To my friends interested in Utilities Industry Cloud,
After other industries declined, Thomas Mueller and I agreed to take the ‘Industry Cloud challenge’ to pursue Utilities partner interest in co-innovation use cases to align with Industry Cloud. Generating partner whitespace interest in Cloud for Utilities was already part of our jobs, so having an organized Industry Cloud program [called SPRINT1] around our effort was a no-brainer. The idea was if Thomas and I could get good partner Utilities use cases, others would answer deep-dive partner questions on technical platform and the technical requirements to be deemed Industry Cloud. With the hope that at the end of the program, each partner could have an app on the SAP Store that is deemed Industry Cloud and promoted by the industry teams.
As Thomas and I kicked off our effort in November 2020, we agreed that the use cases needed to be in Utilities ‘whitespace’ with reasonable business case viability for the customer, partner and SAP. We spoke to many partners about Utilities requirements, co-innovation, use cases, Cloud for Utilities roadmaps and solution whitespace, PartnerEdge Build and Industry Cloud. And just because a partner is ‘big’ doesn’t mean they have immediate expertise to grasp the breath of the new program. Thomas and I tried to help the early partner conversations by presenting at SAP TechEd and use the recording as initial partner discussions. The partner use case recruitment process was exhausting and consuming, as each partner required and deserved a conversation about their specific needs and objectives.
Humbly, partners did understand and submitted about 25 use cases. The cases were from both international and regional partners. The cases were for global use case and for local markets. The cases were simple and complex. Some cases were easy to understand, some confusing. After a challenging internal vetting process with other members of the SPRINT1 team from the Industry Program, Co-Innovation Lab [COIL], Business Technology Platform [BTP] Product Management, Cloud for Utilities Development, the group collectively agreed on six partners with 7 use cases.
Cognizant, Cronos, Everis, EY (2), Infosys, Utegration were selected as the first participants in the Industry Cloud SPRINT1 program for their Utilities use cases. A good mix of international, regional, big and not-as-big.
Big thank you to those SAP colleagues that led SPRINT1: Miliau.Pape, Peter.Snowdon, Simon.Hofmann, Joey.Bronner, Paul.Roth, Wael.Labidi, Yevgen.Trukhin and dedicated time to ensure partners were enabled on critical industry cloud subjects.
What next?
For one week – February 4-11 – the next phase of SPRINT1 began with the six partners advancing their use case/business case through deep-dive enablement by those technical experts from that same SPRINT1 team from the Industry Cloud Program, COIL, BTP Product Management, Industry Business Unit, Global Business Development Ecosystem [GBDE] Cloud for Utilities Development. I applaud the many hours my colleagues spent to guide the partners in this Industry Cloud program. The SPRINT1 sessions concluded Feb 11 with a brief presentation by each partner to SAP Utilities/Industry Executive Management for executive awareness of the Industry Cloud use cases. Great sessions with the six partners.
With the partner SPRINT1 use case/business case ‘approved’ on February 11, the partners are then tasked to finalize the development of the app. In the next few weeks, the SPRINT1 team will talk to the partners about app productization, GTM approaches and commercialization. Each partner will complete development based on complexity of the app. Hopefully, these partner apps will be completed in Q2-2021 so SAP can talk about them at Sapphire or the SAP for Utilities event.
SPRINT1 wasn’t a competition. All partners win by eventually posting their Industry Cloud approved app to the app center.
It has been fun, exciting and educational working alongside these interested partners. I'm looking forward to commercialization.
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