TechEd Bangalore Journal

Former Member · ‎01-06-2014

Is it the end of December already? The past two months were hectic and the memories interact and bind with each other: 3 SAP TechEds, 3 very different cities, 2 months…

The last event was very special for me: my first time in INDIA! What to expect? Would I like it? I was raised on Bollywood movies. I have tons of friends (and one husband) who traveled to this amazing country and fell in love with it. It's a gigantic hi-tech hub that moves at the speed of an ultrasonic train. And most important, it's a country with one of the most impressive cultures in the world, whose heritage was suppressed for a long period of time and flourished fiercely afterwards.

So here I am, landing in Bangalore after long flights Tel Aviv->Frankfurt->Bangalore. The smell is familiar if you've been to Israel: sweet dates and hot soil. First breakfast with Masala Dosa (I probably misspell the words). It feels like coming back home, even though I've never been here before. Going outside, the street is a boiling mix of vehicles, auto-rickshaws, pedestrians and animals. I would rather take a taxi that time :smile: It took me one day to adjust and one long hour wait for a taxi which has never arrived and a lot of guts to take an auto-rickshaw. I'm a big fan of Six Flags and Great America, so the experience was AWESOME.

We, River and HANA Co-Innovation teams, were lucky to participate both in SAP TechEd and STEP (Internal SAP India Lab) events. I met the local teams, partners, customers. It was enchanting to feel the everyone's enthusiasm: People were visiting the exhibitions, taking notes, debating and taking their seats 2 hours before the keynote. And Big Big expectation in the air.

When Vishal Sikka started the keynote with the metaphor of the Indian river system being the base and the platform for life, it was clear what the emphasis is on. SAP Ganges was announced. Ganges is a very ambitious, polished solution which enables Kirana shops to run businesses in a more sustainable fashion, with transparency, credit line and compliance. Basically, Ganges aims to digitize the biggest part of the commercial activity in India, yet it is surely applicable for other places on the globe.

The metaphors didn't end there: SAP River Programming Language and Development Experience was officially launched with HANA SP7, combining the aspiration for timeless software and separation of intent from implementation. The bottom line is that SAP River provides a Web-based development environment for the programmer and for the hands-on developer (I personally do not believe in so-called "business user") to quickly write the HANA native application logic in a highly abstracted language (River can also be developed in the Eclipse-based HANA Studio). In addition, SAP River provide a brand new solution to extending existing SAP frameworks, like BYD, B1, SF etc. By providing breakouts to other programming languages, stored procedures and scripts, River provides maximum flexibility and a short learning curve. Having River launched, together with OpenUI5 and the integration of HANA with CloudFoundry provides corner stones of the "full stack Lego" – choose your database, choose your PaaS, choose your language and tools. Every part is replaceable, but all of them together are stronger and most impressive for time-to-market, performance and cost of ownership. SAP River discussion forums are full with feedback from developers who have already tried the language and the tools. The River team, part of the HANA Platform and Applications Israel group, don't expect downtime anytime soon, since Vishal Sikka mentioned SAP River being the topic that has occupied him since his thesis, and finally being launched, bringing power to the end user.

On Bangalore->Frankfurt->TelAviv everything looks like a mirage – so overwhelmed with the past week filled with celebration, food, temples, and, yes, Sarees (I got two of those :wink: ). Hope to be back before the next year TechEds.