SAP at #GartnerBI 2014
Gartner Business Intelligence & Analytics Conference March 31- April 2
Monday last week marked the kick-off of the Gartner Business Intelligence and Analytics Conference at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. The opening keynote theme was The Future of Your Business: Transparent, Decisive, and Personalized. Attendance was up to almost 3,000 attendees.
It feels good being part of a team contributing to our successful event presence! I was running 4 presentations around SAP Lumira and interest was huge. Most attendees wanted to see demos, and demoing SAP Lumira is easy & fun. I spoke to some SME customers, and was able to position our newly created visualization starter pack that combines SAP Lumira with SAP BusinessObjects Explorer and our Mobile solution.
Often questions from customers interested in our data exploration solutions revolved around “why SAP?”. In that context I love telling the story from one customer in the IT LoB who approached me at the event: “…those departments they just pull their credit card and buy a bunch of licenses from <smaller vendors>, and then they ask for our support when they run into issues. We don’t have the bandwidth for this.”
At SAP we strive to expand not only the data available to you for decison making, but also the number of users exposed to intuitive tools designed for visual decision making. While your user base is growing, it is critical for the company as a whole to maintain a consitent data governance infrastructure, and keeping everything secure at the entrprise level. Nobody can support that better than SAP. If you are thinking about enabling your department with self-service BI, look beyond the features & functions level and consider a growing user base over a long term BI strategy.
Here are some pictures and facts from the event:
Coffee Bar:
SAP sponsored a specialty coffee station and people loved it!
Solution Provider Session
Tianbing VP Information Technology, Celestica & Jayne Landry, our Global VP & GM Business Intelligence, held an interactive Solution Provider Session to more than 200 attendees. Celestica is a $6B company. Tianbing spoke in our Solution Provider Session about their 5 year Analytics journey. As a longtime customer, TQ was able to show the attendees how Celestica has leveraged SAP to improve demand forecast, project factory outputs & reduce inventory.
The SAP Booth:
In our 20’x30’ booth, we showcased SAP Lumira, SAP HANA, BI Solutions and Predictive Analytics. In our in booth theatre, our product experts showed live demo’s of our solutions.
Our theme was March Madness NCAA. Our action packed booth demonstrated team comparison & college basketball analysis and predictions.
SAP & Microsoft Partnership
In the 20’ x 12” area on the show floor, SAP & Microsoft had a Learning Lab. The product experts held sessions discussing next generation solutions for interoperability, showcasing Microsoft Sharepoint and SAP BusinessObjects BI Universes. Executives and product managers discussed how the partnership will provide self-service and ad-hoc reporting capabilities to consume real time intelligence from shop floor data across multiple platforms.
SAP & Microsoft Party
We celebrated the SAP & Microsoft partnership with a party at Tryst at the Wynn Hotel. We had the time of our life listening to Mycle Wastman & special star guest Deanna Ransom. A big thank you especially to Aundrea for her organizational talent.
@mariofarag @sapanalytics