Last June 6th and 7th, I attended the annual AUSAPE Forum held by the Spanish SAP User group at “FYCMA - Palacio de Ferias y Congresos” at the nice city Malaga located at the south of Spain. Below you can find my view about the Forum focus, the sessions I attended and activities in which I participated.
Day 1
Jose Ignacio Santillana, AUSAPE Chairman, welcomed all attendees in the main auditorium, UG shared initial instructions on how to get the most benefit from the Forum, and the agenda with the help of the new app (created especially for this Forum). Then current SIG leaders and Delegation representatives were recognised because of the volunteering work and time dedicated to grow the UG.
Before the opening keynote, AUSAPE donated some part of the tickets fee to one local organization (like NGO or social/health associations) as part of its RSC internal activities. This time the donation was destinated to "Asociación Piel de Mariposa Debra", the national charity working on behalf of people in Spain with the genetic skin blistering condition Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB).
This year Forum focused to talk about cybersecurity in the digital enterprise and about myths and facts. In the keynote opening session, there was an interesting talk between Jose Ignacio Santillana and Javier Miyares (SAP Spain COO) around what cybersecurity means to enterprises and also to SAP, and Javier Miyares detailed what they do as a company in terms to protect itself from this actual type of threat.
After this inaugural session, a round table with customers was the principal attraction. In this discussion was quite well reflected how companies understand cybersecurity from customers, lawyers, partners and security authorities point of view.
Later on a lot of interesting parallel sessions from partners started to share customer initiatives round several topics like S/4 HANA, SAP Cloud Platform, Success Factors, cloud infrastructure, Hybris, Hadoop, machine learning and artificial intelligent to mention some.
In addition, there was a demo track where SAP Certification, SAP SII and SAP Mentors Program & SAP Community were explained. I was happy to detail what SAP Mentors Program means to local community and to provide some insights and latest news about SAP Community.
And I had time also to participate in the blood donation activity promoted by AUSAPE jointly with “Consejería de Salud” from local government body in Andalucía.
As a complement, Forum provided some meetings to partners with young people to exchange questions and create new job opportunities.
To conclude first day activities, all attendees went to a nice restaurant close to the sea and enjoyed a nice dinner where networking and social relations were the main dishes.
Day 2
Second day started with more parallel sessions from partners to talk about BigData, Fiori Portals, mobile services, Cloud Analytics, … From SAP side, AppHouse new initiative at Spain and SAP Customer Center Support were detailed.
Afterwards, the plenary sessions returned to the main auditorium. First, there was a round table to discuss current situation and next steps of next topics: SII, GDPR, and IFRS16. Secondly, there was a session to deep into new License Model based on the document concept and into the improved audit process because of first. On stage there were Simon Pritchard, (Director License Management - EMEA South) and Pilar Martinez (Head of Global License Audit & Compliance - South Europe and Francophone Africa). Details and questions where, how and why to change to the new model or not were explained to customers.
Last plenary session came back to cybersecurity topics with an online demo where a SAP system (NW Java Server) was hacked, performance by Ackcent people. They explained guidelines all SAP Customers should follow to improve security and protection of IT landscape.
And last but not least, members of UG Board closed the event sharing with us that +850 people enjoyed these two intensive days representing +350 sap customer companies.
This was an excellent event. The quality of the speakers was very high indeed and cybersecurity topics were very interesting.
It also cannot be underestimated how important networking is at these events, meeting people who I know from SAP Community and good friends, as well as a whole bunch of SAP people from all over the Spanish SAP community.
Next year 2019, AUSAPE will celebrate 25th anniversary of the UG and 15th anniversary of the annual meeting. Zaragoza city will host beginning next June 2019 all the activities to make a special celebration with all the UG members and friends. If I were you, I would block ASAP these dates in your agenda! Here you are the promotional video.
In summary, it was a great Forum!
Now looking forward next year, see you there!
David
Day 1
Jose Ignacio Santillana, AUSAPE Chairman, welcomed all attendees in the main auditorium, UG shared initial instructions on how to get the most benefit from the Forum, and the agenda with the help of the new app (created especially for this Forum). Then current SIG leaders and Delegation representatives were recognised because of the volunteering work and time dedicated to grow the UG.
Before the opening keynote, AUSAPE donated some part of the tickets fee to one local organization (like NGO or social/health associations) as part of its RSC internal activities. This time the donation was destinated to "Asociación Piel de Mariposa Debra", the national charity working on behalf of people in Spain with the genetic skin blistering condition Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB).
This year Forum focused to talk about cybersecurity in the digital enterprise and about myths and facts. In the keynote opening session, there was an interesting talk between Jose Ignacio Santillana and Javier Miyares (SAP Spain COO) around what cybersecurity means to enterprises and also to SAP, and Javier Miyares detailed what they do as a company in terms to protect itself from this actual type of threat.
After this inaugural session, a round table with customers was the principal attraction. In this discussion was quite well reflected how companies understand cybersecurity from customers, lawyers, partners and security authorities point of view.
Later on a lot of interesting parallel sessions from partners started to share customer initiatives round several topics like S/4 HANA, SAP Cloud Platform, Success Factors, cloud infrastructure, Hybris, Hadoop, machine learning and artificial intelligent to mention some.
In addition, there was a demo track where SAP Certification, SAP SII and SAP Mentors Program & SAP Community were explained. I was happy to detail what SAP Mentors Program means to local community and to provide some insights and latest news about SAP Community.
And I had time also to participate in the blood donation activity promoted by AUSAPE jointly with “Consejería de Salud” from local government body in Andalucía.
As a complement, Forum provided some meetings to partners with young people to exchange questions and create new job opportunities.
To conclude first day activities, all attendees went to a nice restaurant close to the sea and enjoyed a nice dinner where networking and social relations were the main dishes.
Day 2
Second day started with more parallel sessions from partners to talk about BigData, Fiori Portals, mobile services, Cloud Analytics, … From SAP side, AppHouse new initiative at Spain and SAP Customer Center Support were detailed.
Afterwards, the plenary sessions returned to the main auditorium. First, there was a round table to discuss current situation and next steps of next topics: SII, GDPR, and IFRS16. Secondly, there was a session to deep into new License Model based on the document concept and into the improved audit process because of first. On stage there were Simon Pritchard, (Director License Management - EMEA South) and Pilar Martinez (Head of Global License Audit & Compliance - South Europe and Francophone Africa). Details and questions where, how and why to change to the new model or not were explained to customers.
Last plenary session came back to cybersecurity topics with an online demo where a SAP system (NW Java Server) was hacked, performance by Ackcent people. They explained guidelines all SAP Customers should follow to improve security and protection of IT landscape.
And last but not least, members of UG Board closed the event sharing with us that +850 people enjoyed these two intensive days representing +350 sap customer companies.
This was an excellent event. The quality of the speakers was very high indeed and cybersecurity topics were very interesting.
It also cannot be underestimated how important networking is at these events, meeting people who I know from SAP Community and good friends, as well as a whole bunch of SAP people from all over the Spanish SAP community.
Next year 2019, AUSAPE will celebrate 25th anniversary of the UG and 15th anniversary of the annual meeting. Zaragoza city will host beginning next June 2019 all the activities to make a special celebration with all the UG members and friends. If I were you, I would block ASAP these dates in your agenda! Here you are the promotional video.
In summary, it was a great Forum!
Now looking forward next year, see you there!
David
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