HANA Cloud Platform - Revisited - Improvements ahead and turning into a real PaaS

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

Read more

I am sure SAP executives would probably play back the whole HANA marketing and product naming story if they could - given the confusion that was created in the initial enthusiasm around the HANA in memory database with HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC), HANA Cloud Platform (HCP) and other HANA xxx products and initiative.

But it’s time to revisit what is happening a few weeks before TechEd / dcode around HANA Cloud Platform (HCP) and SAP was gracious enough to recently brief me on progress, upcoming new features and latest uptake.

Improved – Purpose

For a PaaS platform it is key to understand what kind of applications can be built, potentially run, operated and built with. Naturally PaaS players with evolving PaaS capabilities prefer to be more nebulous than clear on this key area - as the capabilities of the platform expand and naturally vendors don’t want to lose developers to other platforms because of a too restrictive positioning.
 

So credit goes to SAP to provide more clarity in this area, with three major usage scenarios being the focus of HCP now:

1. New Cloud Apps - SAP wants a portion of the ‘born on the web’ apps, which makes sense - but is probably the most competitive area of the three scenarios.
    
2. On-Premise Apps - Building cloud extension to on premise apps with the help of HCP is the most common scenario for SAP internally, and a good one to draft in as a potential HCP user.
    
3. Cloud Apps - Building cloud extensions to cloud solutions. For SAP that would be e.g. putting new cloud based apps on top of SuccessFactors or Ariba, another scenario that is relevant for SAP and with that decision makers should have a relatively high comfort level HCP can help them for the same or similar project scenarios.

MyPOV - SAP is smart at packaging these 3 different scenarios in the usage of HCP – all three of them being close to what SAP needs to do internally anyway, so why not make it good enough / attractive enough for customers and partners attempting to do the same.

Improved – Platform Capabilities

So the marketecture slide for HCP looks as below.
 

And while the bottom part is fairly know and stable since the launch of HANA, the top boxes are part of where I see news and changes:

• Line-of-Business Apps - It is now clear that SAP will develop its new Line of Business Apps with HCP. First products like Simple-Finance are being built on HCP. More will come.
   
• Hybris on CloudFoundry - Interestingly the recent SAP acquisition hybris will build its next generation platform on top of CloudFoundry, which becomes / is part of HCP.
   
• Customer / Partner Apps - SAP expects customers and partners to build their application – based on the three above mentioned scenarios with the help of HCP.

MyPOV – For the longest time SAP development and platform tools have been proprietary, despite all attempts to make ABAP and the ABAP platform a ‘standard’ business platform. . If there is a standard programming language these days for business applications, it is certainly more Java and Java byte code compatible languages…. than ABAP. So it is good to see that SAP is supporting these languages, but equally probably the most popular large enterprise PaaS, CloudFoundry (here is my News Analysis of the partnership announcement). That this happens as part of the hybris project should serve as a good confidence building point for users of HCP, as SAP needs to deliver the next version of hybris and wants to run that largely in its own (or partner) data centers. So the CloudFoundry integration into HCP has to succeed – otherwise SAP will be in a totally different challenge. Lastly – by building commerce functions as part of HCP, SAP creates another attractive reason to use HCP always - assuming SAP will provide good enough commerce functionality and will open it up to HCP users –as they key next generation application capabilities of commerce are ‘baked’ into the platform.

Notable is also the very bottom – with using both SAP and partner datacenters. And while SAP started out doing everything themselves, they have signed up partners on the data center side, will be good to check-in at another opportunity to see how these partners are supported and how successful they are at this early point of product life for HCP.

Lastly note the subtitle of the slide: “The in memory PaaS.” That is certainly a genuine statement as HANA runs on RAM – but also harbors some concerns, more on that below.

SAP is using the following three packages for HCP

1. Infrastructure Services - This is the closest SAP will dabble into the IaaS world. If a customer has a HANA license, SAP will operate it – as part of the infrastructure services. It is BYOL as already earlier announced for HEC last year.
    
2. DB Services - This is the package that will be key for enterprises who will want to build on HANA, and deploy to HEC, using HCP as the PaaS.
    
3. Application Services - Here SAP throws in its weight around business APIs, and allows customers to build higher level applications (remember ‘composite apps’?) on top of these. Certainly with a different license construct than the other two packages, fair enough.

More on the services offerings around the announcement earlier this year is here.

MyPOV – With these three packages SAP covers the key license needs of the most common usage scenarios. And it makes sense to break these into more granular packages as SAP has done as the cloud game is all about load derived economies of scale – so the more load SAP can get e.g. for its Infrastructure Services, the better for the overall success of SAP in the cloud.

Improved - Outlook

It is always key to look at the plans ahead when making a decision for a PaaS. And SAP has recently expanded these plans:

 

With the extension to other database services – starting with the Sybase products HCP becomes a broader PaaS tool. We mentioned the support of CloudFoundry before, with the addition of docker SAP offers something for the container crazed demand that we see these days. And we have already mentioned the AppServices. Here SAP shares a similar vision like IBM with its BlueMix (also CloudFoundry based) vision of an API economy.

MyPOV – It was already key to see SAP opening the runtimes to Java, node.js and standard support for HTML5 with SAP UI5. The ultimate test on the database side will be to see when SAP will not only support in-house databases (Sybase, MaxDB etc) – but also other leading databases (Oracle 12c, IBM DB2 etc.) and NoSQL databases (Hadoop, MongoDB, Couchbase etc). The opening of the database support will be key in terms of customers and developer classifying HCP as a general PaaS player or a SAP ecosystem play. The addition of docker is a very good move, again my preference is a load perspective. SAP as a later entry in the IaaS game needs to chase loads to drive up utilization of its data centers. And it may be the same customers that recently drove VMware to support docker that may have had a word with SAP, too. And certainly docker makes a nice developer story.

Finally the Apps Services area is an interesting differentiator. SAP will have to make clear how these APIs will be licensed, supported and operated, but a functionally rich enterprise Paas is a powerful value proposition that both Salesforce.com (see here) and IBM (see here) are already using.

But don’t pop open the champagne yet…

Schrodinger's Privacy: A Master Class

Steve Wilson

Former Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Steve Wilson is former VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, leading the business theme Digital Safety and Privacy. His coverage includes digital identity, data protection, data privacy, cryptography, and trust. His advisory services to CIOs, CISOs, CPOs and IT architects include identity product strategy, security practice benchmarking, Privacy by Design (PbD), privacy engineering and Privacy [or Data Protection] Impact Assessments (PIA, DPIA). Coverage Areas: -  Identity management, frameworks & governance-  Digital identity technologies-  Privacy by Design -  Big Data; “Big Privacy”-  Identity & privacy innovation Previous experience: Wilson has worked in ICT innovation, research, development and analysis for over 25 years. With double…...

Read more

Master Class: How to Protect Your Customer's Digital Identity and Personal Data

A Social Media Week Sydney event #SMWSydney
Law Lounge, Sydney University Law School
New Law School Building
Eastern Ave, Camperdown
Fri, Sep 26 - 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

It's often said that technology has outpaced privacy law. Many digital businesses seem empowered by this brash belief. And so they proceed with apparent impunity to collect and monetise as much Personal Information as they can get their hands on.

But it's a myth!

Some of the biggest corporations in the world, including Google and Facebook, have been forcefully brought to book by privacy regulations.
So what does privacy law really mean for social media businesses in Australia?

In this Social Media Week Master Class I will:

• unpack what's "creepy" about certain online practices
• show how to rate data privacy issues objectively
• analyse classic misadventures with geolocation, facial recognition, and predicting when shoppers are pregnant
• critique photo tagging and crowd-sourced surveillance
• explain why Snapchat is worth more than three billion dollars
• analyse the regulatory implications of Big Data, Biometrics, Wearables and The Internet of Things.

We couldn't have timed this Master Class better, coming two weeks after the announcement of the Apple Watch, which will figure prominently in the class!

So please come along, for a fun and in-depth a look at social media, digital technology, the law, and decency.

Register here.

About the presenter

Steve Wilson is a technologist, who stumbled into privacy 12 years ago. He rejected those well meaning slogans (like "Privacy Is Good For Business!") and instead dug into the relationships between information technology and information privacy. Now he researches and develops design patterns to help sort out privacy, alongside all the other competing requirements of security, cost, usability and revenue. His latest publications include:

• "Big Privacy: The new standard for Big Data Privacy" from Constellation Research, and

• "The collision between Big Data and privacy law" due out in October in the Australian Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy.

Foot Locker same day delivery – embracing Matrix Commerce

pending

Guy Courtin was formerly Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research covering Matrix Commerce and how the Internet of Things drives the evolution of commerce.  Guy has over 15 years experience in the technology space and specifically in the supply chain space. Most recently he was the Vice President of Research at SCM World. Where he focused on the service providers that empowered supply chains. Prior to SCM World, Guy held numerous senior positions. He was responsible for product marketing at RSi, a retail supply chain solution provider. There managed RSi’s go to market strategy around their leading cloud based supply chain solutions. He also spear headed Progress Software’s supply chain group. Where he was responsible for driving revenue and market share as well…...

Read more

Earlier this week Foot Locker announced it was going to start testing same day delivery for consumer purchases. Click here for the press release. This is an excellent case study of what we at Constellation Research are discussing with Matrix Commerce. It is a prime example of where the consumer voice and needs have converged with the retailer’s supply chain.

Foot Locker will be testing the same day delivery in 5 locations between the San Francisco and the Los Angeles area. In order to address the last mile delivery challenges, Foot Locker will be partnering with Deliv for the logistics of getting the product from the stores to the consumer’s location. Think of Deliv as doing for small parcel shipping to consumers as what Uber did for personal transportation – crowdsourcing last mile transportation. A very interesting challenge and service to say the least.

The voice of the consumer continues to grow when it comes to asking for and seeking the ability to get their products where they want it and how they want it. For retailers such as Foot Locker it is imperative that they determine how they can meet these demands from their consumers. They are already addressing their customer’s needs by allowing for online ordering with in store pick up. This new pilot is the natural next step.

As Daphne Carmeli, CEO at Deliv stated, “Foot Locker who surpass their customer’s expectations by giving them the ability to receive their merchandise when they want it, including same-day…” This is one area where the likes of Foot Locker, who are brick and mortar retailers at heart, have an advantage over eCommerce giants like Amazon. Foot Locker already has a number of distribution centers (DCs) that are located close to their customers – the actual Foot Locker stores. With the likes of Deliv’s services, they can now solve the last mile delivery issue that has made such services a logistics headache.

This success of the pilot project will be interesting to observe. Some questions a retailer such as Foot Locker will have to address:

• Can the staff in their stores be able to not only service the customers that come into the physical store, but also efficiently pick and pack the orders? Store personnel are trained to service a customer in person, Foot Locker will now have to ensure proper training for this staff to have to properly prepare orders for home delivery. Not as easy as it may sound.
• How does a crowdsource delivery offering like Deliv handle customer interactions? Once you start delivering products to consumers’ home you are exposing your brand – the person doing the delivery represents your company whether or not they are on your payroll.
• If your store acts more and more as a DC, how do you handle returns and restocking issues? Again, similar to the first bullet point, your staff is trained to sell products to customers who are in the store, now you are adding tasks to their jobs. How ready are they to handle this added demand?

The ability of companies such as Foot Locker to offer same day delivery is a natural progression when it comes to Matrix Commerce (other retailers such as Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s also announced this week they are running same day delivery pilot projects). That does not mean the challenges aren’t there…on the contrary the complexity remains and may become increased as Foot Locker travels down the learning curve. These companies are making the correct choice when it comes to offering such services, but they need to show patience with the process. There will clearly be some growing pains. However, similar to when eCommerce exploded on the markets in the late 1990s, the genie is out of the bottle. Now it is a matter of how well retailers and their partners meet the ever increasing speed for fulfillment.

As the Foot Locker EVP of Operations, Mike Owens, stated, “We want our customers to experience speed in everything they do, from shooting hoops to on the track.” It is all about speed…just make sure you don’t sacrifice quality for speed!

First Take - Infor’s Inforum - Top 3 Day 1 Keynote Takeaways

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

Read more

We have the opportunity to attend Infor’s user conference Inforum in New Orleans - which is well attended with over 6000 participants.
 

Here are my Top 3 Takeaways from the Day 1 keynote:

• Infor Xi - Infor announced its new platform, Infor Xi. Infor Xi is key for Infor as it will be the platform on which it will run its next generation, CloudSuite products. Infor Xi comes with a good DNA, leveraging AWS as public cloud infrastructure and popular open source products like PostgreSQL, using standards like HTML5 and XML. Infor complements AWS with key monitoring and support features needed for enterprises, as COO Murphy presented.

Infor Xi Platform Features

• CloudSuite - And on top of Infor Xi runs Infor Cloudsuite Corporate - for now mainly horizontal functions like Finance, HCM and Purchasing. CloudSuite Corporate will be the applications foundation for the microvertical applications that Infor is bringing to the cloud with the help of Infor Xi. On top of that Infor today announced CloudSuite Business, the first vertical CloudSuite offering (based on Syteline).  

Scholl presents CloudSuite

• UpgradeX - When vendors have a new go to platform as Infor has with CloudSuite, it is key to move their install base to it. And with a vast, fragmented across numerous acquired applications install base like Infor - these upgrade / migration programs are even more crucial for customer and the vendor. We will check in the 24 hours to get a pulse on where the UpgradeX programs stands and what customers think about it. 

MyPOV - A good start to Inforum with key product announcements with Infor Xi and Infor CloudSuite Business. It will be key for Infor to show how the deep (micro) vertical capabilities will migrate over to the new cloud world, with programs like UpgradeX playing a key role to move the customer base. We will use the next days to get some clarity on both.

What do you want to know about the internet of things? Here's what we want to know.

The Importance of Addressing the Unknown

Here's a question: why, with the growing number of IoT "experts" in the field, are there unanswered fundamental questions about IoT?

It seems that in the excitement over the potential of IoT, industry experts and their audiences have glossed over some basic details regarding how, exactly, IoT will work. Leaving us with questions!

Here's another question: what can we learn from this 'excitement blindness' that we can apply to disruptive technology implementation strategies in our own organizations? 

Join R “Ray” Wang as he interviews entrepreneur and technology scholar, Richie Etwaru about this 'excitement blindness' about our knowledge of internet of things.

You will learn:

• 10 things we want to know about the Internet of Things
• How will connectivity work? What about privacy? Can our internet infrastructure even handle the demand?
• How to avoid the pundit effect (talking a lot, but knowing little) when implementing new technologies 

Webinar Details:

• September 19, 2014 11:00a.m. PT / 2:00p.m. ET
• Speakers: R "Ray" Wang, Richie Etwaru

Digital Transformation Adoption: A Point-by-Point Update

We did it!

Finally, we reached peak of the hype cycle for Digital Transformation.

Congratulations, we couldn’t have done it without your help.

Thank you!

I first wrote, seriously, about it earlier this year after many years of mentioning the coming paradigm shift that would revolutionize business (not an evolution like social media and social networks).

Since then just about every Tom, Patty, and Rene has written about it (that my gender neutral version of Tom, Dick, and Henry by the way…) and taken a stance about it.  Most of those stances are — nuanced, to say it a way that is not using the words “biased” and “wrong” but at least they managed to move the needle in some direction.

I would like to take the next few minutes of your attention (about 15-20 if you believe Wikipedia) to help you understand where we are, where we are going, and what’s going on right now in the world of Organizations in regards to Digital Transformation.

Two caveats: first, I won’t link to anything or anyone else unless I see value and lack of hype in what they are saying.  If you want hype, you can Google “Digital Transformation” (yes, with the quotes) and you can get as much hype as you can stomach.  Second, I don’t have all the answers (likely don’t have many either) but I can give you some data and information that will help you feel better about this paradigm shift (read my past post to understand why this is a paradigm shift).

Ready?

First: the Hype

About that hype statement above.

If you ever used Google trends you know how this works: any topic is scored on a scale from zero (no substantial amount of searches or content created around it) to 100 (top trending topic in Google searches and content found via spidering).  While I don’t know the algorithm used to compute the score, I have found them very accurate in the past.

Here is the chart for Google Trends for Digital Transformation (click on the chart to navigate to Google Trends site for more details)

By contrast, here is the chart for Google Trends for Social Media (click on the chart to navigate to Google Trends site for more details)

And the first thing you will notice is that the both took different lengths of time to get to the top.  Which is why, as Gartner has said from the beginning, hype only serves as birddogging for early adopters (more on that below).

Second: The Progress

That brings me to the second point I want to share: this is early adopter’s time for digital transformation.

By definition-ish, early adopters are those organizations that are comfortable with managing risk and taking chances with untested technology and tools and even concepts.  They foresee a potential value that exceeds the potential damage that could occur if they were to move forward.  Of course, this is done within a framework of risk management and methodical trial-before-commitment – but that is risk management 101 and the topic for another post.

The reality is that without those early adopters jumping in ahead of everyone else and “testing the waters” we wouldn’t be able to move to mainstream adoption (around 30% of the overall market adoption).  There are about 5% of organizations that fit into the early adopter category – and not all topics and tools apply to all of them: thus, when I say “early adopter’s time” I mean a handful of organizations around the world actively doing digital transformation.

Which means, there are more people talking than doing this – and use that as a yardstick when someone tells you they “know how to do digital transformation”.

Third: The Management Stance

I often, read every day many times a day sometimes, get asked who is doing digital transformation? who can i point to that has done a good job and can be used as an example.

Funny thing happened on the way to this answer, everyone now is doing digital transformation… and naming CDO (chief digital officer) and CTO (chief transformation officers) along the way.

Is this the right move?  Read on.

If you need a generic statement, this is a key top-level strategic initiative that is often led by the CEO, the COO, or in very few cases someone below them.

There is no single purchaser of “digital transformation” projects – nor should it ever be (and I did mentioned this in my previous post also).  This is not a software purchase – this is about transforming your business (and that is led by executives if it is to be successful).

There is positively no way this is going to happen in a “ground-up” or grassroots way.  The fact that a lot of people in the organization know about digital, understand the impact, and (frankly) are devoted users of digital makes no difference.  There may be some lab-based projects here and there of tools and technologies – but this is an infrastructure-level, all-in initiative.  Nothing short of that would work, and nothing like that works without executive support.

Mea Culpa, I did say last year at a conference that CDO is the mix of CMO and CIO as a visionary statement together with friend Ray Wang (of Constellation Research).  Since then, we both retracted that statement (we actually did it in the same conference this year, video is forthcoming soon) and provided some guidance as to how to embrace digital transformation.

If you absolutely, positively need to point to someone that is “buying” or leading the efforts, there is another trend to consider…

Remember your CIO?  yeah, that funny person who is always worried about deploying tablets, laptops, securing and integrating and managing data, and developing custom applications for you — but that does not get it?

Guess what? They have been getting it.  Big Time.

As I highlighted in my first post, this is about infrastructure.  Cloud underlies the transformation.  Without PUBLIC cloud, there is no possibility of transformation.  Go ahead and debate me below if you want.

Who owns the cloud infrastructure? Yep, you got it. The CIO.

But, wait – there’s more! (wanted to say for a while now)…

Before you pack your bags and head to haunt every CIO in the world for budget, read a little bit more.

Business stakeholders are represented in this debate by the CMO.  A large part of that is because Gartner said that technology budgets would explode by 2017 for CMOs.  Which is likely true, except…

Except that they forgot two points surrounding that “explosion”:

1. They did not mention that CMOs budgets are for more than just technology.  The technology portion of their budgets are not what is exploding – the expense in advertising, media, content generation, etc. is what is exploding.  And there is not a lot that can be moved from there to technology (we will argue allocation from traditional media to digital in another post if you want, but not part of this discussion).  Even if the technology budgets were to be exploding, the starting point is so low compared to IT budgets (which even if continuing their slow 5% average expansion would still crowd over CMO budgets) that the amount of spend is — well, not worth the expense to target it (as a lot of vendors found out in the last few months).
2. CMOs had a hard time proving the use of the “expanded” budgets in social as they allocated the money in the past few years.  Let’s face it, Social was not what was supposed to be.  True, a communications evolution happened – and brands needed to be there.  But the change to consumer behaviors, the link from social to expanded revenues, the correlation between social presence (or lack of the same) and higher revenues was not there.  Promises made around the social revolution did not, for the most part, come true – and that hurt the reputation and credibility of the CMOs that lined up behind it.

So, if the CMO is not the one with budgets for digital transformation, and the CIO is the gate-keeper (but not the purse keeper) what’s going in the organization? Is this another “who owns social?” discussion.

Hardly, there is a massive change adrift – but you have to pay attention to notice it.

Enter your old, ignored friend – the COO.

Who? COO? What is that? Do we even have one?

Yes, you do – and she (or he, to be politically correct) is becoming the unsung hero for digital transformation.

There is a change in organization chart, partly driven by the fact that CMO-as-a-proxy-for-business-stakeholders were not able to deliver for social initiatives, and partly because CEOs realized that strategies don’t get implemented just because you think about them.

The new dynamic duo of the CEO and COO work in tandem, with the Executive handling the vision and strategy and the Operations chief handling tactical and implementation.  The rest of the C-level peeps end up reporting to one or the other – as need be.  Yes, even if you don’t have C-level people but SVP, EVP, GVP, or MVP – or whatnot, the concept is the same: CEOs strategize, COOs operationalize.

OK, you say, fine.  This is happening – but who is holding the budget for digital transformation?

No one.  Yet.

There is no budget yet allocated, and very little I am seeing being allocated for 2015 budget cycles, for digital transformation.  And that brings me to the next point.

Fourth: The Gurus

If no one is spending money, and few are doing it, then who do I turn to for help and assistance in understanding this paradigm shift?

Well, first of all – me.  This blog will continue to publish more and more content about this transition as we move forward.  I am always happy to extend conversations from this “printed” world to the real world anytime.

Second, turn to those that have been talking and writing about it for some time now.  In no particular order (and because I am too lazy to put them in alphabetical order) they are:

IBM (good research, but lacking field-level people IMO that can extend that research), Accenture, Ernst & Young Advisors (or just EY so their branding police don’t get me), and Deloitte are all staffed with good people that have been writing, researching, and talking about it for some time.

Their research reports, published in the past few months, are worth reading as they reflect the thoughts of executives around the world (which highlight the intent, but not the execution yet on these ideas).

These are the players in the US Market (and not so much at a global level – yet).  If you are in EMEA, then Cap Gemini has been doing quite well, and EY (see? I learn) is gaining ground as well.  Accenture had a slow start, but is gaining ground quickly there also.  My good friend Jesus Hoyos from Solvis Consulting as always has the coverage on the Latin American market.

Most of the outsourcers have been also doing quite well in expanding their presence in this field (including some of the names I mentioned above) but I will let my good friends at Horses for Sources cover that in more detail as they are far more entrenched in that world that I am.

There are many others that have been talking about it – but in my interactions with executives in all countries and of all sizes I have not heard many compliments – nor have I seen a change in their organizations to support their thought leadership.

As I mentioned above, many people talk about it (which is why we reached the top of the hype cycle), but few have actually the bandwidth and knowledge to take it to the next level.

Fifth: The Model

When I first released the “model” for Digital Transformation I challenged you to take it and improve it.  I said, this is just an idea – but it need to get better.

There were a few people that took me on it, and apparently still working on it – had limited contact since they started, but no major changes.

However, since I have been using this model extensively in conversations and consulting with vendors and brands, I came up with a few changes to it.  Look right below

I am not going to send you to the previous post (although it is linked here if you want to go there) to compare, so let me tell you some of the discoveries I made since (and feel free to add your links to the comments if you have expanded on the previous model since).

The most notable one, the interfaces layer at the top.

This used to be part of what is now the legacy pillar on the right side, but have since separated.  Why?

Glad you asked…

I used to say that interfaces and legacy were all part of one giant layer: you collected information from legacy apps, processed it, and because for the most part the interfaces were not “upgraded” yet (read, not mobile or IoT or similar) then we would just process it back to legacy.  While I still maintain that is the case for most (read again, most) situations, to future-proof the model the interfaces layer had to decouple from the legacy layer.

Once I did that, I also looked at the flow of process and information through the framework (the whole idea for the framework was to have a blueprint of sorts that could be used to manage the transformation for the organization) and in doing that I realized also that the interfaces layer must be overarching and cover direct output from analytics and direct output from legacy pillars.

In this way, there is a more natural flow that happens in this model:

1. The interfaces layer requests an experience (regardless of the client or channel)
2. The experience layer deconstructs the requests and determines what to deliver
3. Queries are then dispatched to the information, analytics, and legacy layer to secure the necessary data / knowledge and / or content to build the outcome
   • If necessary, it may also use the cloud layer to obtain ancillary but remote information)
4. All this information is delivered back to the experience layer
5. Then it is prepared for delivery via any interface

Pretty simple flow, with lots of work to make sure it is delivered as expected.

For a deeper discussion of how this works and how it can be adapted to any situation (including how it applies to your specific situation) contact me.  That is too much to include in this post.

Phew, thanks for hanging in there…

Yes, close to 3,000 words – but it is shorter than last time, and it is still a brief summary.

I have often been told two things:

I don’t do things on the timeframe that I propose.  Yes, I know it is a shocker – but sometimes practice takes longer than intent (which is why I have been trying to write this for about 2 months now – needs time to “solidify” in my mind first).  And there is no better “push” for me to do things than committing them in public as I have you to push me to do it (and I hate to not deliver on a promise).

I need to write a book about “this”.

Thus, I am going to use this platform to tell you that I am committed (now that I said it publicly) to write the book about “this”.  What this is and what shape the book will take is to be decided in the next few weeks.  However, this will be researched, expanded, and delivered in the form of a book next year.

With that in mind, I will use this medium to publish summaries of each of the layers and pillars in the model above, starting with the cloud layer.  Yes, Mr. Sameer Patel -I will finally write that post you have been pestering me about for a long time – including the one-page-summary of cloud models… Geez, the lack of patience.

I hope.

Comments? Arguments? Disagreements? Agreements?

Comments section below is open to everyone and not moderated (although WordPress will ask me to confirm if you are first time commenter; I don’t even look at the comment and I approve them).o

Challenges in Customer Service - Today - The Mirage Las Vegas

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

Read more

After a delayed flight back from the East Coast to Las Vegas, I made it to the Mirage shortly after midnight, and was still in a good mood - tweeting that only in Las Vegas you have a line checking into a hotel after midnight...

But then the challenges started to pop up fast and furiously:

• Despite having a non smoking room reserved the receptionist told me that they had only smoking rooms left. Not a good start.    
   
• In my hope that my MLife loyalty would change something - I wanted to provide my loyalty card number, only to note that I didn't have it. But I knew from other MGM properties that the receptionist can look that number up with the address. Not so my receptionist - she said it's not possible.... But I pressed and she then 'found a way' to do it, excusing herself for a 'brain fart' (her words!).
  
  [Epilogue - she gave me a number - but it wasn't mine as I discovered back home...]
   
• So I make myself to the room - enter, can't find the light switch, but can see the bathroom, find the 'standard' setup of the light switch and ... there are toiletries on the sink. As I make my discover a female voice says faintly 'Hello?' - to which I retreat with profuse apologies that this was my room according to the front desk and my key opened the door... I doubled check once outside again - and yes it was my room.

• So off to the service phone on the floor (22nd) only to find out - that it doesn't .... work.
   
• Next down and to the service telephone at the bottom of the elevator...
   
• Receptionist asks me to come back to reception, which I politely decline with my luggage and given it's almost half a mile and its quarter to 1 AM. So he says he will re-program my key and give me a new room over the phone. Incredously I ask if that worked, as I never have seen that working - but he reassures me this will work.
   
• Back to 22nd floor and of course... it does not work.
   
• Back down (service phone broken) and guess I sounded irritated - as the switchboard offers to connect me with the hotel manager... I though the cavalry is here.
   
• The hotel manager can't offer an apology but says he will send someone with the key. 15 miniutes later as I am picking up the phone again - a young gentleman shows up and gives me the new keys... promises to call me if I make it in the room (...).
   
• I make it to the room and find new - never seen equipment - an air purifier.

• Needless to say I never get a call in the room - and being 1:10 and having a 5 AM start I resort in my fate... needless to say the most smoke stinking room I ever was in. Luckily I was able to open the window, but let me tell you that the slightest move in the bed of a smoking room unleashes plenty of smoke.
   
• The next day - on a conference call I took from my (smoking) room - the house cleaning maid walks in on me - no knocking whatsoever. Before your phantasies go wild - I was decently dressed.
   
• Around 2 PM - I was supposed to get my new room assigned by noon - I call myself the hotel manager. The reply is 'oh yeah - let me send someone'.
   
• And yes - 10 minutes later another young gentleman shows up and gives me the new room keys.
   
• I was glad to be in my new non smoking room. 2 more house cleaning walk ins - I know use the deadbolt. And they left me a present:

• Also it looks like taking away trash guests need to leave lying around - as there was no dust bin - does not get picked up either. Or hotel dishes: 

]

• Generally it looks like the Mirage Las Vegas is falling apart - just two pictures from my bath room door. Door handle not secured by screws and broken off wood at the door.

 

Throughout my 3 day and 3 night stay - where I documented all of the above on Twitter, no one of the Mirage bothered to reach out to me. It was like all of this did not happen... 

Why CIOs Attend Connected Enterprise

IT budgets are shrinking, and you know that investing in emerging technology will give your organization a competitive advantage in the era of digital disruption. You know that innovation is no longer a luxury, but a necessity to remain competitive.  You're ready to make the case for new and emerging technologies. 

Connected Enterprise is not for every CIO.

Connected Enterprise is for the forward-thinking CIO. CIOs who attend Connected Enterprise are not interested in simply maintaining IT systems. CIOs who attend Connected Enterprise are interested in challenging the status quo, breaking down silos, and experimenting with new business models in order to introduce emerging technologies to their organizations. 

Forward-thinking CIOs Benefit from Connected Enterprise's Technology Optimization & Innovation Programming

Connected Enterprise's Technology Optimization & Innovation sessions analyze the strategic balance between investing in innovation while optimizing the cost of providing support to existing IT systems. New economic realities and shrinking IT budgets necessitate that IT organizations become better at justifying new projects, more efficient in delivering IT services, and smarter at adopting new technologies that can deliver business value while reducing costs.  Organizations must work together to optimize the cost reduction that funds innovation, and learn how to balance the needs of business with the responsibilities of IT.  Is your organization ready for the shift to innovation?  Have you developed a strategy to fund innovation with optimization? 

Connected Enterprise's Technology Optimization & Innovation sessions will teach you how to create a strategy to balance innovation and IT optimization. You will discover new technologies and learn how to justify innovation projects to your organization. You'll learn how to instill a culture of innovation in your organization from other CIOs who successfully implemented disruptive technologies in their own organizations. 

Technology Optimization & Innovation Sessions:

• EXECUTIVE EXCHANGE: Infusing a culture of Innovation In an Age of Digital Transformation
• VISIONARIES: How to fund innovation through technology optimization and innovation
• EXECUTIVE EXCHANGE: Industry Spotlight - How Sports Has Changed With Digital Business

What It's Like to be a CIO in Silicon Valley panel from Connected Enterprise 2013

Register soon! Early bird pricing ends September 30!

Event Report - SAP SuccessFactors picks up speed - but there remains work to be done

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

Read more

SAP SuccessFactor’s yearly North America user conference, SuccessConnect concluded this week in Las Vegas. It was the largest SuccessConnect ever, with over 2200 attendees, a good indicator that the acquisition and integration of SuccessFactors by SAP is on a good track. That was not a guaranteed outcome a year ago – my takeaways of SuccessConnect 2013 as reference are here – and of the Day 1 keynote are here.

A lot of important product and services news were announced, tough to pick the Top 3 – but here you go:

1 - Roadmap Sharing 

As Ettling keynoted on Day 1 of SuccessConnect, SuccessFactors is now sharing its roadmap for the next 12 months to come. To deliver on that was the task for Dmitri Krakovsky on Day 2. He didn’t share the dates – but the roadmap items – see below. 

 

SuccessFactors Roadmap items as shared by Krakovsky

 

And that were indeed a lot of roadmap items for the next 12 months to come. Let’s look at the ones with the most impact:

• SuccessFactors is doing its integration homework - After a conservative first year (besides EmployeeCentral) the SuccessFactors product team is picking up on a number of innovations coming from SAP.
  
  • More Localizations, more Payroll countries and more documentation are leveraging SAP scale, investment and processes. 
  • On the technology side, new customers will be running fully on HANA at some point in 2015, the Fiori UX will be uptaken and SuccessFactors will use HANA Cloud Integration (if that will be the bye bye for Dell Boomi remains to be seen). 
  • And SuccessFactors will also leverage and work with other SAP acquisitions, improving the Fieldglass integration and using KXEN’s InifiteInsight for Analytics.
     

• On the functional side SuccessFactors focusses on Learning (more below), improved Workforce Planning (positive Time), Auto Sourcing (in Recruiting), Offboarding and extension of Global Benefit.
   
• Mobile gets a big push with new native support for Apple (demoed in the keynote) and Android (coming next year).
   
• Moreover SuccessFactors will support the visually impaired with additional color palettes, that help e.g. the red / green blind user population. Why this did not morph into a full ADA support announcement / roadmap was one of the questions I did not manage to ask, but this is a first step in that direction.
   
• And last but not least SuccessFactors has already an Applications marketplace, a good instrument to help partners to promote and monetize their offerings, something not seen too often in the industry yet (see e.g. Cornerstone’s announcement here).
   
• Finally there was an entry on the slide named ‘Model S’, the codename for SAP’s new simple Suite. If there by accident or dropped by purpose to start a conversation, it certainly means that a part of the SuccessFactors capacity will go towards SAP’s next generation suite. 

 

New iPhone Learning Client

2 - Learning front and center

SuccessFactors is executing a major learning push, leveraging its acquired Plateau products and expertise to advance two critical functions that so far have been more or less inexistent or badly broken in learning management: The user generated, self-creation of content and the easy identification of relevant learning content, aided by analytics. If SAP can solve both of these challenges in their next generation Learning product, then enterprises should take note.

I was impressed by the approach taken with analytics – Krakovsky called it analytical racks – that just run to predict the best course recommendations – and are added or taken off when obsolete. That comes the closest to where I see analytics going, I call it model thrashing. Just run as many models you can get hold off and use the one for the day or even for the hour that has the best prediction fidelity.

Ettling presents Service Improvements on Day 1

3 - Services strengthening

The services announcements made by Ettling made my top three event takeaways on the Day 1 keynote and now as well for the event. The separation of the upgrade time frames for the test vs. the production instances is a key quality for SaaS customers. And knowing 6 weeks before a release what will likely be part of it is essential to take the necessary preparation in learning and change management that enterprises may have to prepare for.

Tidbits

• EmployeeCentral - moving on - Good to see more traction in EmployeeCentral, starting with plans on UI improvement, the addition of more countries and more payroll support as well as the addition of positive time. It is also clear that SuccessFactors plans to use EmployeeCentral and its technology framework (MDF) as the basis for its next generation HCM SaaS product, as more talent management functions are being built on the same framework. 

• Analytics - InfiniteInsight coming -  SuccessFactors already has a very good intelligence platform with the acquisition of Australian infoHRM that is widely used acroos the suite. The product team is now actively working with the InfiniteInsight product of KXEN (acquired by SAP, my takeaways here), which will beef up SuccessFactors analytical capabilities significantly. 

• Recruiting - improved - A number of enhancements for the Recruiting product, the most important being the improved and automated interview scheduling, which brings SuccessFactors to par in this critical productivity / efficiency function with Workday. 

• Jam - plowing on -  The SAP social product is always close to the HCM products, so SuccessConnect was no exception. The product is making good progress in the usability side, the Work Pattern approach has proven itself with partner uptake and it now comes back to foster an ecosystem to garner the uptake. The SuccessFactors Marketplace certainly helps here. 

MyPOV

SuccessFactors is making good progress on all fronts. Tackling the user interface with improvements, up taking more synergies with what SAP can offer and closing competitive gaps are all good practices that every software vendor should practice, but not all manage to pull that off.

The Services improvements received a very warm welcome by customers already at the event, now SAP has to deliver on them.

But then SuccessFactors still has to do a lot of work on harmonizing architectures of acquired products – or rebuilding of these on the new EmployeeCentral / MDF architecture. Or maybe in Model S – or Simple HCM? The sharing of the roadmap for the next 12 months is very good news for customers in order to have the opportunity to align their rollout plans with the product roadmap. Now SAP needs to wrestle some of the thought leadership and commercial success away from Workday, a major task to be undertaken, the starting position has certainly improved compared to year ago.

And more on overall SAP strategy and products:

• 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.

And more about SAP technology:

• News Analysis - SAP commits to CloudFoundry and OpenSource - key steps - but what is the direction? - Read here.
• News Analysis - SAP moves Ariba Spend Visibility to HANA - Interesting first step in a long journey - read here
• Launch Report - When BW 7.4 meets HANA it is like 2 + 2 = 5 - but is 5 enough - read here
• Event Report - BI 2014 and HANA 2014 takeaways - it is all about HANA and Lumira - but is that enough? Read here.
• News Analysis – SAP slices and dices into more Cloud, and of course more HANA – read here.
• SAP gets serious about open source and courts developers – about time – read here.
• My top 3 takeaways from the SAP TechEd keynote – read here.
• SAP discovers elasticity for HANA – kind of – read here.
• Can HANA Cloud be elastic? Tough – read here.
• SAP’s Cloud plans get more cloudy – read here.
• HANA Enterprise Cloud helps SAP discover the cloud (benefits) – read here.

SAP SuccessFactors picks up speed - but there remains work to be done

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

Read more

SAP SuccessFactor’s yearly North America user conference, SuccessConnect concluded this week in Las Vegas. It was the largest SuccessConnect ever, with over 2200 attendees, a good indicator that the acquisition and integration of SuccessFactors by SAP is on a good track. That was not a guaranteed outcome a year ago – my takeaways of SuccessConnect 2013 as reference are here – and of the Day 1 keynote are here.

 
 

A lot of important product and services news were announced, tough to pick the Top 3 – but here you go:

 

1 - Roadmap Sharing 

As Ettling keynoted on Day 1 of SuccessConnect, SuccessFactors is now sharing its roadmap for the next 12 months to come. To deliver on that was the task for Dmitri Krakovsky on Day 2. He didn’t share the dates – but the roadmap items – see below. 

 

SuccessFactors Roadmap items as shared by Krakovsky

 

And that were indeed a lot of roadmap items for the next 12 months to come. Let’s look at the ones with the most impact:

• SuccessFactors is doing its integration homework - After a conservative first year (besides EmployeeCentral) the SuccessFactors product team is picking up on a number of innovations coming from SAP.
   
  • More Localizations, more Payroll countries and more documentation are leveraging SAP scale, investment and processes. 
  • On the technology side, new customers will be running fully on HANA at some point in 2015, the Fiori UX will be uptaken and SuccessFactors will use HANA Cloud Integration (if that will be the bye bye for Dell Boomi remains to be seen). 
  • And SuccessFactors will also leverage and work with other SAP acquisitions, improving the Fieldglass integration and using KXEN’s InifiteInsight for Analytics.
     

• On the functional side SuccessFactors focusses on Learning (more below), improved Workforce Planning (positive Time), Auto Sourcing (in Recruiting), Offboarding and extension of Global Benefit.
   
• Mobile gets a big push with new native support for Apple (demoed in the keynote) and Android (coming next year).
   
• Moreover SuccessFactors will support the visually impaired with additional color palettes, that help e.g. the red / green blind user population. Why this did not morph into a full ADA support announcement / roadmap was one of the questions I did not manage to ask, but this is a first step in that direction.
   
• And last but not least SuccessFactors has already an Applications marketplace, a good instrument to help partners to promote and monetize their offerings, something not seen too often in the industry yet (see e.g. Cornerstone’s announcement here).
   
• Finally there was an entry on the slide named ‘Model S’, the codename for SAP’s new simple Suite. If there by accident or dropped by purpose to start a conversation, it certainly means that a part of the SuccessFactors capacity will go towards SAP’s next generation suite. 

 

New iPhone Learning Client

2 - Learning to the front

SuccessFactors is executing a major learning push, leveraging its acquired Plateau products and expertise to advance two critical functions that so far have been more or less inexistent or badly broken in learning management: The user generated, self-creation of content and the easy identification of relevant learning content, aided by analytics. If SAP can solve both of these challenges in their next generation Learning product, then enterprises should take note.

I was impressed by the approach taken with analytics – Krakovsky called it analytical racks – that just run to predict the best course recommendations – and are added or taken off when obsolete. That comes the closest to where I see analytics going, I call it model thrashing. Just run as many models you can get hold off and use the one for the day or even for the hour that has the best prediction fidelity.

 

Ettling presents Service Improvements on Day 1

3 - Services strengthening

The services announcements made by Ettling made my top three event takeaways on the Day 1 keynote and now as well for the event. The separation of the upgrade time frames for the test vs. the production instances is a key quality for SaaS customers. And knowing 6 weeks before a release what will likely be part of it is essential to take the necessary preparation in learning and change management that enterprises may have to prepare for.

Tidbits

• EmployeeCentral - moving on - Good to see more traction in EmployeeCentral, starting with plans on UI improvement, the addition of more countries and more payroll support as well as the addition of positive time. It is also clear that SuccessFactors plans to use EmployeeCentral and its technology framework (MDF) as the basis for its next generation HCM SaaS product, as more talent management functions are being built on the same framework. 

• Analytics - InfiniteInsight coming -  SuccessFactors already has a very good intelligence platform with the acquisition of Australian infoHRM that is widely used acroos the suite. The product team is now actively working with the InfiniteInsight product of KXEN (acquired by SAP, my takeaways here), which will beef up SuccessFactors analytical capabilities significantly. 

• Recruiting - improved - A number of enhancements for the Recruiting product, the most important being the improved and automated interview scheduling, which brings SuccessFactors to par in this critical productivity / efficiency function with Workday. 

• Jam - plowing on -  The SAP social product is always close to the HCM products, so SuccessConnect was no exception. The product is making good progress in the usability side, the Work Pattern approach has proven itself with partner uptake and it now comes back to foster an ecosystem to garner the uptake. The SuccessFactors Marketplace certainly helps here. 

MyPOV

SuccessFactors is making good progress on all fronts. Tackling the user interface with improvements, up taking more synergies with what SAP can offer and closing competitive gaps are all good practices that every software vendor should practice, but not all manage to pull that off.

The Services improvements received a very warm welcome by customers already at the event, now SAP has to deliver on them.

But then SuccessFactors still has to do a lot of work on harmonizing architectures of acquired products – or rebuilding of these on the new EmployeeCentral / MDF architecture. Or maybe in Model S – or Simple HCM? The sharing of the roadmap for the next 12 months is very good news for customers in order to have the opportunity to align their rollout plans with the product roadmap. Now SAP needs to wrestle some of the thought leadership and commercial success away from Workday, a major task to be undertaken, the starting position has certainly improved compared to year ago.

And more on overall SAP strategy and products:

 

• 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.

 

And more about SAP technology:

• News Analysis - SAP commits to CloudFoundry and OpenSource - key steps - but what is the direction? - Read here.
• News Analysis - SAP moves Ariba Spend Visibility to HANA - Interesting first step in a long journey - read here
• Launch Report - When BW 7.4 meets HANA it is like 2 + 2 = 5 - but is 5 enough - read here
• Event Report - BI 2014 and HANA 2014 takeaways - it is all about HANA and Lumira - but is that enough? Read here.
• News Analysis – SAP slices and dices into more Cloud, and of course more HANA – read here.
• SAP gets serious about open source and courts developers – about time – read here.
• My top 3 takeaways from the SAP TechEd keynote – read here.
• SAP discovers elasticity for HANA – kind of – read here.
• Can HANA Cloud be elastic? Tough – read here.
• SAP’s Cloud plans get more cloudy – read here.
• HANA Enterprise Cloud helps SAP discover the cloud (benefits) – read here.

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here.