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tomas-krojzl
Active Contributor
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Here is the second part of SAP TechEd Las Vegas keynote coverage – first part can be found here:

If you do not wish to read everything then just move down to the summary part at the end where I tried to summarize in my own words what the Keynote was about (but you will miss a lot of information).

SAP Executive Keynote: Bernd Leukert, Las Vegas 2015

Part 1: Redefining CRM

At the beginning of the keynote bernd.leukert shared the background of story behind #ONE4 partnership with Imagine Dragons. Outcome of the story was that technology today can help one individual to change the world.

He mentioned that digital transformation starts with engagement with customers that expect everyone's business to operate digitally – they need to be in the center independently on which channel they communicate – they expect that communication started on one channel can continue on other channel and they expect personalized experience = multichannel/omnichannel experience with personalized offering. This can lead to increased complexity for enterprise.

According to Bernd SAP innovated “like hell” and in addition to e-Commerce with SAP Hybris SAP launched SAP Hybris Profile (https://www.hybris.com/en/hybris-profile-solution) – allowing you to understand not only registered customers but also anonymous customers. SAP invested in Hybris Customer Experience (https://www.hybris.com/en/customer-experience) – omnichannel Content Management solution which can prevent situations like that same offering is presented differently for each channel.

Then Bernd talked about redefining CRM – he said that consistent engagement is required with the customers across Sales, Service, Marketing and eCommerce. [ More info on this topic can be found here: https://www.hybris.com/en/news-events/press-releases/150915-simplified-front-office ]

Part 2: SAP HANA Cloud Platform as Business Platform-as-a-Service

Bernd said that all the functionality is also being integrated into SAP HANA Cloud Platform (HCP) – so that HCP will give customers access to anything at SAP and challenged all developers to start building HCP applications that will help customers to get competitive advantage.

He said that developing an application in HCP is quite simple as there are many already prepared ready-to-use services available in HCP. With SAP Hybris-as-a-Service based on HCP SAP launched new modular micro-service oriented architecture (today available for Customer Engagement, Commerce, Marketing, Sales and Service).

All that in addition to:

  • core services (like authentication, messaging, work-flow, rules engine, etc.)
  • deep domain-specific business services (around product, shopping cards, loyalty, etc.)
  • mash-up services aggregating data from many other services
  • custom services – created by customers for their own use or created and published by partners

Bernd said that SAP HANA Cloud Platform (HCP) is entire ecosystem of solution providers, software vendors and developers on digital marketplace – enabled by tools and services.

He explained that reason why SAP started with front-office is because it is there where the digital transformation starts because it is there where all key user interaction is happening.

Bernd said that SAP HANA Cloud Platform (HCP) is not “just another” development platform-as-a-Service – it is rather Business Platform-as-a-service because it is platform where all business applications should be developed.

Demo #1: This was followed by demo on web shop created using Hybris template where ian.kimbell extended the web shop to support Mexico territory by adding Spanish translation the portal using translation service. Then he used Hybris-as-a-Service to add localization service to ensure that tax is calculated and included in price.

Here is screen-shot as presented during the keynote:

Part 3: User Experience-as-a-Service

Bernd outlined importance of user experience and highlighted that SAP won Red Dot Award for their SAP Fiori user experience. [ See more at http://news.sap.com/sap-wins-prestigious-red-dot-award-design-concept ]

He mentioned that SAP developed a tool called BUILD that is focused on prototyping applications (simple design, analysis of click behavior, etc.) which can export the results into SAP Web IDE that can be used to develop these applications in SAP HANA Cloud Platform.

Here is screen-shot as presented during the keynote:

Demo #2: This was demonstrated by another demo by Ian Kimbell showing how to design “Rubber Duckie web shop” using BUILD. He used hand-drawn pictures to build first application prototype which was sent to users for evaluation. Results were analyzed using features like heat map showing where users clicked to understand their behavior and expectations. In the end HTML5 components were added to ease the work for developers and result was exported to SAP Web IDE.

Part 4: SAP Vehicles Network

Bernd shared example of big product built on SAP HANA Cloud Platform – SAP co-innovation with Shell, Toyota, Volkswagen, BMW, VeriFone building SAP Vehicles Network cloud offering enabling North America's drivers with connected parking and fueling through a mobile app.

Here is screen-shot as presented during the keynote:

SAP has partnered with fueling and parking companies to enable drivers to activate pump, to pay for the fuel, to reserve parking slots, to open off-street parking gates or to pay for on-street parking from their mobile devices. [ More info on this topic can be found here: http://news.sap.com/sap-launches-sap-vehicles-network-accelerate-cloud-based-vehicle-centric-service... and here http://hana.sap.com/implementation/customer-innovation/solutions/vehicles-network.html ]

Part 5: S/4 HANA as SAP's Digital Core

Then Bernd mentioned that although it is important to offer digital experience to the customers it is equally important to deliver against this promise and this is where SAP Digital Core comes into the play.

He said that S/4 HANA is this Digital Core – flexible and modular but still integrated business suite that will connect personalized digital customer experience to the back-end processes like manufacturing process, invoicing or supply chain.

Here is screen-shot as presented during the keynote:

Bernd highlighted that S/4 HANA is complete reinvention of the architecture – by simplifying the data model (for example eliminating aggregates or indices) SAP was able to reach 10% of the data footprint with improved throughput up to 25-times. All that with redesigned user experience running on SAP Fiori.

He mentioned that new S/4 HANA shipment coming out in November will be having all these features and will be based on SAP NetWeaver 7.50 that was just announced to be available. Since the S/4 HANA was announced 6 months ago there are already more than 1000 customer across 49 countries applying for the product.

Part 6: Cloud for Analytics

Bernd announced SAP Cloud for Analytics – next generation analytic suite combining analytics and reporting together with planning, simulation and prediction – all designed as Software-as-a-Service running on SAP HANA Cloud Platform (HCP).

Data from all kind of applications (S/4 HANA, SAP Cloud for Customer, from CRM, etc.) can be directly accessed in SAP Cloud for Analytics without the need to replicate – that is to ensure access to real time data rather than to past snapshot. The tool is connecting to the individual data sources regardless if that is on-premise or in cloud.

Bernd said that SAP Cloud for Analytics is targeted at all users in company – starting with regular employees ending up with senior executives. He said that SAP Digital Board Room is based on SAP Cloud for Analytics.

Demo #3: This announcement was illustrated by demo from Ian Kimbell showing example of sales representative getting alert on his smart watch with information that sales are dropping. He was then able to perform analytic investigation from any device supporting HTML5 why is this happening by combining internal data sources with 3rd party data sources (location of universities and competitor promotions). Demo was completed by showing ability to change amount of planned promotions from the very same tool and publish the adjustment to other users.

Demo #4: Second demo was showing example of SAP Board meeting based on 7 million records of scrambled data. Ian was able to navigate over predefined dashboards, drill down anytime into more detailed analysis or run simulation for what-if scenarios on top of complex revenue model.

Part 7: Internet of Things

Bernd was speaking about the need to adopt new business models and gave example of Italian Railways equipping all their locomotives with sensors and moving away from planned maintenance to SAP Predictive Maintenance. This means better quality of service and higher customer satisfaction but also big savings.

He said that SAP HANA Cloud Platform (HCP) with Internet of Things capabilities is enabling these use cases. Data is not just stored and processed in real time (creating for example service orders) but can be also analyzed in real time via Cloud for Analytics.

Demo #5: Ian started the demo by connecting sensor to SAP HANA Cloud Platform and demonstrating that rotation of sensor is immediately seen by the application. Data flow was normalized (in real time) by SAP Smart Data Streaming tool so that values stored in HCP are in the right format.

Part 8: Big Data

Common denominator of all the described products was SAP HANA (being part of SAP HCP). The data in the database is the key component. Bernd said that over 80% of all data worldwide was produced in last two years – is there risk that there will be data overload in next five years?

SAP has launched SAP Vora to address this big data problem – where the goal is not to bring all data into SAP HANA but to enable SAP HANA to run logic in Hadoop. SAP Vora is in-memory engine connected to Spark execution framework extending SAP HANA database and therefore also SAP HANA Cloud Platform (HCP).

Bernd closed the keynote by stating that SAP HANA Cloud Platform is most comprehensive and richest Platform-as-a-Service stack.

Whole keynote can be replayed here: http://events.sap.com/teched/en/session/22782

Summary of SAP Executive Keynote: Bernd Leukert, Las Vegas 2015

Bernd explained how to build digital experience for customers and how individual SAP offerings can be used to cover individual parts of enterprise business:

  • SAP Hybris offering can be used to deliver multichannel / omnichannel experience – both on-premise as well as in cloud
  • SAP HANA Cloud platform – development Business Platform-as-a-Service suitable for building custom applications but also base for other SAP products and offerings – component that is connecting everything from SAP together into one piece – supporting modular micro-service oriented architecture where customers can consume SAP or Partner micro-services or build their own micro-services
  • SAP S/4 HANA – reinvented business suite with radically simplified data model that led to data footprint reduction and significant throughput increase – connected to other components through the SAP HANA Cloud Platform (HCP)
  • SAP Cloud for Analytics running on SAP HANA Cloud Platform – giving customer insight into the data from own as well as 3rd party data sources without the need to replicate – analytics, reporting, planning, simulation and prediction for all regular employees and executives in one tool as-a-Service
  • Internet Of Things supported by applications developed in SAP HANA Cloud Platform
  • Big Data containers connected to SAP HANA / SAP HANA Cloud Platform via SAP Vora – in-memory engine connected to Spark execution framework running on top of Hadoop
  • User Experience as-a-Service – BUILD prototyping tool that can be used to understand user interactions during the application design with option to export the result into SAP Web IDE for further development

I would also like to link blog from Bernd: SAP TechEd Las Vegas 2015: Four Major Takeaways

Thanks

I would like to express big thanks to SAP Mentor and SAP HANA Distinguished Engineer programs and also to SAP for giving me change to participate at the event as SAP Blogger.

Thank you for reading the blog – let me know your feedback so that I can do better job next time. If you will spot some interesting blog or article going more into details for some of the topics mentioned above then please add link as comment.

Unfortunately I do not have access to the slide deck used during the keynotes so some very useful pictures are missing. I will update the blog if I will manage to get the slides.

Thanks.

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