Over 25,000 attendees descended on the Orlando g County Convention Center June 3-5 to review SAP software developments and updates, and to review SAP roadmaps for development. The record crowd was given access to SAP software plans for Cloud development, leveraging Big Data analysis through the HANA application, and wide-spread efforts to enhance the user experience with SAP, especially with the new Fiori interface.
Perhaps most importantly, CEO Bill McDermott announced in his keynote that Fiori would become a part of ALL SAP installations. Further, where clients had already purchased Fiori, refunds would be made as compensation.
Throughout the keynotes presentations and speaker sessions, pronounced focus was made to stress SAP efforts to improve the simplicity of advanced technology, including implementations, integration, and usage. SAP made it very clear that it was in-line CIO and technology staff demands for improved ease in their technology engagements. perhaps one of the most poignant expressions form keynote presentations was the understanding that CIOs indicated the would actually pay significantly more for technology solutions if they were more simply implemented and utilized.
The other major message outlined across SAPPHIRE was SAPs increased focus on Partnerships, and all efforts made to improve Partner engagement and support. Several important new Partner announcements were made including partnerships with eBay for online support, and integration giant CSC for strategic industry go-to-market efforts.
Thousands of Tweets and Blogs accompanied the SAPPHIRE event - The Industry campus was perhaps the most active campus at SAPPHIRE 2014, especially following SAP announcements for increased industry-by-industry focus to most acutely meet client needs - see for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6FBRJyPuz4&index=7&list=PLT40CdhRWmHCxHwuiCH3xrfN6v8BaFNcs
