SAP Further Extends Real-Time Data Platform With “Big Data” Capabilities

 HANA, Innovation, Newsbyte, Technology  Comments Off
May 162012
 
ORLANDO — SAP today announced advanced support and integration with Hadoop environments including an expanded “big data” partner council and customer showcases. These “big data” integration capabilities are planned in SAP Data Services and SAP Information Steward software with the release of service pack 4 for the SAP HANA platform. SAP also showcased game-changing business results among customers, made possible by “big data” implementations based on the SAP real-time data platform. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE NOW, being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012. The SAP real-time data platform, based on the flagship SAP HANA platform, includes data management capabilities from SAP Sybase IQ, SAP Sybase ESP, SAP Sybase ASE and SAP Enterprise Information Management. It unlocks business value from “big data” by providing for real-time decision support within the window of opportunity with extreme capabilities to ingest, store and process big data in real-time. “Groundbreaking innovations like SAP HANA help our customers access and deliver information at unprecedented speeds — up to 100,000 times faster than before — and empower them with fundamentally new ways to run their businesses and master ‘big data,’” said Steve Lucas, global executive vice president and general manager, Database & Technology, SAP “The SAP real-time data platform delivers an information value chain that uncovers and harnesses the right information at the right moment by moving data among SAP HANA, SAP Sybase IQ and Hadoop file systems.” Customer Showcases “Big Data” Results Powered by SAP HANA MITSUI KNOWLEDGE INDUSTRY analyzes genomes for cancer research and treatment. By building an information value chain that uses SAP HANA with R, open source programming language and software environment for statistical computing and graphics, for real-time analysis and Hadoop for preprocessing DNA sequences, the company found a way to shorten the genome analysis time from several days down to only 20 minutes. “Going from a process measured in days to one measured in minutes is radically transforming our customer relationships,” said Yukihisa Kato, CTO and director, MITSUI KNOWLEDGE INDUSTRY. “Using the SAP real-time data platform with SAP HANA at its core will be critical to our DNA going forward and to future business growth.” SAP Enterprise Information Management Solutions to Power Access to All “Big Data” Sources SAP envisions SAP Data Services and SAP Information Steward as the industry’s first and only unified solution for data quality, data integration, text data processing, data profiling and metadata management. The company aims to allow users to unlock the full business potential of “big data” by making it easier to integrate and synthesize information across an enterprise’s SAP and non-SAP applications. SAP Data Services and SAP Information Steward are intended to provide both business users and IT with an intuitive and comprehensive information management solution with planned enhancements that include:
  • Hadoop integration: reading from and loading to Hive and Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), rapid batch updating and loading to SAP HANA, SAP Sybase IQ server and any other data store, resulting in faster performance
  • Text data processing: extending the data view to analyze data sources by performing linguistic analysis and extracting relevant content from files, Web logs and social media
  • Authoritative and trustworthy data: helping users understand, assess and improve the quality of data by integrating data quality scorecards directly within business intelligence (BI) and enterprise applications so users can immediately determine the accuracy of the data and if necessary take corrective action
“Our goal is to help organizations access build and govern information value chains across all data sources,” said Lucas. “With our enterprise information management solutions, customers will have the ability to easily understand and access any data source — be it from an SAP, custom or partner application, enterprise database or new data sources such as Hadoop — so they can now better manage information throughout the organization.” SAP Extends “Big Data” Partner Ecosystem SAP has set up a “big data” partner council that will co-innovate to produce solutions uncovering use cases and architectures that leverage the SAP real-time data platform and Hadoop. The council will include a cross-section of companies, including startups, hardware vendors, software providers and technology services organizations that will collaborate together with SAP on select projects in the SAP Co-Innovation Lab. The cornerstone of this strategy is building a strong integration with the Hadoop ecosystem, starting with Cloudera, the leading provider of enterprise-grade Hadoop data management software, services and training. By co-innovating with Cloudera, the top contributor to the Hadoop development community, SAP plans to enable customers to go beyond business analytics and into the world of next-generation applications that innovate on data and open the door to myriad new possibilities. “We are very excited to work with SAP to provide customers with real-time insights from their Hadoop environments using our complementary solutions,” said Mike Olson, co-founder and CEO, Cloudera. “The SAP real-time data platform, combined with the Cloudera Hadoop Distribution, will deliver unmatched capabilities in next-generation ‘big data’ applications and analytics to the enterprise.” SAP today also announced a number of innovations on the SAP HANA platform. For more information, see “SAP Continues to Expand Capabilities and Scale of SAP HANA Platform and Ease Developer Adoption.” For announcements, blog posts, videos and other coverage during SAPPHIRE NOW, visit the Events Newsroom. SAPPHIRE NOW With SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP offers its customers, partners and prospects even more opportunities to engage in dialogue with peers, participants and thought leaders around the globe. Being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012, this enhanced, real-time event connects attendees on site with global participants through state-of-the-art broadcast studios and an online experience that incorporates the latest social media and community functionality. Whether on site or online, participants can gain insight as to how SAP is delivering on its product strategy and helping organizations around the world to run better. For more information, visit www.sapphirenow.com. Follow SAPPHIRE NOW on Twitter at @SAPPHIRENOW and visit the Events Newsroom at www.events.news-sap.com. Note to Editors: Webcasts, announcements, media roundtables, keynote presentations and blog posts from SAPPHIRE NOW will be available in the Events Newsroom at: www.events.news-sap.com. To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visit www.sap.com/photos. On this platform, you can find high-resolution material for your media channels. To view video stories on diverse topics, visit www.sap-tv.com. From this site, you can embed videos into your own Web pages, share video via email links and subscribe to RSS feeds from SAP TV. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews. For more information, press only: Samantha Finnegan, +1 (650) 276-9350, samantha.finnegan@sap.com, PDT Jeff Neal, +1 (925) 236-5035, jeff.neal@sap.com, PDT SAP Press Office, +49 (6227) 7-46315, CET; +1 (610) 661-3200, EDT; press@sap.com Anthony Suarez, Burson-Marsteller, +1 (212) 614-4331, anthony.suarez@bm.com, EDT During SAPPHIRE NOW (from May 14 to 16), to speak with press contacts on site, please dial the SAP press room: +1 (610) 661-0469.  

SAP Broadens Analytics Reach With New Stake in Data Discovery and Visualization Market

 Analytics, HANA, Innovation, Newsbyte, SME  Comments Off
May 162012
 

ORLANDO — SAP today announced intuitive software that turns data into answers for people across organizations. SAP Visual Intelligence software allows employees, departments and lines of business to creatively visualize and analyze information and apply it to individual and group decision-making. A desktop version of SAP BusinessObjects Explorer software, SAP Visual Intelligence is powered by the SAP HANA platform and empowers users to perform data discovery regardless of technical skill level. With the new application, business users can take advantage of existing data investments that their IT organizations have built and maintained without tasking IT to produce reports. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE NOW, being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012.

No matter where users sit in a company, they want a way to easily explore, mash up and share information to make better decisions and find new opportunities — without having to task IT to deliver reports. Companies are also looking to maximize existing business intelligence (BI) investments; expanding access allows more people to take advantage of a wealth of existing data and systems to make better-informed decisions.

“The category of visual data discovery has become a must-have component of the BI tool portfolio and SAP has upped its capabilities with its latest product, SAP Visual Intelligence,” said Cindi Howson, founder, BI Scorecard. “Ease of use, time to insight and business agility are key reasons for the rapid growth of visual data discovery that provides users with greater self service with minimal IT support. SAP BusinessObjects Explorer provided ease of use, but the release of SAP Visual Intelligence brings greater flexibility and richer analysis.”

“3M is a diversified company consisting of six different businesses units operating across various industries globally. As a result, we are a data-rich organization that relies on SAP to deliver intuitive BI solutions,” said Jeff Robinson, IT manager, Global Business Intelligence, 3M.  “SAP Visual Intelligence puts our people in the driver’s seat because they can truly discover data on the fly. And because SAP handles the work of combining multiple data sources backed by in-memory technology, self-service analysis hits our users’ screens in seconds.”

Empowering Users in Any Industry or Line of Business to Explore Data and Find Answers
SAP Visual Intelligence draws upon the company’s expertise in 24 industries, 10 lines of business and global footprint to deliver a product that any company can use to deliver answers to users everywhere. For example:

  • A loan officer at a bank might wonder how the bank is performing regionally across multiple categories of loans and demographics. Typically this would involve intensive efforts downloading and bringing together information from corporate as well as public data sources to find answers, which would be done manually each time a refresh is needed. SAP Visual Intelligence enables the loan officer to create an automated routine to download census information, combine it with regional loan data as well as additional region and state details to enrich the data. The information could be immediately plotted on a map to discover that loan business had increased 25 percent in the past two years for high-income earners in a specific zip code but new loan applications had slowed significantly. At the next meeting, the team could put together a new campaign targeting sales of loans in the high income areas.
  • Responsible for analyzing the numbers of defects across plants and suppliers, a business analyst at a global manufacturing firm could use SAP Visual Intelligence to pull enterprise data as well as external data files sent by suppliers. A mash up of the data might reveal that specific parts and one particular supplier are responsible for 80 percent of the defects. As a result, the engineering team could work with the supplier on correcting the issues.
  • A regional manager for a healthy snack company might be tasked with increasing sales of a new health bar in the western region. Working with a business analyst and SAP Visual Intelligence, the regional manager could easily access sales numbers for the last three years and combine this with point of sale data to see that the majority of sales were coming from small stores running a new campaign. On the spot, the regional manager and business analyst could expand the campaign to a broader market and eliminate poorly performing campaigns.

Fast, Engaging Way of Finding Answers Buried in Massive Amounts of Data
Building on SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, SAP Visual Intelligence leverages SAP HANA to help users ignite their creativity with beautiful and interactive visualizations, allowing them to ask any question without the need for predefined queries, reports or dashboards. SAP Visual Intelligence removes roadblocks to information so business users can find real-time answers on any volume of data. The engaging interface increases the usage of data and ability to derive answers and make better decisions. SAP Visual Intelligence enables ad-hoc discovery everywhere, across all data — from spreadsheets to sales, finance, marketing, customer, social, geo-location, third-party and other business data.

Analytics Innovations Revolutionize the Decision-Making Process
Recognized as the BI market share leader by Gartner, today’s announcement is another of example of SAP’s commitment to investing and expanding its analytics portfolio to respond to the needs of customers and the market. Recently announced SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis software is intended to help users improve decision-making by predicting future outcomes. Additional planned enhancements to SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions aim to deliver more mobile analytics options, richer insight, improved collaborative decision-making and deeper SAP applications integration. The improved capabilities are planned to help companies extract the most business value from the massive amounts of data that are generated today.

“SAP Visual Intelligence revolutionizes decision-making by offering every person in an organization a fast and extremely easy to use  way of discovering answers from any data,” said John Schweitzer, senior vice president and general manager, Analytics, SAP. “SAP solutions for analytics empower people with precise information anytime and anywhere using beautiful visualizations, enabling rapid response to events as they unfold. SAP delivers a powerful and comprehensive analytics portfolio that helps companies adapt to constant change so they can achieve remarkable results.”

For more information and demos about SAP Visual Intelligence, visit www.experienceexplorer.com. For a closer look, see: “Screenshots: SAP Broadens Analytics Reach.”

For announcements, blog posts, videos and other coverage during SAPPHIRE NOW, visit the Events Newsroom.

SAPPHIRE NOW
With SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP offers its customers, partners and prospects even more opportunities to engage in dialogue with peers, participants and thought leaders around the globe. Being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012, this enhanced, real-time event connects attendees on site with global participants through state-of-the-art broadcast studios and an online experience that incorporates the latest social media and community functionality. Whether on site or online, participants can gain insight as to how SAP is delivering on its product strategy and helping organizations around the world to run better. For more information, visit www.sapphirenow.com. Follow SAPPHIRE NOW on Twitter at @SAPPHIRENOW and visit the Events Newsroom at www.events.news-sap.com.

Note to Editors:
Webcasts, announcements, media roundtables, keynote presentations and blog posts from SAPPHIRE NOW will be available in the Events Newsroom at: www.events.news-sap.com. To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visit www.sap.com/photos. On this platform, you can find high-resolution material for your media channels. To view video stories on diverse topics, visit www.sap-tv.com. From this site, you can embed videos into your own Web pages, share video via email links and subscribe to RSS feeds from SAP TV. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

For more information, press only:
Susan Miller, SAP, +1 (610) 661-9225, susan.miller@sap.com, EDT
SAP Press Office, +49 (6227) 7-46315, CET; +1 (610) 661-3200, EDT; press@sap.com
Jeff Shadid, Burson-Marsteller, +1 (214) 224-8419, jeff.shadid@bm.com, CDT

During SAPPHIRE NOW (from May 14 to 16), to speak with press contacts on site, please dial the SAP press room: +1 (610) 661-0469.

 

SAP Delivers New Applications Built on the SAP HANA Platform

 HANA, Newsbyte, SME  Comments Off
May 162012
 
ORLANDO — SAP continues to deliver on its innovation agenda and announced today a new wave of solutions built on the SAP HANA platform. These real-time solutions aim to help customers drive new business value with advanced reporting, analysis and planning capabilities in the context of their lines of business and industries. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE NOW, being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012. “SAP’s innovation continues with the delivery of these new applications that are simple to use, easy to implement and are built on an open real-time platform,” said Dr. Vishal Sikka, member of the SAP Executive Board, Technology & Innovation. “These applications take advantage of detailed and fresh data, doing complex analysis on-the-fly to power interactive decision-making on mobile devices and in the cloud.” The solutions announced today are:
  • SAP Sales and Operations Planning application
  • SAP Cash Forecasting analytic application
  • SAP Planning and Consolidation application
  • SAP Collections Insight analytic application
  • SAP Sales Pipeline Analysis analytic content
  • SAP Bank Analyzer rapid-deployment solution for financial reporting with SAP HANA
  • SAP Deposits Management rapid-deployment solution for transaction history analysis with SAP HANA
  • SAP Supplier InfoNet site
Next Generation Planning Applications powered by SAP HANA SAP Sales and Operations Planning is a cloud-based application powered by SAP HANA and designed to help companies become more demand-driven by enabling them to rapidly translate demand fluctuations into actionable plans for manufacturing, procurement and logistics. With the new application, companies can engage stakeholders from sales, marketing, finance, supply chain and other functions in a truly integrated and collaborative planning process. SAP Sales and Operations Planning brings together the real-time computing power of SAP HANA and the social collaborative paradigm of the SAP Streamwork application to enable:
  • Planning, using a unified model of demand, supply chain and financial data, which can be analyzed in real time at any level of granularity or dimension
  • Rapid simulations and scenario comparison on a complete, detailed sales and operations planning model against multiple criteria such as demand fluctuations, product mix changes and capacity constraints
  • Collaboration, using an embedded, context-aware social platform to accelerate planning and decision-making across the company
More details on SAP Sales & Operations Planning, Powered by SAP HANA can be found in this video. “In relatively short period of time, we were able to model a significant portion of our business in the pilot environment and perform what-if scenario analysis,” said Richard Komm, director, Advanced Micro Devices. “We could adjust demand volumes and the capacity resource allocations and immediately see their impact on revenue and margins in the solution. This is something that used to take multiple spreadsheets, numerous emails and phone calls and meetings to develop an aligned plan. We feel that this solution has great potential to improve our sales and operations planning process management and accelerate decision-making and the overall responsiveness of our teams.” “Today, our sales and operations planning process is largely manual, managed over disconnected spreadsheets, spans multiple internal teams and contract manufacturers, and it takes too much time and effort to respond to demand and supply variations,” said James Smith, director, McKesson. “We were able to assess the impact of fluctuations in capacity positions at contract manufacturers on our sales forecasts in real time, model alternative scenarios and cut our planning cycle time in half. We are excited about the solution and look forward to rolling it out at McKesson.” SAP Cash Forecasting is an on-premise analytic application built on the SAP HANA platform that helps companies better navigate today’s volatile financial environment by providing advanced capabilities for cash forecasting and analysis in a heterogeneous system landscape. The application is available via an early adoption program. With SAP Cash Forecasting, companies can:
  • Create accurate cash forecasts based on financial data from SAP and non-SAP systems such as ERP
  • Develop an effective foreign exchange hedging strategy based on real-time visibility into exposure across multiple currencies
  • Perform ex-post variance analysis on cash forecasts with the ability to explain variance down to the cash flow statement item-level
  • Manage the forecast process centrally, tracking subsidiaries’ planning status and consolidating forecasts from across the company
“BSH Bosch und Siemens Hausgeräte GmbH co-innovated with SAP on the new SAP Cash Forecasting analytic application, which is built on the SAP HANA platform,” said Marco Dockweiler, enterprise architect, BSH Bosch und Siemens Hausgeräte GmbH. “This application has the potential to improve cash forecast accuracy and to optimize our processes in the treasury department. The results we have seen are very compelling, and we look forward to our continued collaboration with SAP.” SAP Planning and Consolidation helps organizations dramatically accelerate their planning processes, giving financial professionals more analytics power and smarter insights, as well as time savings. Powered by SAP HANA, the application enables companies to accelerate budgeting and forecasting by speeding up the retrieval of queries, pull in large data sets and get a real-time view of what’s happening in the business. As a result, people can plan faster, input data back into systems faster and shrink planning cycles, enabling organizations to more quickly respond to capitalize on opportunities or avoid risks. This also provides simplicity for IT as the application is optimized in real-time with SAP HANA.  Empowering Sales and Marketing Users With Real-Time Solutions SAP Collections Insight provides sales teams with the real-time customer insights they need to optimize their collections strategy and the collaborative tools to execute that strategy. The application is available via an early adoption program. Powered by SAP HANA and accessible via an easy-to-use Web or mobile app, SAP Collections Insight helps companies:
  • Develop rich, dynamic profiles of their customers, including real-time visibility and analysis of payment history and trends
  • Equip users to quickly make and act on collection calls — anytime, anywhere
  • Empower users to collaborate rapidly and effectively to track and resolve collections issues
The capabilities delivered by SAP Collections Insight can enable companies to increase collections yield, accelerate the conversion of revenue to cash and strengthen their customer relationships. SAP Sales Pipeline Analysis, powered by SAP HANA, helps sales organizations to get instant insights into massive volumes of pipeline data in the SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) application while performing on-the-fly calculations and in-depth analysis on any business dimension. Sales managers can react more quickly to changing sales conditions with real-time information and accelerate deals through the pipeline with powerful and user-driven analytics. As a result, companies can unlock hidden revenue opportunities as well as significantly increase profits and sales effectiveness. To help ensure a quicker time-to-value for customers, the content can be deployed as a rapid-deployment solution with the SAP rapid-deployment solution for sales pipeline analysis with SAP HANA. Taking Advantage of “Big Data” in the Banking Industry SAP Bank Analyzer rapid-deployment solution for financial reporting with SAP HANA is designed to help organizations quickly analyze large volumes of data, enabling them to automate lean banking processes and make decisions in near real time. The solution enables banking organizations to rapidly generate detailed financial reports on assets and accounting performance, offering immediate answers to their business questions. SAP Deposits Management rapid-deployment solution for transaction history analysis with SAP HANA helps retail banks boost performance through improved transaction history analysis. It makes it easy for employees to access up-to-date account information, while powerful in-memory data platform and business intelligence (BI) software helps organizations process multi-year information for real-time insights. Drive Greater Visibility and Stronger Performance Across the Business Network SAP Supplier InfoNet is an information network that brings together the power of SAP HANA and the cloud to help companies gain real-time insights from ‘big data” and rapidly respond to changing conditions across their multi-tier supply networks. With this solution, companies are able to effectively manage their complex supply chains by:
  • Proactively monitoring and predicting risks across the multi-tier supply network with real-time alerts and leading-edge machine learning and statistical analysis tools
  • Gaining instant insights into the operational health of the supply network by aggregating and analyzing supplier data from enterprise systems and thousands of external data sources
  • Benchmarking supplier performance on quality and delivery and identifying significant shifts and trends in their performance
The capabilities delivered by SAP Supplier InfoNet empower companies to minimize supply chain disruptions before they impact the business, drive stronger performance of their suppliers and save time and operational costs of managing the supplier base. For announcements, blog posts, videos and other coverage during SAPPHIRE NOW, visit the Events Newsroom. SAPPHIRE NOW With SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP offers its customers, partners and prospects even more opportunities to engage in dialogue with peers, participants and thought leaders around the globe. Being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012, this enhanced, real-time event connects attendees on site with global participants through state-of-the-art broadcast studios and an online experience that incorporates the latest social media and community functionality. Whether on site or online, participants can gain insight as to how SAP is delivering on its product strategy and helping organizations around the world to run better. For more information, visit www.sapphirenow.com. Follow SAPPHIRE NOW on Twitter at @SAPPHIRENOW and visit the Events Newsroom at www.events.news-sap.com.  Note to Editors: Webcasts, announcements, media roundtables, keynote presentations and blog posts from SAPPHIRE NOW will be available in the Events Newsroom at: www.events.news-sap.com. To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visit www.sap.com/photos. On this platform, you can find high-resolution material for your media channels. To view video stories on diverse topics, visit www.sap-tv.com. From this site, you can embed videos into your own Web pages, share video via email links and subscribe to RSS feeds from SAP TV. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews. For more information, press only: Samantha Finnegan, +1 (650) 276-9350, samantha.finnegan@sap.com, PDT Cathrin Wolf, +49 6227 7 63908, cathrin.wolf@sap.com, CET SAP Press Office, +49 (6227) 7-46315, CET; +1 (610) 661-3200, EDT; press@sap.com During SAPPHIRE NOW (from May 14 to 16), to speak with press contacts on site, please dial the SAP press room: +1 (610) 661-0469.

SAP HANA Offers Multi-Node Capabilities to Help Customers Scale Out

 HANA, Newsbyte, SME  Comments Off
May 162012
 
ORLANDO — A company’s ability to grow with its data is critical. Increasingly, organizations are challenged to draw deeper insights from larger data sets in shrinking windows of time. To empower customers in this regard, SAP offers scale-out capabilities with the SAP HANA platform so that customers can grow their deployments to multiple nodes, supporting multi-terabyte data sets to provide real-time insights on big data. More than 50 percent of the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that offer x86 servers now deliver servers certified to run SAP HANA in a scale-out environment, including leading SAP technology partners Fujitsu, HP and IBM. In addition, SAP and Intel have collaborated to optimize SAP HANA to run optimally on Intel processors, enabling greater business agility and innovative usage models that let customers respond to changing conditions in real time. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE NOW, being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012. “Our ongoing, joint engineering collaboration allowed SAP HANA to take full advantage of the powerful performance, reliability and availability features of the Intel Xeon processor E7 family,” said Diane Bryant, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Datacenter and Connected Systems Group. “The optimization of SAP HANA for Intel processors allows customers to achieve much more efficient results, increasing their record-breaking performance and scalability for mission-critical applications for increased business value.” SAP HANA delivers scale-up and scale-out solutions for clients to run big data, growth-oriented applications and analytics — including high-volume instances of the SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse application — by rapidly scaling to many nodes in high-performance and high-availability configurations. Other key benefits include:
  • Ability to handle large volumes of data: In addition to compression of data that fundamentally reduces the amount of memory required, SAP HANA grows with the number of data volumes across multiple nodes. SAP has validated 16 nodes and has not seen limitations on a large number of nodes now certified on demand for partners and customers.
  • Better failover and high availability: High availability enables the failover of a node within a distributed SAP HANA database. With cluster configurations, failover uses a cold standby node and gets triggered automatically. If a node fails, the database on a standby server can be cold-started and returns to its last consistent state by replaying the log since the last save point from shared storage. Distributed processing of data allows systems to scale beyond one server and can remove the single point of failure.
  • End-to-end improvement in performance: Increasing nodes of SAP HANA clusters enables distribution of data loading and analysis utilizing massively parallel processing (MPP) capabilities.
“With the scale out of SAP HANA, we see almost linear improvement in performance with additional computing nodes,” said Dr. Vishal Sikka, member of the SAP Executive Board, Technology & Innovation. “Recently, in our research labs, we have assembled the largest SAP HANA system that scales to 100 nodes, 4000 computing cores and 100 TB in DRAM. Now CIOs can adopt in-memory databases for large deployments with peace of mind that it can grow with their data and provide breakthrough improvement in end-to-end performance.” The business value of SAP HANA was demonstrated recently through scalability testing performed by SAP on SAP HANA with a 16-node server cluster. During the testing, SAP HANA allowed SAP NetWeaver BW-like queries to be executed on 100 billion rows of sales and distribution data with sub-second performance results, without any indexing or tuning required. The results of this testing highlights the ability of SAP HANA to enable customers to perform real-time analytics directly on raw transactional data without going through traditional extract, transform and load (ETL) processes and building of aggregates or materialized views. Details on the testing can be found in a recently released SAP HANA performance white paper. For additional information regarding SAP HANA and in-memory computing technology, visit the Experience SAP HANA website. For announcements, blog posts, videos and other coverage during SAPPHIRE NOW, visit the Events Newsroom. SAPPHIRE NOW With SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP offers its customers, partners and prospects even more opportunities to engage in dialogue with peers, participants and thought leaders around the globe. To be held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012, this enhanced, real-time event connects attendees on site with global participants through state-of-the-art broadcast studios and an online experience that incorporates the latest social media and community functionality. Whether on site or online, participants can gain insight as to how SAP is delivering on its product strategy and helping organizations around the world to run better. For more information, visit www.sapphirenow.com. Follow SAPPHIRE NOW on Twitter at @SAPPHIRENOW and visit the Events Newsroom at www.events.news-sap.com. Note to Editors: Webcasts, announcements, media roundtables, keynote presentations and blog posts from SAPPHIRE NOW will be available in the Events Newsroom at: www.events.news-sap.com. To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visit www.sap.com/photos. On this platform, you can find high-resolution material for your media channels. To view video stories on diverse topics, visit www.sap-tv.com. From this site, you can embed videos into your own Web pages, share video via email links and subscribe to RSS feeds from SAP TV. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews. Media Contacts: Samantha Finnegan, +1 (650) 276-9350, samantha.finnegan@sap.com, PDT Cindy McKendry, +1 (503) 231-7274, cindy.mckendry@sap.com, PDT During SAPPHIRE NOW (from May 14 to 16), to speak with press contacts on site, please dial the SAP press room: +1 (610) 661-0469.

SAP Unveils Accelerated Cloud Strategy

 ByD, Newsbyte, On Demand  Comments Off
May 152012
 

ORLANDO — SAP today unveiled its accelerated cloud strategy by announcing cloud solutions for four lines of business to manage people, money, customers and suppliers. These are planned to be offered in a consistent way and seamlessly integrated into enterprise resource planning (ERP) business software. SAP will leverage the market strengths of SuccessFactors, an SAP company and one of the fastest growing cloud providers in the world, and its founder and CEO Lars Dalgaard. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE NOW, being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14−16, 2012.

“As a long-time customer of both SAP and SuccessFactors, we see this strategy as a clear way forward, harnessing and streamlining the best of what each side brings to the table,” said Troy Barnett, director of HR Processes, Under Armour. “SAP has the process and industry expertise that we rely on every day to run our business, and SuccessFactors gives us cloud applications that our teammates love to use. With the resources at SAP’s disposal coupled with Lars’ vision and passion, we expect great things from this combination.”

“The cloud is a completely new paradigm. Our team of 5,000 will provide customers and all their people with rock-solid access to best-in-class business functionality for people, money, customers and suppliers,” said Dalgaard, SAP Executive Board member. “They aim for the highest level of reliable security in the cloud. We will provide integration among the cloud solutions and external content out-of-the-box with on-premise business software. We are passionate about bringing creative and innovative first-in-class applications to market with a beautiful user experience.”

The New Cloud Powerhouse
Since the close of SAP’s acquisition of SuccessFactors in February 2012, the combined teams immediately joined forces to begin delivering on an accelerated cloud strategy. SuccessFactors is a pioneer in the cloud and a clear leader in the human capital management (HCM) space, while SAP has deep and unmatched end-to-end business process know-how across on-demand and on-premise solutions, hard-won from 40 years of intellectual property, experience and customer success. Together, and with Dalgaard at the helm of the combined Cloud business unit, SAP is now investing more than 5,000 people dedicated to designing, building and delivering beautiful cloud solutions that enable people to love work again and perform at their best. The newly formed Cloud business unit, serving more than 17 million users, will be focused on four solution areas aimed at helping customers manage their most business-critical assets and relationships.

SAP plans to deliver its multitenant cloud solutions as a loosely-coupled suite of best-of-breed applications. The company plans to offer customers the choice and flexibility to adopt these applications at their own pace, as their business needs evolve. When used together, these applications aim to offer the value of a single solution with a consistent user and customer experience, process and data integrity. The cloud portfolio will focus on solutions that help SAP customers better manage:

  • People: SAP announced the addition of its industry-leading global  payroll software as a cloud-based offering integrated with SuccessFactors’ core human resources (HR) solution, Employee Central. The solution is planned to be available in 10 countries, and is today leveraged by a number of strategic partners as a platform to offer business process outsourcing (BPO) services. SAP has more than 200 resources throughout every region in the world to help ensure local regulations and complexities are addressed and updated within its payroll solution. With the addition of global payroll to the SuccessFactors talent management and core HR solutions, SAP intends to offers the most comprehensive suite of applications in the cloud to help customers manage their people more effectively along end-to-end HR processes, from strategy to execution.
  • Money: With decades of deep expertise in global localization of sophisticated financial applications, SAP announced the planned availability of the SAP Financials OnDemand solution, targeted for large enterprise customers to manage their core financials as well as order-to-cash and invoice-to-pay processes. It is planned to be integrated with SuccessFactors’ core HR solution Employee Central. In addition, SAP intends to deliver a new release of the SAP Travel OnDemand solution with additional integration and mobile capabilities, including the ability to capture and process expenses directly from a mobile device.
  • Customers: The SAP Sales OnDemand solution, with new innovations now released quarterly, goes beyond the outdated capabilities of existing cloud-based sales force automation tools by delivering new marketing and social selling capabilities, new configurability and customization tools, and new integration to on-premise SAP Business Suite software, including the SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) application. SAP is now broadening its portfolio of CRM solutions to help companies leverage the full power of social networks. SAP today also announced the general availability of the SAP Social Customer Engagement OnDemand solution to help companies engage intelligently with their customers via social media such as Facebook and Twitter as part of their multichannel approach for both marketing and service professionals.
  • Suppliers: Supplier interaction continues to be a key lever for customers. SAP intends to invest in the SAP Sourcing OnDemand solution for strategic sourcing, supplier and contract lifecycle management integrated on premise with SAP Business Suite, as well as its business networks solutions, including the SAP Information Interchange OnDemand solution, for networked-based invoice management and information exchange for the procure-to-pay process.

SAP Cloud Solutions Built With “Social, Mobile, Analytics-First” Approach
Harnessing the power of its mobile, collaborative and analytic expertise for the cloud, SAP cloud solutions can create synergies for customers to realize business value in entirely new ways. A beautiful and intuitive user interface (UI) enables people to easily navigate the system to get their work done more efficiently. Built-in social collaboration aims to help teams work together to achieve business goals faster— whether across the globe or in the next cubicle. With these capabilities powered by the SAP HANA platform, people can make better-informed decisions while integration with the existing portfolio of on-premise solutions from SAP allows for faster innovation across lines of business.

Social Collaboration Where People Work: In Every Application and Business Process
SAP continues to reinforce its social collaboration strategy with new people and data collaboration capabilities: analytics directly in social software for fact-based decision-making, social communities easily blended with formal training for increased learner engagement and an iPad application for collaboration on-the-go. Additionally, in less than two months, social capabilities have been activated for millions of users, letting them easily share and tap into the expertise of their colleagues, unlocking the value of social software.

Sameer Patel, a social software influencer who recently joined SAP, is driving the development of the next-generation social strategy at SAP. The goal is to combine the company’s broad footprint in systems, data management and business processes with SuccessFactors’ leadership and knowledge of cloud solutions to deliver social and collaborative capabilities in a way that accelerates process and business performance. SAP plans to announce further details in the coming months.

Mobile, Extensible, Powered by SAP HANA: Cloud Applications Using SAP and Third-Party Platform-as-a-Service
Across its rich portfolio of mobile cloud solutions, SAP announced today the planned availability of SAP NetWeaver Cloud as its unified platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering. It is intended to be powered by SAP HANA with application design and runtime capabilities, as well as a rich set of services that are planned to include security, mobile and collaboration. SAP today also reaffirmed its commitment to openness by announcing its partnership with leading third-party PaaS offerings, including VMware Cloud Foundry™, that customers will be able to use together with platform services from SAP NetWeaver Cloud to extend SAP solutions.

Integration of Hybrid Landscape Using SAP and Third-Party Integration-as-a-Service
SAP recognizes that for many of its customers, heterogeneous IT landscapes and deployments across on demand and on premise will continue to be the norm and it is crucial to provide integration to make such a hybrid solution landscape work. To address this need, SAP intends to deliver a cloud-based integration technology, comprised of on-demand solutions for process integration and data services, with out-of-the-box content to connect the loosely coupled line-of-business on-demand solutions to other SAP solutions whether on premise or on demand. For integration to third-party solutions, SAP plans to offer its own cloud-based integration technology and also plans to enable its vast ecosystem of partners, including solutions from Dell Boomi, IBM Cast Iron and Mulesoft.

SuccessFactors and SAP Run Better Together
Wasting no time, SuccessFactors implemented several key SAP cloud solutions internally in only six weeks. SuccessFactors, previously a user of multiple, disparate cloud applications, now boasts the title of world’s largest implementation of SAP Sales OnDemand. In the weeks since the companies came together, SuccessFactors has also gone live with SAP Sourcing OnDemand for its strategic procurement management; SAP Travel OnDemand for expense and travel management of its U.S. and German employees; and the SAP Business ByDesign solution, supporting finance and professional services processes.

In parallel, SAP will also use SuccessFactors BizX suite internally as its new HCM system. The use of Success Factors’ cloud solution will simplify HR processes for managers and employees, help managers better align their daily management activities with the corporate strategy and provide the best tools for employees to take more control of their career development. Thirteen hundrend internal early adopters have been working with SuccessFactors since April with enthusiastic feedback about its ease of use and simplicity. The solution will be globally available on May 14 to every SAP employee.

Run Better: Full Business – Any Size – In the Cloud
SAP will continue to offer fully integrated suites in the cloud, with SAP Business ByDesign for mid-market customers via its reseller channels and for subsidiaries of large enterprise customers, as well as the SAP Business One OnDemand solution served by certified SAP partners for smaller customers.

For announcements, blog posts, videos and other coverage during SAPPHIRE NOW, visit the Events Newsroom.

SAPPHIRE NOW
With SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP offers its customers, partners and prospects even more opportunities to engage in dialogue with peers, participants and thought leaders around the globe. Being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012, this enhanced, real-time event connects attendees on site with global participants through state-of-the-art broadcast studios and an online experience that incorporates the latest social media and community functionality. Whether on site or online, participants can gain insight as to how SAP is delivering on its product strategy and helping organizations around the world to run better. For more information, visit www.sapphirenow.com. Follow SAPPHIRE NOW on Twitter at @SAPPHIRENOW and visit the Events Newsroom at www.events.news-sap.com.

Note to Editors:
Webcasts, announcements, media roundtables, keynote presentations and blog posts from SAPPHIRE NOW will be available in the Events Newsroom at: www.events.news-sap.com. To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visit www.sap.com/photos. On this platform, you can find high-resolution material for your media channels. To view video stories on diverse topics, visit www.sap-tv.com. From this site, you can embed videos into your own Web pages, share video via email links and subscribe to RSS feeds from SAP TV. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

For more information, press only:
Dorit Shackleton, SAP, +1 (604) 889-7841, dorit.shackleton@sap.com, PDT
SAP Press Office, +49 (6227) 7-46315, CET; +1 (610) 661-3200, EDT; press@sap.com
Andrea Meyer, SuccessFactors, + 1 (415) 370-7329, ameyer@successfactors.com, PDT

During SAPPHIRE NOW (from May 14 to 16), to speak with press contacts on site, please dial the SAP press room: +1 (610) 661-0469.

McLaren Group Runs Faster With SAP

 Analytics, HANA, Newsbyte, On Demand  Comments Off
May 152012
 

ORLANDO — The McLaren Group, known for its Grand Prix racing team and iconic Formula 1 cars, will integrate its growing portfolio of businesses using solutions from SAP as its technology backbone. McLaren selected SAP for enterprise applications that improve efficiency across all lines of business, combined with an innovative vision that promises to amplify that value via mobile devices, the cloud and in-memory technology. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE NOW, being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012

SAP has a long-standing relationship with various parts of the McLaren Group. This latest deal marks a new stage in their relationship aimed at transforming the IT infrastructure of the entire McLaren Group. McLaren is a midsize company, quickly growing across multiple business centers and regions. As the company expands its investment into diverse markets, including applied technology, electronic systems and high-end hospitality, it needed a technology engine that was integrated, scalable and delivered maximum performance.

McLaren chose SAP to help create a holistic approach, enabling the company to gain better visibility and leverage best practices more easily across the business divisions. With the SAP HANA platform and mobile apps, the company will be able to empower everyone — from tire changers to executives — with the real-time information needed to keep ahead of competitors. The McLaren Group is looking forward to a fast time-to-value using SAP Rapid Deployment solutions, pre-configured software and implementation services.

“The McLaren Group is a rapidly growing business and has unique demands for our software implementation,” said Ron Dennis, executive chairman, The McLaren Group. “These are exciting times for our business, and as we look to the future, we’re pleased to be able to partner with a company like SAP that shares our values – passion, commitment and the willingness to make sacrifices in order to be the absolute best. The growth and longevity of our brand are dependent on our having a varied portfolio, supported by a strong business plan, implemented by the best people – with input from the best partners.”

The McLaren Group’s core activity is Formula 1 racing, a data-intensive sport that demands technical agility and continuous, rapid invention. And McLaren has perfected telemetry systems, which use data generated by race car sensors, so much so that it is the official electronics system for all Formula 1 teams as well IndyCar and NASCAR series. SAP HANA will help turbo-charge both the speed and depth of McLaren’s telemetry technology allowing the teams to look at much larger data sets and ask more complex questions. This real-time analysis of car sensor data can be run against both historical data and predictive models, helping the team to make immediate proactive corrections, avoid costly, dangerous incidents and win the race. With instant analysis of what is happening to the car while the race is on, the driver and engineers can work together to ensure a winning result.

“At McLaren we’re accustomed to handling ‘big data,’” continued Dennis. “On every lap of every Grand Prix, practice or test session, our Formula 1 cars generate vast quantities of performance data. Our ability to process that data and act on it rapidly is crucial to creating the kind of prescriptive intelligence that enables us to transform the outcome of races. And that need resonates through every other facet of our business.”

As McLaren diversifies its business, its electronic systems — including telemetry, modeling and real-time simulations — are being used widely in other areas, such as to help Olympic athletes hone their performance and in rapid transit systems in the U.S. to optimize traffic flow. The company plans to use SAP innovations to augment the competitive advantage it provides across these various areas.

“Transforming information into intelligence in real time is a cornerstone for McLaren’s winning formula – and increasingly critical for the future of every company,” said Jim Hagemann Snabe, co-CEO, SAP AG.” With SAP HANA, mobile and the complete SAP portfolio underpinning its business, McLaren can now bring increased intelligence across the full spectrum of its business operations. SAP will be able to help McLaren better anticipate, accelerate and differentiate its business — keeping them very much in the driver’s seat. In short, working together, SAP will help McLaren run like never before.”

For announcements, blog posts, videos and other coverage during SAPPHIRE NOW, visit the Events Newsroom.

SAPPHIRE NOW
With SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP offers its customers, partners and prospects even more opportunities to engage in dialogue with peers, participants and thought leaders around the globe. Being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012, this enhanced, real-time event connects attendees on site with global participants through state-of-the-art broadcast studios and an online experience that incorporates the latest social media and community functionality. Whether on site or online, participants can gain insight as to how SAP is delivering on its product strategy and helping organizations around the world to run better. For more information, visit www.sapphirenow.com. Follow SAPPHIRE NOW on Twitter at @SAPPHIRENOW and visit the Events Newsroom at www.events.news-sap.com.

Note to Editors:
Webcasts, announcements, media roundtables, keynote presentations and blog posts from SAPPHIRE NOW will be available in the Events Newsroom at: www.events.news-sap.com. To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visit www.sap.com/photos. On this platform, you can find high-resolution material for your media channels. To view video stories on diverse topics, visit www.sap-tv.com. From this site, you can embed videos into your own Web pages, share video via email links and subscribe to RSS feeds from SAP TV. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

For more information, press only:
Robin Meyerhoff, +1 (650) 440-2572, robin.meyerhoff@sap.com, PDT
SAP Press Office, +49 (6227) 7-46315, CET; +1 (610) 661-3200, EDT; press@sap.com

During SAPPHIRE NOW (from May 14 to 16), to speak with press contacts on site, please dial the SAP press room: +1 (610) 661-0469.

Capgemini and SAP Announce Strategic Co-Innovation and Co-Development Agreement for Mobile Solutions

 Mobility, Newsbyte  Comments Off
May 152012
 

ORLANDO and PARIS — SAP and Capgemini today announced an agreement to co-develop a mobile sales execution solution and a joint go-to-market plan for the next five years. This follows the global managed mobility agreement Capgemini signed with SAP and Sybase in September 2011. Today’s announcement focuses initially on the consumer products sector to design a mobile application solution for companies selling products via mobile direct store delivery with additional requirements for accelerated customer relationship management (CRM). The solution is planned to be based on Sybase Unwired Platform and aims to help customers reduce costs but at the same time improve customer experience, as mobile channels become increasingly important. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE NOW, being held inOrlando,Florida, May 14-16, 2012.

“Having worked with SAP and Capgemini for many years on the Direct Store Delivery area, we feel that their shared knowledge is a huge asset to build a solution for the consumer products industry,” said Alejandro Bombaci, CIO for Empresas Polar, a leading consumer products manufacturer and distributor. “Capgemini’s mobile development capabilities combined with SAP products and mobile strategy experience will produce a world-class mobile solution, which includes extensive process coverage and strong data integration, that should become the de-facto standard in the industry.”

The joint team will leverage SAP excellence in back-end architecture, process consulting, custom development and technical optimization, along with Capgemini strengths in mobile architecture design, implementation and hosting services, drawing on its recently created Global Mobile Solutions Service Line.

“We are delighted to sign this significant co-development agreement with SAP and to have been defined as the preferred systems integrator for mobile sales execution in the consumer products industry,” said Fernando Alvarez, mobile solutions global service line leader, Capgemini. “This agreement builds on our strong relationship with SAP in the area of mobile. It will help us deliver further value to our customers as we continually strive to build and advise on solutions, in a sector where mobile channels are developing at a rapid pace.”

“We are partnering with Capgemini because of their strong global footprint, deep expertise in implementation, hosting services, mobile capabilities and functional expertise in the market,” said Sanjay Poonen, president, Product Go-to-Market, and head of Mobile Division, SAP. “We look forward to developing our go-to-market strategy with them over the next years, as one of the leading forces in the marketplace.”

Capgemini has a long-standing relationship with SAP with nearly 11,500 practitioners focused on SAP solutions globally. It provides application life-cycle services in support of SAP solutions, including on-premise, on-device and on-demand projects to thousands of clients worldwide. Capgemini has one of the broadest offerings of SAP Services globally, including design, build, run and operate services. It delivers solutions to its customers by providing SAP software licensing, implementation, hosting, application management and business process outsourcing under one contract. In March 2012, Capgemini received an SAP Pinnacle award in the category of “Transformational Award: Unwired Enterprise.”

For announcements, blog posts, videos and other coverage during SAPPHIRE NOW, visit the Events Newsroom.

SAPPHIRE NOW
With SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP offers its customers, partners and prospects even more opportunities to engage in dialogue with peers, participants and thought leaders around the globe. Being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012, this enhanced, real-time event connects attendees on site with global participants through state-of-the-art broadcast studios and an online experience that incorporates the latest social media and community functionality. Whether on site or online, participants can gain insight as to how SAP is delivering on its product strategy and helping organizations around the world to run better. For more information, visit www.sapphirenow.com. Follow SAPPHIRE NOW on Twitter at @SAPPHIRENOW and visit the Events Newsroom at www.events.news-sap.com.

Note to Editors:
Webcasts, announcements, media roundtables, keynote presentations and blog posts from SAPPHIRE NOW will be available in the Events Newsroom at: www.events.news-sap.com. To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visit www.sap.com/photos. On this platform, you can find high-resolution material for your media channels. To view video stories on diverse topics, visit www.sap-tv.com. From this site, you can embed videos into your own Web pages, share video via email links and subscribe to RSS feeds from SAP TV. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

About Capgemini
With around 120,000 people in 40 countries, Capgemini is one of the world’s foremost providers of consulting, technology and outsourcing services. The Group reported 2011 global revenues of EUR 9.7 billion. Together with its clients, Capgemini creates and delivers business and technology solutions that fit their needs and drive the results they want. A deeply multicultural organization, Capgemini has developed its own way of working, the Collaborative Business ExperienceTM, and draws on Rightshore, its worldwide delivery model.

Learn more about us at www.capgemini.com.

For more information, press only:
Jason Loesche, SAP, +1 (484) 437-0015, j.loesche@sap.com, EDT
SAP Press Office, +49 (6227) 7-46315, CET; +1 (610) 661-3200, EDT; press@sap.com
Christel Lerouge, Capgemini, +33 (0)1 47 54 50 76, christel.lerouge@capgemini.com
Hester Decouz, Capgemini, +44 87- 904 5758, hester.decouz@capgemini.com

During SAPPHIRE NOW (from May 14 to 16), to speak with press contacts on site, please dial the SAP press room: +1 (610) 661-0469.

SAP Customers Embrace Breakthrough Technologies for Innovation, Growth and More Powerful Business Models

 Newsbyte  Comments Off
May 142012
 

ORLANDO — The SAPPHIRE NOW conference from Orlando kicked off today with 60,000 customers, partners and employees of SAP  gathering in person and online to understand how profound new technologies are reshaping companies, industries and the way people live and work. On the opening day, SAP customers, including Coinstar, Inc., Burberry and Ace Hardware, demonstrated how forces shaping today’s IT landscape — big data, cloud and mobile — are helping them keep pace with rapidly changing customer needs and buying behavior. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE NOW, being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012.

Today’s businesses operate in a digital economy where information is vast, interconnected and automated. Companies must continuously transform their business models to remain competitive in a world with rapidly changing global economic conditions and events.

“When I talk to CEOs, I hear three big problems consistently, across all industries: How can we innovate better? How do we grow profitably? How do we transform our business models?” said Bill McDermott, co-CEO, SAP AG. “Businesses today must must be serial innovators and move in almost surreal time to anticipate the needs of customers and deliver an incredible and personal customer experience.”

Top Executives Share Success Stories at SAPPHIRE NOW
Top executives from Ace, Burberry and Coinstar are participating in a keynote panel discussion with McDermott on Monday, May 14, at 4:30 p.m. EDT. Representatives joining McDermott on stage at SAPPHIRE NOW include Ray Griffith, CEO of Ace Hardware; Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry; and J. Scott Di Valerio, chief financial officer of Coinstar, Inc. The panel will be broadcast via the virtual platform at www.sapphirenow.com, with a replay available following the session.

Solving Retail Problems With SAP Solutions
Embracing technology has helped Burberry, the iconic British luxury brand, to build a “young, old” company that combines a 156-year heritage with a modern attitude. Once a federation of businesses, Burberry today is one globally SAP-connected organization, with full visibility across its retail network and a pure, consistent brand worldwide. From concept to customer, every part of the business and culture has been touched and transformed by technology, enabling greater responsiveness, deeper engagement and compelling customer experiences that blur the boundaries between the physical and virtual worlds. Burberry has used solutions from the SAP for Retail solution portfolio and other industry-specific solutions from SAP for business-critical functions in the fashion world that include optimizing supply chain logistics, customer segmentation, spotting hot items and driving down stock inventory.

Coinstar, Inc., a leader in automated retail, was faced with a positive yet challenging problem: outdated legacy systems supporting its growing core businesses and promising new ventures. It needed a way to identify synergies and share information to enable the company to continue providing its simple and convenient solutions to a growing number of consumers. Coinstar tackled the problem by revamping its IT infrastructure, retiring legacy systems and adopting a shared-services environment. The company divested under-performing ventures and used that capital to reinvest in its core businesses, Redbox® movie rental and Coinstar® coin-counting kiosks as well as new automated retail concepts. Today, Coinstar is a large enterprise with more than 50,000 kiosks in the market and annual revenue of approximately US$2 billion.

Similarly, Ace Hardware was at risk to the “big box” retailers. Priding itself on being “the helpful place,” Ace understood that customers were becoming increasingly social. Consumers shared experiences – good or bad – with their friends and neighbors verbally and electronically. Ace wanted an enterprise that enabled small retailers to enjoy bulk-buying prices but maintain a local, personal feel. As a prime user of SAP solutions for supply chain management and with SAP Rapid Deployment solutions, Ace has been able to rapidly enable business processes, gain real-time data and distribution for quick reaction to global changes and develop specialized merchandizing capabilities. Ace used its data to understand demographics, and for visibility into things such as seasonal buying trends. Using mobile connectivity, personalization and buyer insight, the company not only maintained profitability, it remained a vital part of the community.

For announcements, blog posts, videos and other coverage during SAPPHIRE NOW, visit the Events Newsroom.

SAPPHIRE NOW
With SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP offers its customers, partners and prospects even more opportunities to engage in dialogue with peers, participants and thought leaders around the globe. Being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012, this enhanced, real-time event connects attendees on site with global participants through state-of-the-art broadcast studios and an online experience that incorporates the latest social media and community functionality. Whether on site or online, participants can gain insight as to how SAP is delivering on its product strategy and helping organizations around the world to run better. For more information, visit www.sapphirenow.com. Follow SAPPHIRE NOW on Twitter at @SAPPHIRENOW and visit the Events Newsroom at www.events.news-sap.com.

Note to Editors:
Webcasts, announcements, media roundtables, keynote presentations and blog posts from SAPPHIRE NOW will be available in the Events Newsroom at: www.events.news-sap.com. To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visit www.sap.com/photos. On this platform, you can find high-resolution material for your media channels. To view video stories on diverse topics, visit www.sap-tv.com. From this site, you can embed videos into your own Web pages, share video via email links and subscribe to RSS feeds from SAP TV. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

For more information, press only:
Andy Kendzie, +1 (202) 312-3919, andy.kendzie@sap.com, EDT
SAP Press Office, +49 (6227) 7-46315, CET; +1 (610) 661-3200, EDT; press@sap.com

During SAPPHIRE NOW (from May 14 to 16), to speak with press contacts on site, please dial the SAP press room: +1 (610) 661-0469.

SAP Teams Up With Amazon Web Services to Offer Customers Cloud-Based Option for Mobile Device and Application Management

 Analytics, Mobility, Newsbyte  Comments Off
May 142012
 
ORLANDO — SAP today announced that the industry-leading SAP Afaria mobile device management solution is now available on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace, providing a convenient, reliable and cost-effective way for customers to effectively manage and secure their enterprise mobile applications and corporate-liable and personally-owned devices. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE NOW, being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012. The AWS Marketplace is an online store that helps customers easily find, purchase and deploy software and services they need to help them run their businesses. The availability of the fully configured SAP Afaria 7.0 server on the AWS Marketplace gives customers the ability to immediately take advantage of a comprehensive mobile management platform with the click of a mouse. “As the cloud rapidly becomes the IT deployment model of choice for businesses of all sizes, Amazon Web Services  is excited to be working closely  with SAP in bringing enterprise solutions to the cloud,” said  Andy Jassy, senior vice president, Amazon Web Services. “Adding SAP Afaria to AWS Marketplace provides customers a fast, simple and trusted way to shop for and implement an enterprise-ready mobile solution.” The decision to offer SAP Afaria on the AWS Marketplace is in response to increasing customer demand for software that can deliver centralized control of all mobile devices and instantly be deployed in the cloud. A July 2011 Aberdeen study found that 75 percent of organizations permit the use of employee-liable mobile devices for business purposes. With the growing trend of employees using personally-owned mobile devices in the workplace, regulating these devices is essential for protecting sensitive data and enhancing employee productivity. SAP Afaria is a long-standing solution that has evolved over the last decade into a complete platform that manages and secures mobile data, devices and applications across the enterprise from a single console. The 7.0 release of SAP Afaria brings a new user interface for simplified app and expense management, a consumer-like app portal with SAP® Store integration and mobile analytics dashboards for business intelligence (BI) reporting with powerful drill-down analysis capabilities. SAP Afaria can now be found in the AWS Marketplace. Customers with licenses for earlier versions of SAP Afaria can use the same license to experience SAP Afaria 7.0 on Amazon Web Services. Customers without existing licenses can receive a license that enables a 14-day free trial. The evaluation includes help from SAP mobile experts, who will guide customers throughout the test-drive process. SAP Afaria can be found by visiting http://aws.amazon.com/marketplace. “By offering SAP Afaria on the secure, scalable AWS cloud infrastructure, we are extending our existing close relationship with AWS and making it as easy as possible for customers and partners to test and deploy the industry’s leading mobile device management solution in an economical and reliable fashion,” said Sanjay Poonen, president, Product Go-to-Market, and head of Mobile Division, SAP. “This announcement is just a sneak preview of what’s coming from SAP as we lay the ground work for long-term innovation around our comprehensive, unmatched B2B and B2C mobile platform – both on premise and in the cloud.” For announcements, blog posts, videos and other coverage during SAPPHIRE NOW, visit the Events Newsroom. SAPPHIRE NOW With SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP offers its customers, partners and prospects even more opportunities to engage in dialogue with peers, participants and thought leaders around the globe. Being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012, this enhanced, real-time event connects attendees on site with global participants through state-of-the-art broadcast studios and an online experience that incorporates the latest social media and community functionality. Whether on site or online, participants can gain insight as to how SAP is delivering on its product strategy and helping organizations around the world to run better. For more information, visit www.sapphirenow.com. Follow SAPPHIRE NOW on Twitter at @SAPPHIRENOW and visit the Events Newsroom at www.events.news-sap.com.  Note to Editors: Webcasts, announcements, media roundtables, keynote presentations and blog posts from SAPPHIRE NOW will be available in the Events Newsroom at: www.events.news-sap.com. To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visit www.sap.com/photos. On this platform, you can find high-resolution material for your media channels. To view video stories on diverse topics, visit www.sap-tv.com. From this site, you can embed videos into your own Web pages, share video via email links and subscribe to RSS feeds from SAP TV. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.  Media Contact: Jason Loesche, + 1 (610) 661-8541, j.loesche@sap.com, EDT  

SAP Mobile Apps Connect Businesses and Consumers — from the Boardroom to the Shopping Center

 Analytics, Newsbyte  Comments Off
May 142012
 

ORLANDO — Extending its commitment to drive mobile innovation from the enterprise to consumers, SAP today announced a new wave of mobile apps designed to help people be more efficient whether at work, at home or pursing leisure activities. With the help of a thriving partner ecosystem, the new SAP mobile apps lay the foundation for growth by providing real-time mobile access to human resources (HR), sustainability, finance, sales and mobile commerce functions. This includes updated versions of existing SAP mobile apps available on more mobile platforms, including Android and RIM BlackBerry. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE NOW, being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012.

Mobile apps are transforming devices into useful productivity tools that enable people to save time, whether they are entering travel expenses, meeting with a customer, investigating a potential safety hazard, treating a patient at his bedside or purchasing an out-of-stock item at their favorite store. Innovations from SAP and its partners make it possible for people to quickly access a wide range of simple mobile apps to help them make informed decisions, any time and from anywhere.

“SAP is following through on its commitment to deliver innovative, engaging mobile apps for millions of people,” said Sanjay Poonen, president, head of Mobile Division, SAP. “With mobile serving as a major part of daily life, it is a top priority for most businesses that seek to simplify daily tasks for employees and their customers. SAP is leading the charge for businesses to run better with stunning, easy-to-use mobile apps that can manage and analyze today’s explosion of data—bringing business to people.”

Mobilizing Work Tasks for Employees On the Go
Entering travel expenses is a necessary evil for many workers. Most travel and expense systems require an employee to log onto back-office systems from a computer. SAP is empowering mobile workers to easily enter expenses while on the road, freeing them from tedious re-entry at a later date. The SAP Travel Expense Report mobile app allows business travelers to easily create expense reports from a mobile device. For example, users can save time by adding corporate credit card charges or quickly taking a photo of a receipt to submit expenses with a few clicks directly from a restaurant.

With the new SAP Learning Assistant mobile app, SAP helps learners explore and consume learning content anywhere and anytime. The app accesses SAP Learning Solution and allows learners to explore available learning content, manage course bookings and download and play e-learning content online in a range of formats right from their iPads. Learners can view personal notifications for expiring and required qualifications, as well as the recommended courses to fulfill them on time. Employees who to consume learning content off-site can now do so quickly and easily even in unconnected mode.

For sales executives the SAP Customer Briefing mobile app provides a real-time dashboard to help prepare them for customer interactions. This allows immediate access to critical client data in an easily consumable format. The app provides real-time visibility to internal customer relationship management (CRM) data, as well as external business, and news sources, while on the road. Sales professionals can easily view customer information in a visual format, helping ensure they are exceptionally well prepared for every customer meeting.

Companies focused on improving safety will have faster visibility to problems with the SAP EHS Safety Issue mobile app. Workers can log issues from their mobile device with a photo or video, as well as an audio recording, and send it directly to an incident or safety manager for corrective action. The app makes it easy for everyone to participate in creating a safer, more sustainable work environment and proactively reduce operational risks.

Bringing Mobile Commerce to Consumers and Businesses
With billions of mobile apps downloaded to date and hundreds of millions of mobile commerce users worldwide, what people do with their mobile devices is changing. SAP is supporting this monumental shift through its award-winning mobile customer engagement and commerce platform for banking, telecommunications, utilities, retail and consumer packaged goods. The mobile commerce portfolio from Sybase 365 has already been widely deployed by banks and mobile operators for mobile banking, mobile payments and mobile money services in both developed and emerging markets. This mobile commerce portfolio from Sybase 365 is a key component of the industry-leading SAP mobile platform for powering highly productive business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) mobile apps and services, including:

  • Sybase 365 Mobile Banking, which enables subscribers to pay, buy, bank and remit money with any mobile device. It allows an end user to use his mobile phone as a micro bank, performing all banking tasks where instant information is important, such as inquiring about account balances, configuring notifications to receive account activity, paying bills, person-to-person (P2P) money transfers and applying for new products. This solution is available in retail, small to midsize business and corporate mobile banking editions.
  • Sybase 365 Mobile Payments, which enables people to leverage a mobile wallet solution to pay bills and loans, make domestic P2P payments to known and unknown beneficiaries, remit money, top-up and pay for goods and services. The solution includes all the tools and services for managing merchants and for emerging markets managing agent networks.
  • Sybase 365 Mobile Money, which enables financial institutions to offer a branchless financial inclusion service that allows them to offer financial products to un-banked and under-banked customer segments in a highly cost-effective manner, entirely through the mobile device. For the end user, mobile money supports money transfers, balance inquiries, bill payments, cash in/cash out via agents and self-service machines, as well as micro-payments and loan repayments. For bank agents, it offers a full suite of customer enrollment, KYC (Know Your Customer) details, reports, fee tracking and much more.

Numerous leading financial institutions and mobile operators, including Dutch Bangla-Bank, First Tennessee Bank and Telefónica, are providing their customers with live mobile commerce apps and services built on top of the Sybase 365 mobile commerce portfolio.

Mobilizing Across Industries
SAP is extending the value of key systems of record by mobilizing business processes across healthcare, insurance and retail industries:

  • Retail shoppers and employees can benefit from the SAP In-Store Product Lookup mobile app, which creates a new experience for retail shoppers and employees by helping store managers and associates on the floor better assist customers. For example, store employees can locate the availability of an item with current stock information in real-time, eliminating the need for shoppers to wait at the checkout counter. The app also displays product details and stock levels both in-store and in nearby stores, as well as the ability to adjust inventory.
  • Insurance companies can improve customer service with the SAP Policyholder Lookup mobile app, which allows insurance sales agents to access policy and claim details of policyholders anywhere and anytime. The app provides increased sales insight and service with up-to-date customer information, decreasing call volume for claim status and policy coverage.

SAP Store and Mobile App Ecosystem Growth
SAP offers a carefully curated mobile platform and enterprise application portfolio designed to expand and accelerate any business’ ability to run better with mobile. With the introduction of more than 70 apps from SAP and its partners, SAP continues to expand a network of industry-leading developers, with companies such as Advent Global and Principal Consulting making it possible for complex mobile solutions to become a simple reality.

Advent Global’s Go Sell mobile app is a comprehensive sales force automation app that enables sales professionals to be connected and sell on the go. With instant access to their handheld devices, sales professionals can log calls, respond to hot leads, and access vital information such as opportunities and dashboards across the complete order-to-cash process wherever they are. The app not only saves precious time, but also eliminates the process overhead of carrying physical reports/forms and dependency on sales office for real-time information. The app runs on Android, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices and utilizes data from the SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) component and SAP CRM application.

The Principal Consulting Group successfully runs an app called the Project Manager, which allows users to effectively manage their projects while out of the office. The app provides customers with a complete end-to-end project management functionality including: the ability to review and update projects, review work-breakdown-structures, coordinate team members and project assignments, capture time for project tasks to be completed and review dashboards and critical KPIs. The app saves time and cost, while providing all the information needed for a project manager to run the task on time and on budget. The app is available for all major mobile devices.

An HTML5 version of SAP Store for iPad and tablets is now available, delivering a dynamic user experience. New versions of SAP Store native mobile application for iOS (“SAP Mobile Apps” in iTunes) and Android (“SAP Store” in Google Play Store) platforms have also been made available for an end-to-end buying process for mobile solutions, including credit card enablement for payment.

Expanding SAP Mobile Apps Across Platforms
SAP is continuing to evolve and build the mobile app ecosystem with updated features and expanded platform availability to existing apps, including:

  • SAP Customer Financial Fact Sheet mobile app, allowing sales representatives or account executives to check the system financial status of their customers anywhere and anytime, is now available on iPad and Android 2.2 or later.
  • SAP Payment Approvals mobile app, helping ensure the liquidity of a company by approving payments anywhere and anytime, is now available on Android 2.2 or later.
  • SAP Electronic Medical Record mobile app, putting critical patient information in the hands of doctors, providing them with instant access to the electronic medical records at a patient’s bedside, is now available on Android 3.2 and iPhone.
  • SAP GRC Policy Survey mobile app, allowing employees to receive, complete and submit governance, risk and compliance (GRC) policy surveys, quizzes and acknowledgements, is now available on iPad.

For a closer look, see: “Screenshots: SAP Mobile Apps Connect Businesses and Consumers.” For announcements, blog posts, videos and other coverage during SAPPHIRE NOW, visit the Events Newsroom.

SAPPHIRE NOW
With SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP offers its customers, partners and prospects even more opportunities to engage in dialogue with peers, participants and thought leaders around the globe. Being held in Orlando, Florida, May 14-16, 2012, this enhanced, real-time event connects attendees on site with global participants through state-of-the-art broadcast studios and an online experience that incorporates the latest social media and community functionality. Whether on site or online, participants can gain insight as to how SAP is delivering on its product strategy and helping organizations around the world to run better. For more information, visit www.sapphirenow.com. Follow SAPPHIRE NOW on Twitter at @SAPPHIRENOW and visit the Events Newsroom at www.events.news-sap.com.

Note to Editors:
Webcasts, announcements, media roundtables, keynote presentations and blog posts from SAPPHIRE NOW will be available in the Events Newsroom at: www.events.news-sap.com. To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visit www.sap.com/photos. On this platform, you can find high-resolution material for your media channels. To view video stories on diverse topics, visit www.sap-tv.com. From this site, you can embed videos into your own Web pages, share video via email links and subscribe to RSS feeds from SAP TV. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.

For more information, press only:
Amisha Gandhi, +1 (415) 341-7101, amisha.gandhi@sap.com, PDT
Scott Malinowski. +1 (978) 287-1793, scott.malinowski@sap.com, EDT
SAP Press Office, +49 (6227) 7-46315, CET; +1 (610) 661-3200, EDT; press@sap.com

During SAPPHIRE NOW (from May 14 to 16), to speak with press contacts on site, please dial the SAP press room: +1 (610) 661-0469.

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