Thoughts from a #SAPtd newbie
It’s been over a week since I got back from my first SAP TechEd & d-code. Co-workers and team members have attended SAP TechEd in the past. I’ve also organized ‘virtual TechEd days’ to get my team together to watch a playlist of relevant or insightful sessions. But 2014 was different because I attended TechEd/d-code live as a speaker.
The road to Vegas traces back to the Vancouver SAP Inside Track last September on the subject of Big Data. I had given a talk on the origins and ideas around Big Data. As the Vancouver event was one of a number of such event around the globe, I’d almost forgotten about it. So it was both a surprise and an honour to have Tammy Powlas and Moya Wilson invite me to give my talk to a larger audience at TechEd/d-code.
As a brief introduction, my involvement with SAP dates back to the early 2000 when SAP started offering MDX on SAP BW. Many will know that MDX is alive and well today in HANA too. Over the years, Simba has seen the rise and maturation of SAP technologies alongside macro trends: BW, XML for Analysis, BIA, HANA, Hadoop and NoSQL.
I count 2014 is particularly significant because SAP is now acknowledging and addressing non-in-memory technologies as part of the Big Data scene. It was just last year that SAP started attending Oreilly’s Strata conference. This summer, SAP announced their partnership with Databricks at the Spark Summit.
And now, we have Steve Lucas showcasing partners and products working alongside NoSQL technologies such as MongoDB and harnessing IOT with Flextronics. SAP is hitting its strides with Big Data.
So it is all the more fitting that I had the opportunity to share my thoughts about the origins and ideas behind Big Data and how emergent technologies such as NoSQL and Hadoop fit in.
The trend towards SQL-on-Hadoop demonstrates both how far Hadoop and NoSQL have came in the past two years (that you can pair “SQL” together with “Hadoop” into a catchy moniker) and how much more needs to be done to realize the potential of this new architectural pattern.
Great to meet you in person, George. Thank you for your session.
I wonder if Jason Cao knows the origin of your session was the SAP Vancouver Inside Track he helped organize
Yes, I met up with Jason at TechEd and he suggested that I put this blog entry in. So it all connects.
Greetings George;
Thanks for this post!
> my involvement with SAP dates back to the early 2000 when SAP started offering MDX on SAP BW.
That's exactly when my involvement with SAP started too. It was great to put a person behind the great name of Simba -- I've always respected Simba dating back to then and my hiring manager Guido, on that very team working on MDX on BW. I can even still dig out our SDK documentation from back then: BI Java SDK
It was FANTASTIC to meet you at the conference and I'm so glad you brought your excellent content. Hope our paths cross again soon and that at a minimum this is a regular event.
best,
-m