S/4HANA!

The year started like the one before ended: With HANA. To run even simpler and faster SAP launched its next generation business suite S/4HANA. It compiles business accounts and forecast within minutes instead of hours and days due to its in-memory database platform. Until this summer more than 370 companies had already signed up to S/4. However a survey, presented at the DSAG annual meeting in Bremen/Germany in September, showed that users aren't so sure it's the technology they're looking for.

Job Cuts

Shortly after this big launch, another news story was released which didn’t receive as much approval. To keep up with its rivals, SAP announced to cut 2,200 jobs. That is 3% of the company’s workforce. However SAP’s Chief Human Resources Officer Stefan Ries said, SAP will create the same amount of jobs in growth areas like the cloud business and in-memory computing. Bill McDermott commented: “We are not eliminating jobs but lifting and shifting those assets.” This is the second big job cut under the American CEO.

Ice Ice Baby

After soccer, sailing and cricket, it’s now “SAP On Ice”. In February 2015, the North American National Hockey League (NHL) and SAP rolled out a new multi-year partnership and unveiled a new statistics platform powered by SAP HANA. Fans will now be able to gain deeper insights from the game and tell enticing stories about hockey and its players. If you’ve ever seen an ice hockey game: It’s extremely fast-paced! Let’s see if HANA can capture all that data in real-time.

And maybe we’ll now finally be able to see that puck!

SAP Café

We’ve seen all sorts of themed cafés: hammock cafés, pay-per-minutes cafés, cat cafés....Sure, but that doesn’t have anything to do with the world of SAP, you think? Well, think again. In March SAP opened the HanaHaus, a new café and centre for communication and collaboration in Palo Alto. The aim is to foster the entrepreneurial community in Silicon Valley. And for SAP, it’s a good opportunity to reach out into the techie world and raise its sex appeal in Silicon Valley. Free wifi is of course included and you will get free programming advice on top!

In times of Virtual Reality, digital communication and Cloud Computing a nice cup of tea with your work mates sounds very appealing, doesn’t it?

We’ll have a latte, please!

BlueFin Buyout

Let’s move on to some more serious topics: Boardroom Talk. In July, Mindtree, an Indian technology consulting firm, acquired SAP Partner BlueFin. The UK-based consultancy specializes in SAP HANA, Analytics, Digital, Mobile and Cloud. By doing this, Mindtree extended its business into Europe and gained the full spectrum of SAP expertise. The sum they’ve paid for this is undisclosed.

Airbus runs flies SAP HANA - Up, Up and Away

In June, plane manufacturer Airbus said goodbye to its Oracle database. The HR department will run simpler and faster reporting with SAP HANA. Airbus hopes it will be able to "perform live business intelligence (BI) in 2017, as well as merge data sources and have a "big data arrangement" without the need for BW or infocubes”. Airbus’ competitor Boeing and also many airlines are already relying on the in-memory database.

 SAP CEO Accident

Oh, what a freaky moment this was when the press reported about SAP’s CEO Bill McDermott’s accident! It already happened in July however wasn’t announced till September when McDermott and Hasso Plattner gave an official interview. Mr McDermott slipped on the stairs of his brother’s house in the US at night. He was holding a glass of water and fell on the broken glass and lost consciousness. Doctors couldn't save his left eye despite their best efforts. In October the CEO said: "Leaders would be forgiven for a lot of things. But never for a lack of vision." He is fully recovered now and continues to be head of SAP. Since the accident SAP focusses more on precision medicine. From all at Sapture we wish him the best! 

Profit in the Cloud

Despite this terrible accident, the third quarter of 2015 was looking good for SAP: They’ve announced a 2% rise in net profit (€898 million), mainly because of the strong growth in the cloud. New subscriptions increased 102% to 216 million. But also non-IFRS cloud and software revenue went up 19% to €4.12 billion. “Our flagship S/4HANA is rapidly gaining market share. HANA is redefining the database industry as the standard real-time platform. Our cloud solutions for workforce engagement are best in class and our omni-channel customer experience solutions are growing faster than best of breed competitors.”, said SAP CEO Bill McDermott.

Glaring Holes

Nothing is safe from hackers. Not even the SAP software. Researchers found security holes that could give attackers control of company financials and allow them to steal, modify or delete business information. 21 vulnerabilities were found by Onapsis, a security company from Boston. These affect more than 10,00 customers the company said. SAP reacted and said they are cooperating with research companies to fix the problems and that customers should secure their landscapes by applying the available security patches.

SAP Whale

Trying to stay ahead of the game, SAP pre-announced Project Orca, now officially named Cloud for Analytics, a BI service that will run on the HANA cloud. The goal is to allow business users to sample, wrangle, combine and blend any data, using an intuitive user interface. Prizing and further details have not been finalized due to the early release. Amazon had announced a similar BI-analytics-as-a-service offering called Space Needle. SAP said: "What drove us to pre-announce a little was we wanted to capitalize on the momentum and awareness level that Amazon had created around analytics". The company said that Cloud for Analytics would however be a stronger offering than Space Needle because it offers more sophisticated modeling and visualization.



Let’s see what 2016 will bring for SAP….