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SAP, The batter is better?

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CIOL Bureau
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DELHI, INDIA: Counting backwards never helps with some things. Like when waiting for your lady to get ready in time for the party. Or putting a baby to sleep as you read some atavistic fairy tale with all silly sound effects you can manage. Or pacing to and fro the kitchen boundaries hoping endlessly for the cookies to bake soon. Or?

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Now this could have many naysayers. But in some way, this holds true many times. Hoping for some strong, vertigo hurricane effect of everything turned upside down from a new, promising wave that has just hit technology industry’s shorelines?

Whenever a breakthrough breathes its first in the industry, a lot of hype and expectations surround the cradle in no time. The industry may be dynamic and innovation-driven but ironically it takes decades for a real paradigm shift to strike it.

The hope, suspense, nail-biting time on tenterhooks gets all the more vindicated when something like HANA strikes a beach that was all calm and rather uneventful before. That something like this has arrived and drenched the enterprise software and hardware market simultaneously, is itself a fresh change for an ERP-jaded coastline. When Dennis Gaugham from Gartner commented that none of the four big vendors in the enterprise market are really re-imagining IT, it was not an entirely hollow dart.

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The hype that came with HANA is then plausible. It’s been some time and many industry-watchers are still hoping for some big bang noise with HANA in a world attuned to the popping of corns. But when? Where? How? Will it just drench or will it inundate? How many will pick it for their high surfboards?

I met Adaire Fox-Martin, senior vice president, Industry Business Solutions, APJ, SAP Asia Pte Ltd with many such question marks. On one hand there’s conjecture on HANAlizing of applications, impact on Core Suite, skill-deficit issues, real translation of unprecedented speed for a CIO and predictive analytics. On the other hand, one wonders about the seismic ripples on hardware side of the market, scalability or volume concerns and of course, some industry-staple Oracle-SAP comparisons.

Like any charming yet intelligent, poised and fore-sighted woman on this earth would hint with a smile, one has to be patient while baking a nice cake. The batter may seem to be tastier enough to make it all the more hard to wait for the oven to ring. Anticipation makes a good seasoning. Provided one can hold the urge to have a peek into the tray again and again.

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Yet one quick peek should be ok, right? Ladies, babies or cookies, we do know that good things take time. Is HANA worth the wait though? This is one wave that will need counting forwards for sure. But meanwhile, let’s check the oven.

When we hear about HANA, most of the attention and hype is galvanized around one factor: faster response times. As outstanding as this speed part may be, how does it convert into a good investment proposition? What to do with a super-fast bike? Specially on usual roads?

Speed is a point I agree on. Ok, let’s think of how bullet trains work in a city like Tokyo. Every next level of speed turns the previous level into a non-acceptable standard. It’s in seconds now. The bar changes drastically. HANA has done the same thing to Enterprise passengers. My team is working to understand just how more and more sense be squeezed out of this immense new standard. I know that people do not consume technology but they do this in context of an industry. We are working on simplifying this part as we go forward. What business questions can now be answered with this massive speed? We are not there now but it’s underway. The earlier technology is now 37 years old, and with HANA a fundamental change in hardware has happened as well.

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Does it make the hardware market a new ball game now? New territory for SAP?

The current direction is that we maintain the openness of our software to work with any hardware and give a wide spectrum of choices to our customers.

How does HANA affect core suite and other applications? We will see more HANA spins on earlier apps?

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Yes, the impact has already touched areas like utilities, healthcare, SMB etc. We are working with customers on many use cases to get a sense of its possibilities for their scenarios.

What would you say about the head-to-head nature of comparisons between Exadata and HANA that have never taken a pause?

My argument is that Exadata is still some 30 years old with no fundamental architectural change. I would ask ‘what’s exactly new here’? Where’s the innovation? How is it not just another repackaging?

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In the same vein, can you help clear the confusion between NetWeaver and HANA, specially for someone who has already invested in the former?



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If you don’t have HANA, the question of middle layer opens up in an entirely new dimension. It’s a point about relational database. NetWeaver components are important to integrate other applications and it is an important part of HANA use cases.

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Should CIOs be worried about skill-deficit issues while investing in HANA?

This is a perennial question for us and implementation is always an important question for SAP. The company has been exceptionally strong with its ecosystem. Out strength has been the focus that client should have choice of implementation. Our partners are good and we maintain a good integration. We have a number of initiatives with many universities etc to increase the skill base around HANA, along with attempts like opening free licenses to developers.

The recently announced Predictive Analytics software makes the market more interesting. What else can we look forward to on this tangent?

The real what-ifs happen here. Like in case of a smart grid metering system. Imagine the power. It is for sure an exciting area for us to pursue. I think we will see so many sources of data in future. We are working with a lot of companies to drill deep here. The recent portfolio is fresh and initial uptake is encouraging. This area would be a big push for SAP with dedicated teams.

You have a strong métier when it comes to PSUs. What’s been your experience with this genre of customers? How different or similar are they to other enterprise customers? Adoption laggards always?

There’s nothing starkly different. They belong to the same world where expecting quality and a certain level of deliverables is a priority. The degree of accountability, transparency and their effects on their decision-making may be a bit different. Many PSUs put citizens in the centre of their work. I have seen many brilliant people working in PSUs. People who could have easily got other options in private sec        tor and still chose to work here because they want to make a difference. They see a future state that is about back-office efficiencies, is productive, engaged and sustainable. They are no less when we talk of adoption or SLAs. There is a lot of innovation around process and on breaking down boundaries. PSUs have been the first-movers in many areas. I see a change in discussions when it comes to off-the-shelf software not working in India. PSUs have opened up.

What are they precisely interested in?

Earlier the conversations were about ERP platforms for governments. In the last two years, with all acquisitions and innovations that SAP has done, the conversations have become much broader and moved to mobility, big data or device. Government has to go to the lowest common denominator, which is SMS in India. Acquisitions like BusinessObjects have given us a good range. For this market, our competition was not another ERP vendor, it was interestingly the thought of ‘doing nothing’ and the second most strong competition was ‘in-house IT’. HANA gives us a lot of new conversation points now.