magal is a veteran of the SAP Mentor program (*to the uninitiated, the jersey he sports in the video below is the giveaway). Simha was at SAPPHIRE NOW to learn about the latest innovations from SAP, with an eye towards incorporating these learnings into his curricula for students.
I caught up with Simha fresh from a two-hour round table discussion led by SAP University Alliances, with participation from SAP Education. “One thing that really caught my attention was the partnership between University Alliances and SAP Education that allows us to take the material from SAP Education and incorporate it into what we do from an academic point of view. It’s exciting and I look forward to it.”
Earlier in the week, University Alliances and SAP Education announced a joint initiative called SAP Student Academy. “There’s a lot of material that SAP Education has, and a lot of times we wind up duplicating that in academia. With this new partnership we can now take advantage of what’s already out there and use that to educate our students.”
Simha’s key takeaway from Vishal Sikka’s SAPPHIRE NOW keynote was SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud. “90% of SAP customers could be placed on the cloud. That’s mind boggling.”
Finding these synergies inside different SAP program offerings will only enrich the learning experience for both young and seasoned practitioners. Great to see Simha this year at SAPPHIRENOW and ASUG Annual Conference.