Here I am, sitting in the main hall of the RAI Convention Center in Amsterdam, for what is already set to be an amazing #SAPTechEd event.
Before it is starting, let me share with you some of the trends happening in the market that will all be addressed during these three days.
We are truly in an inflection point for IT. Companies are shaking the old paradigms and re-thinking from the ground up the way they invest, shape and consume their IT.
We have seen already in many examples how IT budget, within big and small companies, is shifting to the Lines Of Businesses, like Marketing or HR. These organizations are increasingly leveraging the unprecedented capabilities that in-memory technologies are providing to extract unique business insights from the massive amount of structured and unstructured data. They are adding their historical “dark data” to the mix, that until now was sitting untapped on archiving vaults, and suddenly see new trends appearing by building predictive analytics scenarios.
Very quick iterations on new technologies will become a norm so companies can better innovate. The very long implementation cycles to get access to a new technology are disappearing, in favor of short on-premise, hybrid deployments or readily available applications on the cloud. Companies can get access new applications in a much faster and easier way and can now better focus on innovating their core business.
Companies have choice. Gone is the time when companies’ IT was locked up by a few vendors. Today many organizations are bringing their multi-vendor strategy to new heights. Inter-cloud technologies and standardization will offer the capability for organizations to pick the best products in each area and harmoniously integrate them. The foundation of their strategy will be their enterprise IT platform on top of which they can run, build and customize the hundreds of applications that will make their new IT landscape.
Business networks will prevail. The power of networks is immense. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have transformed the way we learn, get informed and communicate. Similarly, business networks are reshaping the way companies do business. From purchasing, to marketing, to HR and finance, business networks will profoundly change the economics of many companies in the years to come.
With these new trends coming, does is it mean that all the previous investments in companies’ core IT becomes irrelevant? Absolutely not! Part of the reason I am very bullish on SAP’s growth future - and so proud to be part of it – is that I truly think SAP is the one company out there that can help organizations transition to this new world while safeguarding their past investments. For the existing core SAP’s users, it means leveraging the opportunities new technologies are offering. For the others, it means adopting the latest and greatest technologies to firmly position themselves as innovation leaders in their industry.
We have an exciting journey ahead of us and I can’t wait for SAP TechEd to start, to learn more about how these trends and others are already executed by organizations around the world, and how SAP is helping them along the way.
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