SAP

While the first two days of the event focused much more on what SAP is doing today (...or very soon!) with partners and customers, particularly around the cloud, mobility and analytics, the final day of SAP Sapphire focused much more on the long-term. And no one was surprised to see that Hasso Plattner and Vishal Sikka's keynote focuses were on HANA, SAP's massive technology push towards in-memory computing. While much of HANA is focused on its analytical capabilities, SAP made an effort to highlight real-world uses within business applications currently being leveraged by traditional first-movers such as Colgate-Palmolive and Nestle. One great example in the retail space coming in the future will be for merchandise assortment planning, where with the underlying HANA technology, SAP users will be able to perceive and adapt to local consumer dynamics more quickly, giving them a chance to beat the competition to market! In the Colgate-Palmolive example, the company can now analyze its sales trends across 200 countries, by retail location and SKU, in order to more actively adapt to consumer trends.

HANA is still a longer-term SAP technology to follow, it is certainly clear at the end of this year's conference that there are no shortages of new solutions or paths for SAP customers to take today in order to move forward and to gain competitive advantages.

While the last two years may have been ruled by instability and fear, I think anyone who attended Sapphire 2011 is leaving with an even more positive view of the market coming out... since it is one thing to have a brightening outlook yourself, but when seeing all of your peers actively investing in their business, the impetus to move forward becomes even greater. While it always helps to continue to invest in your core SAP ERP; between analytics, mobility and new extensions in the cloud, being an SAP customer today is a great place to be!

About the author:

Peter has over 10 years of experience in the SITS industry. He joined Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC) in 2001. He serves as the managing director of PAC's U.S. operations and its partners in Latin America. Peter is also the founder of PAC's global SAP & Oracle Services research teams programs.

On the consulting side, he is involved in U.S. and global projects for software suppliers pertaining to ecosystem assessment, competitive benchmarking, go-to-market strategy in emerging industries, and analysis, planning, and execution of localized partnership strategies.

Peter is often quoted in both IT news and major publications for his views on the application software market. He is also a frequent speaker at IT conferences and PAC Webinars.