Receiving a staggering 39% of all investments made in Q4, 2014, enterprise software is innovating, disrupting and shaking up the current incumbents like never before.
Viewing this change from a recruitment perspective, we've market mapped enterprise software into its key areas to show you where the most value and potential is.
In this QuickView:
- Key Areas to Watch in 2015
- Technology Layers:
- Infrastructure Layer
- Data Architecture Layer
- Applications Layer
- Security
- Investment by Industry
- Top 100 Cloud-Based Enterprise Software Startups Ranked by Total Funding, March, 2015
Receiving a staggering 39% of all investments made in Q4, 2014, enterprise software is innovating, disrupting and shaking up the current incumbents like never before.
Viewing this change from a recruitment perspective, we've market mapped enterprise software into its key areas to show you where the most value and potential is.
In this QuickView:
- Key Areas to Watch in 2015
- Technology Layers:
- Infrastructure Layer
- Data Architecture Layer
- Applications Layer
- Security
- Investment by Industry
- Top 100 Cloud-Based Enterprise Software Startups Ranked by Total Funding, March, 2015
Trends 2020 - Demystifying Bleeding Edge from Leading Edge TechnologyFulcrum Digital
Want to gain mileage with technologies? Discover the ones that directly add business value through this FREE Whitepaper.
To download go to bit.ly/2020-tech-trends-whitepaper
Cloud Usage in Business Today and Tomorrowrftclouds
Reach for the Clouds, Inc. was formed to organizations migrate to the cloud with One Solution, One platform, one with your customer.
http://bit.ly/1wqmNX3
What does the future hold for BI, CRM, ERP and enterprise software in 2015? IT experts discuss which enterprise software trends will have the greatest impact on IT organizations in the coming year
A managed journey to the cloud requires that IT Leaders:
- Engage Lines of Business leaders as partners
- Establish a cloud migration strategy that meets the needs of the business
- Enlists their key technology providers' commitment to that strategy
Hear more at the 2016 Quest Executive Forum in Las Vegas on April 12.
How an organisation can leverage the Cloud for delivering fast growth. The presentation covers various aspects of the Cloud ranging from BPaaS, SaaS, IaaS and PaaS and how an organisation can go about leveraging each of them for business growth. The presentation was part of Keynote presented at the IBM Cloud Innovation Forum India by Christian Klezl, Vice President, Cloud Solution Sales, IBM Corporation.
Although cloud is widely recognized as a technology
game changer, its potential for driving business innovation remains virtually untapped.
Indeed, cloud has the power to fundamentally shift competitive landscapes by providing a
new platform for creating and delivering business value. To take advantage of cloud’s
potential to transform internal operations, customer relationships and industry value
chains, organizations need to determine how best to employ cloud-enabled business
models that promote sustainable competitive advantage.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a comprehensive, evolving cloud computing platform provided by Amazon. It provides a mix of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and packaged software as a service (SaaS) offerings.
For IT recruiters, and just about everyone who has been interested in tech, cloud is not a new phenomena. However, over the past 18 months, adoption of cloud is growing quickly and is now used in some shape or form by businesses of all sizes around the world.
This issue provides an overview to the rise of cloud, highlights the most in demand IT skills and lists the fastest growing cloud companies by employee.
In this QuickView
- Fastest growing cloud companies by employees
- Most in demand skills, job roles and certifications
- Top employers of cloud professionals
- Is Big-data-as-a-service the next big growth sector?
- Top 5 uses of cloud computing for 2015
Trends 2020 - Demystifying Bleeding Edge from Leading Edge TechnologyFulcrum Digital
Want to gain mileage with technologies? Discover the ones that directly add business value through this FREE Whitepaper.
To download go to bit.ly/2020-tech-trends-whitepaper
Cloud Usage in Business Today and Tomorrowrftclouds
Reach for the Clouds, Inc. was formed to organizations migrate to the cloud with One Solution, One platform, one with your customer.
http://bit.ly/1wqmNX3
What does the future hold for BI, CRM, ERP and enterprise software in 2015? IT experts discuss which enterprise software trends will have the greatest impact on IT organizations in the coming year
A managed journey to the cloud requires that IT Leaders:
- Engage Lines of Business leaders as partners
- Establish a cloud migration strategy that meets the needs of the business
- Enlists their key technology providers' commitment to that strategy
Hear more at the 2016 Quest Executive Forum in Las Vegas on April 12.
How an organisation can leverage the Cloud for delivering fast growth. The presentation covers various aspects of the Cloud ranging from BPaaS, SaaS, IaaS and PaaS and how an organisation can go about leveraging each of them for business growth. The presentation was part of Keynote presented at the IBM Cloud Innovation Forum India by Christian Klezl, Vice President, Cloud Solution Sales, IBM Corporation.
Although cloud is widely recognized as a technology
game changer, its potential for driving business innovation remains virtually untapped.
Indeed, cloud has the power to fundamentally shift competitive landscapes by providing a
new platform for creating and delivering business value. To take advantage of cloud’s
potential to transform internal operations, customer relationships and industry value
chains, organizations need to determine how best to employ cloud-enabled business
models that promote sustainable competitive advantage.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a comprehensive, evolving cloud computing platform provided by Amazon. It provides a mix of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and packaged software as a service (SaaS) offerings.
For IT recruiters, and just about everyone who has been interested in tech, cloud is not a new phenomena. However, over the past 18 months, adoption of cloud is growing quickly and is now used in some shape or form by businesses of all sizes around the world.
This issue provides an overview to the rise of cloud, highlights the most in demand IT skills and lists the fastest growing cloud companies by employee.
In this QuickView
- Fastest growing cloud companies by employees
- Most in demand skills, job roles and certifications
- Top employers of cloud professionals
- Is Big-data-as-a-service the next big growth sector?
- Top 5 uses of cloud computing for 2015
Cloud computing is now a viable option for businesses seeking to outsource part or all of their IT operations. But in this new era — where the power of the Internet is harnessed for IT tasks — outsourcing to the cloud can be a strategic maneuver, not just a cost-cutting measure.
If there is any trend that has created such a buzz in recent times, it has got be cloud computing. But does this mean that you should provide your software-plus-service from the cloud? Or should you tread with caution and wait for the market to stabilize? This paper attempts to provide Sanity-as-a-Service to ISV’s, Software-enabledbusinesses and Enterprises on cloud-enabling their software.
Today’s economic situation continues to favor the Cloud, driven by businesses reshaping themselves in the wake of recent global economic challenges. The Cloud in all of its forms – including SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and Cloud Services – will drive increasing business and IT activity, resulting in hybrid architectures to manage, and a new Cloud IT mission. However, equally important is how the Cloud is helping to transform business and drive revenue opportunities for traditional businesses, not just Cloud providers. This presentation will highlight the key trends driving the adoption of Cloud IT and Cloud Business strategies, as well as some Best Practice insights from early-adopters concerning how best to profit from new Cloud investments, while avoiding pitfalls.
Market momentum for Cloud BI has been announced already a couple of time. But today seems the right time, with the market opening up to three BI sub-segments. In order of maturity : performance management applications ; departmental BI applications t; and enterprise BI and big data.
This white paper looks at those different marlets, highlights their benefits and painpoints and presents the different players.
In 2016, cloud technologies went mainstream. But with maturity came the realization that moving to the cloud doesn’t happen overnight. CIOs are prioritizing hosted computing and cloud data storage. But they’re approaching the shift as a gradual, multi-year journey.
Many startups and small businesses will continue to go all-in on cloud. But enterprises will find success in a slow but steady move from on-prem. Hybrid ecosystems—of data, software, and infrastructure—will be the reality for most established organizations.
As this shift to cloud progresses where are things are headed? This paper highlights the top cloud trends for 2017.
Are you searching for a partner to help you navigate Microsoft Dynamics 365 for your financial and operational needs in the USA? Look no further! We offer expertise as a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations Partner, providing comprehensive solutions and implementation services.
A cloud revolution is brewing, and it promises to radically transform the way we compete, collaborate, and consume business services. Indeed, in an economy as volatile and hypercompetitive as today’s, the cloud’s potent mix of simplicity, security, faster innovation, and lower operating costs is proving increasingly attractive. For many businesses—small, medium, and large—the time to adopt this game-changing approach is now.
The wall businesses is moving towards the cloud, and we are gradually creating a cloud-native based world. Companies are looking to take advantage of this, and to do this, they must understand how the cloud-native service industry world and the ebbs and flows of the industry. Here are the top cloud-native trends for 2021.
The power of Cloud - Driving business model innovationIBM Software India
Although businesses today are leveraging the power of Cloud to transform the way they function, they are yet to realize its potential when it comes to driving innovation in the organisation. When utilised effectively, Cloud capabilities offer numerous advantages to drive business innovation. Read through or download the study to find out more.
Levelwise PageRank with Loop-Based Dead End Handling Strategy : SHORT REPORT ...Subhajit Sahu
Abstract — Levelwise PageRank is an alternative method of PageRank computation which decomposes the input graph into a directed acyclic block-graph of strongly connected components, and processes them in topological order, one level at a time. This enables calculation for ranks in a distributed fashion without per-iteration communication, unlike the standard method where all vertices are processed in each iteration. It however comes with a precondition of the absence of dead ends in the input graph. Here, the native non-distributed performance of Levelwise PageRank was compared against Monolithic PageRank on a CPU as well as a GPU. To ensure a fair comparison, Monolithic PageRank was also performed on a graph where vertices were split by components. Results indicate that Levelwise PageRank is about as fast as Monolithic PageRank on the CPU, but quite a bit slower on the GPU. Slowdown on the GPU is likely caused by a large submission of small workloads, and expected to be non-issue when the computation is performed on massive graphs.
Opendatabay - Open Data Marketplace.pptxOpendatabay
Opendatabay.com unlocks the power of data for everyone. Open Data Marketplace fosters a collaborative hub for data enthusiasts to explore, share, and contribute to a vast collection of datasets.
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Leverage these privacy-preserving datasets for training and testing AI models without compromising sensitive information. Opendatabay prioritizes transparency by providing detailed metadata, provenance information, and usage guidelines for each dataset, ensuring users have a comprehensive understanding of the data they're working with. By leveraging a powerful combination of distributed ledger technology and rigorous third-party audits Opendatabay ensures the authenticity and reliability of every dataset. Security is at the core of Opendatabay. Marketplace implements stringent security measures, including encryption, access controls, and regular vulnerability assessments, to safeguard your data and protect your privacy.
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Our team of experienced lawyers can initiate lawsuits on your behalf and represent you in various jurisdictions around the world. They work diligently to recover your stolen funds and ensure that justice is served.
At StarCompliance, we understand the urgency and stress involved in dealing with cryptocurrency theft. Our dedicated team works quickly and efficiently to provide you with the support and expertise needed to recover your assets. Trust us to be your partner in navigating the complexities of the crypto world and safeguarding your investments.
Adjusting primitives for graph : SHORT REPORT / NOTESSubhajit Sahu
Graph algorithms, like PageRank Compressed Sparse Row (CSR) is an adjacency-list based graph representation that is
Multiply with different modes (map)
1. Performance of sequential execution based vs OpenMP based vector multiply.
2. Comparing various launch configs for CUDA based vector multiply.
Sum with different storage types (reduce)
1. Performance of vector element sum using float vs bfloat16 as the storage type.
Sum with different modes (reduce)
1. Performance of sequential execution based vs OpenMP based vector element sum.
2. Performance of memcpy vs in-place based CUDA based vector element sum.
3. Comparing various launch configs for CUDA based vector element sum (memcpy).
4. Comparing various launch configs for CUDA based vector element sum (in-place).
Sum with in-place strategies of CUDA mode (reduce)
1. Comparing various launch configs for CUDA based vector element sum (in-place).
Explore our comprehensive data analysis project presentation on predicting product ad campaign performance. Learn how data-driven insights can optimize your marketing strategies and enhance campaign effectiveness. Perfect for professionals and students looking to understand the power of data analysis in advertising. for more details visit: https://bostoninstituteofanalytics.org/data-science-and-artificial-intelligence/
As Europe's leading economic powerhouse and the fourth-largest hashtag#economy globally, Germany stands at the forefront of innovation and industrial might. Renowned for its precision engineering and high-tech sectors, Germany's economic structure is heavily supported by a robust service industry, accounting for approximately 68% of its GDP. This economic clout and strategic geopolitical stance position Germany as a focal point in the global cyber threat landscape.
In the face of escalating global tensions, particularly those emanating from geopolitical disputes with nations like hashtag#Russia and hashtag#China, hashtag#Germany has witnessed a significant uptick in targeted cyber operations. Our analysis indicates a marked increase in hashtag#cyberattack sophistication aimed at critical infrastructure and key industrial sectors. These attacks range from ransomware campaigns to hashtag#AdvancedPersistentThreats (hashtag#APTs), threatening national security and business integrity.
🔑 Key findings include:
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2. FOCUS POINTS
Cloud enables organizational revolution. If your organization isn’t ready for a
revolution, don’t be surprised if your competition is. capioIT believes that the revolution
is driven by a fervent and unfulfilled demand to increase organizational agility.
The swing by organizations to the cloud will only accelerate through 2014 and beyond.
This shift will be driven by more strategic outcomes than simple cost reduction.
In the simplest terms, SAP has bet its future on SAP HANA. Since product launch it
appears that the bet is paying off. In its first two years, SAP HANA was the fastest
growing product in the history of SAP.
For SAP customers, the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC) offering provides a
number of use cases that meet a range of business and technology requirements for
both new and current SAP customers.
CXO’s considering in any type of cloud or “as a Service” offering (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS et
al) must ensure that they are able to identify, measure and manage its investment, and
ensure that alongside the provider, it creates a culture of agility and business
outcomes.
CLOUD COMPUTING HAS SHIFTED FROM AN
EVOLUTION TO A REVOLUTION
Cloud computing is not new. The term has been used beyond saturation point in recent
years, but both buyers and sellers of technology have been looking for the benefits of
scalable agile technology management since the data bureau days in the 1960’s.
Furthermore at the height of the internet bubble in the early 2000’s the Application Service
Provider (ASP), Systems Infrastructure Service Provider (SISP) and other markets offered
the benefits of cloud.
Unfortunately these benefits could not be delivered due to a range of factors including
infrastructure and networking limitations, and security and change management concerns.
Fast forward to 2014 and it is clear that cloud is the over-riding strategy that will dominate
the technology landscape for a generation.
It is increasingly clear that leaders of enterprises have begun to see the benefits of cloud
within their organization as a revolution, not an evolution. Cloud ensures the agility to allow
organizations to take giant steps. To graphically illustrate this point several natural
resources CEO’s that capioIT met with recently agreed that if their CIO and CFO came to
them with a conservative incremental approach to cloud based transformation, they would
fire them and personally walk them out the door. Put simply, cloud computing and models
such as the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud provide the opportunity for revolution when
3. servicing customers and stakeholders alike and to also secure a competitive advantage in
the marketplace.
TECHNOLOGY MEGA TRENDS FOR THE 21ST
CENTURY ORGANIZATION
One of the acute and recurring failings of the technology industry is repeated hype and
high level pronouncements about the latest and greatest innovations rather than
successful execution. As a result, these pronouncements are often treated with well
warranted scepticism. Due to the pace of current innovation, capioIT believes that finally
the industry may have reached the tipping point where the hype of potential outcomes
from technology meets the reality. This tipping point is given substance by the accelerated
adoption of the new technology across enterprises and government entities.
The five factors that will drive Technology into sustained organisational credibility in the
21st
century are highlighted in the figure below:
It is more than symbolic that Social Business, Mobility, Analytics and Cloud revolve around
Business Engagement. Business engagement is the long desired but rarely obtained
seamless integration and functionality of technology and business. The integration is two
way. The business executive must understand the impact and potential of technology
within the organisation, its supply chain and for the competition, and the technology
executive must be able to create an environment that realises the impact and potential of
the technology.
Historically, an almost insurmountable range of issues from organisational siloes, cultural
clashes, and misaligned (or poorly measured) business value has made successful
alignment of IT and business a “Holy Grail” of business. Typically integration has been
made to be more complicated than necessary. This situation has been non-sustainable for
a significant period of time. In the current environment without business engagement, the
4. As a side note, it is worth considering the
parallel that just as Hybrid Cloud is a
compromise between public and private
cloud solutions, deployment and
integration of SAP is often undertaken
with a hybrid approach between internal
organizational IT resources, SAP partner
SI’s and SAP’s own services capabilities.
This collaborative hybrid approach is
also critical in the determination of which
processes should be kept on premise
and which are suited to the cloud
environment.
four technology innovation areas are at best ineffective, and essentially meaningless
wasted investment.
The comparative weighting of the four technology related mega trends will of course vary
by company, industry and geography, but the collective interrelated capability of them is
critical. A mobility strategy and investment that does not account for Social Business for a
retailer or an analytics strategy for a financial services organisation that does not look to
invest in cloud technology is simply wasted investment and will reinforce IT and business
angst.
CLOUD COMPUTING
Whilst driving a revolution, cloud computing sadly is perhaps the most over hyped term in
the history of the technology sector. This hype is yet another source of frustration,
because in terms of impact, cloud computing has potential to transform business to the
same level that the mainstream adoption of the PC did.
Whilst everyone has their own individual definition of what cloud computing is, in general it
can be defined in the following way: Cloud computing is “IT related resources that are
provided through internet technology. These resources are provided in a rapidly scalable
model with a focus on increased access”.
If one Googles the phrase “Cloud Computing” you will get approximately 440 million
search results. To put this into context, the iPad gives you approximately 600 million hits,
but Outsourcing will provide you with a mere 23 million hits1
. Whilst Outsourcing and cloud
computing are inextricably linked, a brief search of Google alone will reinforce that cloud
computing is much more than just another model of outsourcing.
The Cloud Wars
In the distant history of last decade, the
“Cloud Wars” was the primary ideological
battleground within the technology sector,
particularly on the vendor side. The battle
was over the relative merits of the private
cloud model (a data center managed within
the organizational firewall, or in a dedicated
facility of a provider data center), or the
public cloud model (a standardized data
center managed by a third party provider off
premise). The fundamentalist on either side
of the “war” argued their case with a
passion. Public cloud advocates such as Appirio argued in 2009 that Private Clouds would
rise and fall within that year2
. Other public cloud advocates particularly in the Software as
1
Search undertaken in December, 2013 at www.google.com for “Cloud Computing” “iPad” and
“outsourcing”
2
http://appirio.com/category/business-blog/2009/01/2009-prediction-rise-and-fall-of-the-
private-cloud/
5. a Service (SaaS) offering capabilities made equally ambitious claims that the public cloud
would be the only model of the future.
Whilst private cloud advocates were not as aggressive or ambitious in their
pronouncements, in private discussions3
many would proclaim the long term superiority of
the private cloud market over public cloud.
Not surprisingly neither party could claim victory. The winner in the cloud war is clearly the
Hybrid Cloud model. Quite literally, the hybrid cloud is a strategy where an organization
will use the most appropriate cloud type for their workload requirements. The organization
may use a public cloud approach for test and development work, and use a private cloud
for real time sensitive customer information. The organization has the capability to choose
the best model that suits particular workload or business requirements.
The challenge of the hybrid model is the need for integration and orchestration. This can
be delivered with appropriate investments either in internal capabilities or through a third
party. The specific approach is up to the individual organization. To support this SAP and
partners offer comprehensive cloud connectors to help enable both data and process
integration. These are designed to accelerate business outcomes and ROI.
Benefits of Cloud Investment
Just as the model for the cloud has evolved, the benefits of cloud investment have also
rapidly morphed and matured. The initial focus of the benefits of cloud was very simplistic.
It was cost savings first, second and third. The only other factor readily considered was the
ability to scale usage and scale up and down.
As the cloud market has rapidly matured, the benefits of the cloud have equally matured.
Whilst cost is still important, the increasingly measureable benefits of cloud are highlighted
below.
capioIT believes that in 2014 the most compelling use case and business advantage for
cloud computing can be surmised with the concept of Agility.
Cost management and scalability are well understood benefits of cloud computing. They
have been the mainstay benefits of the model since its inception as the XSP market in the
late 1990’s.
Cost management is driven by the economics of cloud shifting expenditure from capital
expenditure to operational expenditure. Even efficiently run IT departments and
3
Private discussions by Phil Hassey with selective private cloud providers since 2008.
Cost Scale Speed Secure Agility
6. organizations more broadly can experience significant, and sustained cost savings through
the deployment of cloud. The flexibility of the hybrid deployment model provides increased
realization opportunities for cost savings.
The significant benefit of scalability, for cloud deployments is well documented, and
arguably was the first use case for the innovation. It still remains critical today. The ability
to access storage, servers or applications in alignment with business demands and
requirements is simply compelling.
Speed has become an increasingly important benefit of the cloud. Speed has multiple
dimensions. Simple models that require a credit card swipe are logical examples of speed,
but the benefits of speed run deeper with the acceleration in business value through rapid
solution deployment critical in addressing Return on Investment (ROI) requirements.
Security is never far from the surface in terms of concern and fear for IT and business risk
management. Unfortunately too many organizations under invest in security due to a
genuine lack of understanding of the risks and requirements for security, or an attitude that
“it won’t happen to us”. capioIT’s discussions with organizations have made it clear that for
cloud there is a diverse range of opinion, essentially from apathy to paranoia. Clearly this
is neither a healthy, nor sustainable status.
Recent disclosures around national security issues, spying and the location of data
centers have added to the challenges of managing organizational data securely in the
cloud. What is clear is that the overwhelming majority of enterprise cloud providers
(private, public, or hybrid) have significant investment in maximizing security. The
providers have large dynamic and well trained resources that have a singular focus on
ensuring that the provider is secure both in the short and long term. It is worth recalling at
this point that the major organizational issue around security is not always process, threats
or vulnerability, rather a lack of change management, training and communication within
the security team and more widely across the organization.
Cloud is not anti-IT department
Many commentators have taken the view that Cloud and the integration of technology and
the business will lead to the quick and brutal death of the CIO and IT department. For the
majority of organisations this is an overly simplistic analysis. Will there be change. Yes.
Does this change lead to the death of the CIO? No. What IT must do is help stakeholders
navigate the shift from IT to business process as the technology mega-trends transform
the business.
Within its own walls, IT needs to ensure that team members are not disenfranchised from
the process, employees are appropriately communicated to, assured of job security and to
reinforce the importance of change management, a process that frankly IT has more
experience than it often gives itself credit for.
7. SAP HANA
SAP released SAP HANA (High Performance Analytic Appliance) in November 2010 to much
fanfare after announcing and building expectations at the 2010 Sapphire event. At the
launch SAP staked a considerable amount of both its reputation, and future on the
successful uptake and implementation by clients of HANA.
Just as cloud is an evolution of outsourcing that has left its previous format behind, The
SAP HANA platform represents an evolution of the database that SAP hopes will make
most other enterprise grade databases seem under-functioned and underpowered by
comparison. The core differentiator around the SAP HANA product is the in-memory
capability of the technology. This in-memory functionality is designed to offer greater
speed, increased accuracy, and stronger outcomes than the traditional database structure.
Whilst the first commercially available in-memory database was launched in 1993, it has
not been until recent years that the cost of memory, processer speed and market demand
coalesced to create the environment that SAP could produce SAP HANA and have
reasonable expectations of a market being available.
When SAP launched SAP HANA customer uptake accelerated rapidly. Despite anticipated
hesitancy for customers in being an early adopter of new technology, in June of 2013,
SAP announced that SAP HANA was the fastest growing product in SAP history45
.
Since the launch of SAP HANA, SAP has gradually extended the broad SAP product
portfolio with applications developed on top of the platform. In early 2013, it launched SAP
Business Suite powered by SAP HANA representing the first suite of applications on a
single in-memory platform to drive an entire business in real-time.
The focus of this paper is the most recent, and perhaps most dynamic announcement by
SAP, the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud is a managed cloud offering by SAP - also
proposed by selected delivery partners - that offers all of SAP’s solutions, in particular
SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA, SAP Netweaver Business Warehouse
powered by SAP HANA customers as an example with a new cloud deployment option.
SAP HANA ENTERPRISE CLOUD
The SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud is designed to be a fully scalable, enterprise hardened,
secure cloud offering that is delivered with a managed services approach. To be clear, it is
not a public cloud offering, it is a private cloud managed by SAP, offering the opportunity
to run a customer’s core SAP ERP or BW in a HANA-based cloud. Additionally, it opens
the opportunity to a hybrid approach, where customers can then extend their core (running
in the private cloud) into the SAP Public Cloud, via hybrid extensions to SuccessFactors
for HR, Ariba for Procurement and SAP Cloud for Sales. The latter is managed by a set of
cloud service packages from SAP Services that combine predefined integration and
migration (via SAP’s rapid-deployment solutions) with cloud assessment and strategy
offerings. It is also important to note that whilst SAP is driving the HEC deployment and
4
http://www.zdnet.com/sap-talks-up-hana-in-memory-software-sales-growth-7000016327/
5
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/04/sap-agm-idUSL5N0EG18M20130604
8. management, select partners also provide this deployment option. The integration, not
isolation approach, is a critical value proposition for SAP allowing new hybrid scenarios
(e.g. cloud to on-premise integration). capioIT has noted that too many technology
organizations have approached the deployment of cloud capabilities in an isolated fashion
often marginalizing both customers and partners alike.
From a data center perspective, data centers were initially located in Europe and the
United States. As both the capability and market has matured, capioIT notes that the Asia
Pacific will be served by data centers in Japan and Australia by the middle of 2014. SAP
has appeared to understand the increasing issues surrounding data location and
governance for cloud services and as a result is being aggressive in ensuring that an
increasing number of major geographic markets have direct data center location
capabilities.
It is worth noting that the data center location is not an inhibiting factor for those clients
who are using HEC from a test and development perspective. As the data is non-
production there is no location limitation. In the same vein it is worth noting that with global
connectivity there is very limited data speed latency issues, particularly for test-
development workloads.
WHY CUSTOMERS DEPLOY THE SAP HANA
ENTEPRISE CLOUD
The view of the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud as purely a technology investment limits the
value that an organisation can generate. The reality is that the value of the deployment of
HEC lies in its ability to ensure clients look at their business information with a sharper and
faster lens.
Earlier we discussed how the deployment of cloud and in-memory databases accelerates
business agility and speed. This increased agility and speed is what transforms the way in
which an organisation can operate.
The bottom line is that with a successful deployment, outcomes from SAP HANA should
be measured in weeks not years. This is on top of the improvements from agility after the
deployment.
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE OF THE SAP HANA
ENTERPRISE CLOUD
As customers commence deployment of the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud it is clear that
the solution has a broad “sweet spot” in terms of the best organizational fit, and previous
SAP experience. capioIT has identified user experiences that run the range from the large
global MNC who has had a long history with SAP, to country based organizations that
9. came to HEC without having any prior SAP implementation history and experience. For a
new technology offering this diversity of implementation experience supports a compelling
value proposition.
Greenfield SAP Customers
Perhaps counter intuitively, the easiest use case for HEC has been with “net new”
customers. A lack of legacy SAP experience makes the engagement and deployment
relatively clean. Issues are straight forward and the focus is more on organisational
transition and change management rather than “re-writing” of application history that can
come with a legacy deployment. Some of the other key benefits for the Greenfield
deployment are highlighted below:
• The ability to take advantage of a reduced complexity in hardware requirements
when running SAP
• Education investment (whilst still critical) is reduced with the lighter organizational
footprint of the deployment
• Time to business outcomes is reduced.
• Return on Investment is accelerated
All these compelling benefits for Greenfield deployment result in fulfilling the core business
value extracted from cloud – agility. An accelerated time to business outcomes allows
organizations to increase visibility into what its business information is telling it; as a result
the decision process accelerates.
Case Study – Schaidt
Schaidt is a German electronics and automotive components manufacturing company. It
was divested from the automotive components manufacturer Harman. It was in essence
established as a stand-alone company from scratch with the benefit of a close link to the
parent company.
Business Challenge: Schaidt was in the unique situation of having to start a business
from scratch. It had to have mature business process management from day 1. This was
mandated by the CEO of the organisation who was acutely involved in the establishment
of the organisation. Any solution had to be one that the majority of users were familiar with
and one that could be deployed quickly and precisely.
Solution Chosen: For Schaidt, given its history with SAP and Harman, the decision to go
with an SAP solution was not a surprise. Despite this, it still went to market to test SAP
against alternative products. It invested in multiple SAP modules to cover a range of
business processes. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) was a clear priority. Initially
Schaidt was not going to use SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud as it had not been launched,
but as it was deployed, it was able to rapidly shift the model. A key driver for the overall
investment was the business agility it provided. Tight supply chain management is critical
and SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud was able to facilitate this.
10. Business Outcomes: Schaidt is proud that it was one of the first SAP HANA Enterprise
Cloud customers. The process to implement took less than 6 months. At deployment the
solution clearly met the technology requirements to provide a 6*24 manufacturing
schedule. The SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud security measures provided Schaidt with a
high level of comfort. Schaidt was well aware that SAP security was infinitely better than
what a mid-sized business could provide. This is a very tangible business benefit. Without
the opportunity to deploy SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, Schaidt would have still chosen
SAP but it passionately believes that it would have not been as successful a deployment
without the cloud delivery component. Tangible benefits include the fact that it would not
have enough insight into production. Answers that before SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud
took days or hours can now be calculated immediately.
Case Study – McLaren Racing
McLaren Racing is a UK based Formula One racing team. It is one of the oldest and most
successful Formula One racing teams of all time. It has won eight constructors
championships and 12 drivers’ championships
Business Challenge: Simply McLaren needed the technology of its business to match
that of its racing cars.
Solution Chosen: McLaren leveraged SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC) to quickly
deploy SAP Business Suite applications on the SAP HANA platform across many of its
business units, including HR, financials, sales and distribution, materials management and
project management. McLaren also leveraged SAP Services and Rapid Deployment
Solutions to support the deployment.
Business Outcomes: Leveraging HEC for deployment resulted in both a considerable
time saving leading to accelerated business outcomes, reinforcing the agility benefits of
the solution.
Case Study – A European football association
This major European football association has over 6 Million members and 2 million active
players. Reflecting that sport is a business, it realized that it had to understand its
customers (members and players) a lot more closely.
Business Challenge: When analyzing ticketing processes it was clear that the
association was storing incomplete customer data across multiple systems, enhancing risk
and reducing the value as the data was not integrated. It needed to link its sales and
finance department, to ensure a single view of the customer to maximize both its customer
outcomes from engagement with it, and of course its financial benefit from customers.
Solution Chosen: This association was not an existing SAP customer; as a result there
was no legacy or experience to “unlearn”. At the same time, there were no internal skills or
capability in SAP. To support it, SAP Services group implemented SAP CRM and ERP on
11. SAP HANA and leveraged rapid-deployment solutions (RDS) and SAP HANA Enterprise
Cloud, as well as Ticket-Web (SAP Acquired Ticket-Web in 2013). The pre-configuration
offered by RDS was crucial to an expedited installation particularly given the association’s
limited resources and IT staff.
Benefits: It successfully went live on CRM on HANA, on-time & on-budget. Following this
it was able to run its first campaign to drive ticket sales with an enhanced element of
customer understanding. It communicated directly with customers, and obtained
quantifiable detail on campaign success management. As a result it is now able to provide
a personalized outreach to its fans.
Mature SAP Environments
SAP has had significant success as the leader in the enterprise ERP market for the past
20 years. Many Fortune 500 organisations, government agencies and mid-sized
businesses simply would expect to grind to a halt overnight if their SAP implementation
was lost. At the same time, as any experienced enterprise IT professional is well aware,
legacy ERP systems with significant levels of modification and customisation make any
form of change or transition incredibly difficult.
As a result for many legacy SAP ERP and CRM clients as a result the shift to HEC can be
both in perception and practice, intimidating to contemplate, let alone execute. SAP is
clearly aware of this. As a result early adopters to HEC have undertaken specific
strategies to ensure that the shift to HEC or SAP SaaS offerings can be undertaken in an
effective manner to create the business and technology agility that is the future driver for
the cloud. Examples of these strategies include:
Start with a business strategy session and pick a narrow but strategically
significant business function for which agility outcomes can provide significant and
measurable business outcomes.
Align investment in HEC with anticipated investment in analytics and Business
Warehouse capabilities. For many organisations this is a strong growing area of
investment and will allow for tangible measured outcomes.
Investment in programs focused on data cleansing and testing at the front end to
ensure that data and processes shifting to the HEC model maximise the power of
SAP HANA and make logical business sense.
Case Study – A large multinational CPG company
This case study is covering a large CPG company with approx.. 25B in revenue and
120,000 employees.
Business Challenge: The company has a 20 year history of SAP implementations. Due
to different corporate investments, in effect the application has become a customised
legacy platform. This presents clear issues in terms of shifting to the cloud and updating
the technology.
12. Solution Chosen: It took 35 RDS solutions to reinstall financial management modules
over 9 months across the organisation. It was going to manage this internally using DB2,
but shifted to HANA. The migration to SAP HANA from DB2 took one week. The company
is currently planning to keep the data on HEC for 12 months to evaluate.
Business Outcomes: By deploying RDS solutions it was able to accelerate the shift to the
cloud and speed up the transition to the HEC. The 12 month trial on HEC was also able to
give it time to evaluate the business experience with the technology and the suitability of
HEC to meet its longer term SAP technology delivery requirements.
WHAT SHOULD A CXO CONSIDER WHEN
EVALUATING CLOUD INVESTMENTS
As stated up front, cloud is going to drive significant disruption and innovation to your
organization and competitive ecosystem. When considering investment in any cloud
related offering, a CXO regardless of organisation size has to consider the following
factors prior to even considering investment. If your potential SaaS and IaaS provider
cannot provide you with genuine and measured assurance for the criteria then it is
impossible for you to decide to invest.
According to capioIT the key criteria include the following:
Executive ownership. The CEO and entire CXO team has to be active and
involved in the transition to cloud. It is simply that important. Failure to have this
level of ongoing commitment will almost certainly lead to failure.
Ability to provide organisational agility through
o Flexibility and speed of technology deployment. New ideas and investment
can be tested and applied at a dramatically quicker rate to provide
significant ROI benefits.
o Cost effectiveness- Cloud is not a simple or immediate panacea to all ills
from a technology deployment cost point of view. If poorly planned and
deployed, cloud computing can ultimately cost significantly more money for
an organisation. However, that is the worst case scenario. A well-executed
cloud investment can provide significant cost benefits.
o Scalability – Cloud computing models such as the SAP HANA Enterprise
Cloud provide scalability that enables organisations to grow and contract in
a simple manner that meets business requirements. With self-service
portals this change can be as simple as ticking a box online. This level of
speed for scalability is critical for the full agility benefits to be realised.
A solution that meets business and technology requirements in an integrated
ecosystem. This is a critical process step. Technology and business have to be
fully aligned on strategy and a roadmap for the transition to cloud. Isolation will kill
the process. In fact the alignment has to be across the entire organisational
ecosystem. If you are a manufacturer, you need to engage your suppliers, if you
are a financial services organisation, you must engage your agents and
distributors.
13. An ability to offload the challenge of managing a complex application and
infrastructure environment. The hybrid cloud computing model allows for the
organisation to manage technology in the way that suits internal business
concerns and requirements. If you want to manage certain workloads internally,
and outsource others, the model is flexible enough to allow this to be a very
simple process to manage.
Meet and quantify all appropriate security and data privacy concerns – Security
and data privacy concerns are real for the entire ecosystem in which you operate.
Suppliers, staff and regulatory bodies all have legitimate concerns. Whilst recent
government activities with consumer and enterprise data have been of a concern,
in general the level of security for the cloud provided by major operators is at an
incredibly rich level. This investment is only going to continue.
Continual investment in the platform and ecosystem. Whilst it is nice to wish that
investment in cloud is a simple case of doing it once and then walking away, it is
naturally not that simple. As with any system, continual investment is required.
Only when you have the genuine and measured assurance on these criteria should you
invest.
Clearly, the transition to cloud can be a difficult and highly disruptive process to the
organisation. The benefits hopefully are difficult and highly disruptive to your competition
and enable you to manage an agile environment for your customers and stakeholders
alike.
2014 capioIT. All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form
without capioIT’s prior written permission. The information contained in this publication has been
obtained from sources believed to be accurate. capioIT disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy,
completeness or adequacy of such information and shall have no liability for errors, omissions or
inadequacies in such information. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without
notice.
14. ABOUT CAPIOIT
capioIT was founded in 2010. It is focused on helping a range of organisations capture
and understand emerging technology in emerging markets of the global economy. CEO
Phil Hassey has over 20 years’ experience in corporate strategy, consulting and market
intelligence, gained in a diverse range of organisations and industries.
The core of capioIT -
• Capture – Focus on ensuring that you capture the current and future pulse of
emerging markets and emerging technology.
• Understand – Source information to ensure that all customers and stakeholders
are able to understand and drive strategy to maximise engagement with their
customers.
• Collaborate – Through strategic partnerships we have ensured that a small
regionally based firm has highly elevated levels of market engagement and
influence across technology and geography.
• Innovate – We are not satisfied with the current evolution of the analyst/research
market. We have listened and engaged and we drive innovation through our
engagement model, business culture, use of social media and relationships.