News Analyses Roundup - SAP's September Tech Announcements - SAP doubles down on technology

 

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SAP (hybris) acquires Gigya - This is SAP’s LinkedIn acquisition – only it offers IAM and SSO capabilities. The data will be interesting for hybris customers, the technology for SAP CP. And at a friction of LinkedIn (I assume here). A good acquisition for SAP customers. 

 

USS Enterprise with Captain Kirk

SAP gets back to EIM – SAP acquired EIM capabilities with Business Objects (acta) and Sybase – but hasn’t done much with it. The SAP Data Hub is a new and modern attempt to address these markets – and the SAP internal integration challenges. Running elements in Kubernetes containers is an elegant 2017 architecture. Catering for data to stay in place is a risky bet – but SAP Data Hub could feed into a (Big) Data Lake, too. 

 

The SAP Data Hub Scope

Demo at SAP Data Hub Launch

HANA Express gets more cloud support – SAP’s developer version of HANA is now running on (alphabetically) – Azure, Docker, Google Cloud, Huawei Cloud (!) and of course the SAP cloud. Developer versions are important for community learning, so these are good moves to foster the HANA developer community.

 

SAP CP Marketecture

SAP Cloud Platform – a ton is happening – Good to see the traction on SAP’s PaaS, SAP Cloud Platform (CP) where a ton is happening:

• (Finally) ABAP support (beta) – SAP (finally!) courts its largest developer base and gives them a future. And ABAP is SAP’s (Salesforce) Apex or (Workday) Espresso – a very good DSL for business applications.
   
• Mobile SDK (for iOS) – An area where SAP CP needed to get stronger – and the partnership with Apple needs a platform. Expecting the same to happen for Google.
   
• CP Beta on GCP – SAP delivered as announced at CF Summit, always good to see vendors delivering. Important for SAP ML (Tensorflow!) and BigData requirements, and the overall partnership with Google.
   
• S4/HANA SDK - 1000 customers need more software – Time to give the ecosystem a way to extend and build new pieces of S/4HANA, so good to see the SDK.
   
• JAM APIs - finally some social – SAP’s weakest SMAC relationship, social… good to see APIs of JAM coming to CP, but more needs to happen here.
   
• SAP Joins Cloud Native Foundation and Open API Initiative – An overdue move, when seriously courting developers and enterprises. Good to see.
   
• Partnerships with Mendix, Egnyte and Built.io – Important partnerships for document management with Egnite and Built.io. Even more important for low code with Mendix, good to see SAP CP realizing that it can’t do everything inhouse, but low code is key for enterprise PaaS – so watch the space…

   

 

MyPOV

Overall good moves by SAP. Gigya is a good acquisition with multiple benefits. SAP Data Hub is a good attempt at EIM, but SAP customers have their solutions already, it will be a long slog for SAP to get the product in the install base. Good moves on the developer community with bringing HANA Express to more clouds. But most importantly is the beta of ABAP on SAP CP, as it makes CP the future platform of SAP code, and gives a future to almost 3M ABAP developer (my estimates) out there… finally a future for ABAP. SDKs and APIs are always good – we will see what developers and enterprises will build. The beta of SAP CP on GCP is key, given SAP’s commitments to Goggle Tensorflow.

On the concern side, SAP is coming late to many of these moves, but better late – than never. Extra kudos for the ABAP beta – we have asked SAP for many years about the future of ABAP developers. If you lose a developer community it is always hard to make up (look no further than IBM with Rational). And SAP decided to build the road before the destination with EIM. Ok. But SAP needs a SAP native (or certified) BigData / Hadoop capability. All next generation application use cases require it. It’s a red thread across the design thinking driven workshops SAP is having for Leonardo (from what we hear from customers). And deep learning needs BigData to rebuilt itself continuously.

But overall good to see SAP commitment in technology products. Becoming member of CNCF and OAI are good citizen moves on open source – that all key players have do to. It’s not too late, but urgency is needed – and SAP has shown some in the last days. Stay tuned.


Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below (if it doesn’t show up – check here).

More on SAP

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• Summer 2017 News Analysis - SAP Leonardo event July 2017 - read here
• Event Report - SAP Sapphire 2017 - All in on Leonardo, but wait there is more... read here
• News Analysis - SAP reshuffles Executive Board - sets up for next 5 years - read here
• Event Report - SAP Ariba Live - The quest to make Procurement awesome - read here
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• News Analysis -SAP Introduces Jump-Start Enablement Program for SAP Leonardo IoT Portfolio >> Bundling and Simplification matter for IoT - read here
• Event Report - Event Report - SAP TechEd Barcelona - Analytics, ML, PaaS and HANA 2  - read here
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• Event Report - SAP Sapphire 2016 - Top 3 Positives & Concerns: SAP changes - probably for the better - read here
• First Take - SAP Sapphire Day #2 Keynote - read here
• News Analysis - SAP and Microsoft usher in new era of partnership to accelerate digital transformation in the cloud - read here
• First Take -  SAP Sapphire Bill McDermott Day #1 Keynote - read here
• Event Preview - SAP Sapphire 2016 - What to expect and look for - read here
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• First Take - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Day #1 Keynote Top 3 Takeaways - read here
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• Event Report - SAP Sapphire - Top 3 Positives and Concerns - read here
• First Take - Bernd Leukert and Steve Singh Day #2 Keynote - read here
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• First Take - SAP Sapphire Bill McDermott Day #1 Keynote - read here
• In Depth - S/4HANA qualities as presented by Plattner - play for play - read here
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• Progress Report - SAP HCM makes progress and consolidates - a lot of moving parts - read here
• First Take - SAP launches S/4HANA - The good, the challenge and the concern - read here
• First Take - SAP's IoT strategy becomes clearer - read here
• SAP appoints a CTO - some musings - read here
• Event Report - SAP's SAPtd - (Finally) more talk on PaaS, good progress and aligning with IBM and Oracle - read here
• News Analysis - SAP and IBM partner for cloud success - good news - read here
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• First Take - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Top 3 Takeaways Day 1 Keynote - read here.
• Event Report - Sapphire - SAP finds its (unique) path to cloud - read here
• What I would like SAP to address this Sapphire - read here
• News Analysis - SAP becomes more about applications - again - read here
• Market Move - SAP acquires Fieldglass - off to the contingent workforce - early move or reaction? Read here.
• SAP's startup program keep rolling – read here.
• Why SAP acquired KXEN? Getting serious about Analytics – read here.
• SAP steamlines organization further – the Danes are leaving – read here.
• Reading between the lines… SAP Q2 Earnings – cloudy with potential structural changes – read here.
• SAP wants to be a technology company, really – read here
• Why SAP acquired hybris software – read here.
• SAP gets serious about the cloud – organizationally – read here.
• Taking stock – what SAP answered and it didn’t answer this Sapphire [2013] – read here.
• Act III & Final Day – A tale of two conference – Sapphire & SuiteWorld13 – read here.
• The middle day – 2 keynotes and press releases – Sapphire & SuiteWorld – read here.
• A tale of 2 keynotes and press releases – Sapphire & SuiteWorld – read here.
• What I would like SAP to address this Sapphire – read here.
• Why 3rd party maintenance is key to SAP’s and Oracle’s success – read here.
• Why SAP acquired Camillion – read here.
• Why SAP acquired SmartOps – read here.
• Next in your mall – SAP and Oracle? Read here

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