TOP 10 SAP TO-DOs for 2011 (Part Two)
By Sam Sliman, President, Optimal Solutions Integration
Right up there with resolutions, every new year ushers in a bevy of predictions about what will happen in the coming year. Many of these predictions are interesting or provocative. Some prove to be accurate. Many miss the mark in terms of number and/or timing. And while there’s nothing inherently wrong with predictions, we feel they are best left to professional prophets and fortune-tellers. We prefer to simply provide our views for your consideration, like we do each week through this newsletter, to help keep you informed and focused on developments that we notice while serving hundreds of SAP customers each year.
Hence, the Optimal Top 10 SAP TO-DO List for 2011. No bold predictions. No brazen resolutions. Just a pragmatic list of items to consider as you navigate the many SAP-related opportunities you will encounter in 2011.
Read the Optimal Top 10 SAP TO-DOs for 2011 (Part One)
6. SAP BI & analytics
Nothing sharpens a company’s focus on efficiency, profitability and competitiveness like an economic downturn. As ‘do more with less’ cycles from a tired cliché into a genuine business imperative, only those people, projects and technologies that yield immediate, meaningful and measurable value are given the green light and deployed. Greater insight, more timely and accurate information, and the tools needed to make this insight and information actionable is the foundation of BI & analytics. SAP cemented its BI leadership with the acquisition of BusinessObjects in 2007 and has made great progress integrating BusinessObjects BI solutions and SAP Business Suite applications. SAP’s recent advances with in-memory technology are taking analytics to unprecedented heights. Access to and analysis of the vital information needed for fact-based decision making and strategic planning is easier, faster and more accurate than ever before. SAP customers looking to retain customers, optimize capital and operational expenditures, streamline logistics and inventories, maintain regulatory compliance, and sharpen their competitive edge are advised to leverage the BI & analytics capabilities of SAP & BusinessObjects.
For more on SAP BI & analytics read: Analyze This – The SAP Way
7. SAP enterprise mobility
The benefits of enterprise mobility are well known and very real -- greater efficiency, improved productivity, heightened responsiveness, sharpened competitiveness, etc. Add to this mobility’s rapid time to value, relatively low cost, ever-smarter devices and affordable service rates, and it is clear that enterprise mobility adoption has reached a tipping point that will earn it a top spot on company’s IT wish lists in 2011. Infinitely more significant than simple, mobile access to desktop applications is the new wave of mobile BI applications generated by SAP’s acquisition of Sybase and breakthroughs with in-memory technology. It is now possible for everyone from the C-level to frontline workers to generate their own reports and do ad-hoc querying -- without making exorbitant information demands on IT. SAP’s acquisition of Sybase and the flourishing ecosystem of SAP partners focused on mobility -- lead by the likes of Vivido Labs and Roambi -- will bear much fruit in the year ahead, particularly in the area of self-service, mobile BI and analytics.
For more on SAP Enterprise mobility, read Optimal SAP Enterprise Mobility Report: Why SAP Mobility Now?
8. SAP sustainability
More than feel-good press, and more than eco-friendly corporate citizenship, bottom-line business value and regulatory compliance are driving sustainability initiatives. SAP’s commitment to sustainability -- both internally and externally -- is well known and longstanding. Leading by example, SAP has been named as the leader of the software sector of the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes for four consecutive years. In 2009 SAP decreased its worldwide CO2 emissions by 16% over 2008, saving the company approximately 90 million euros. SAP has invested approximately $2.3 million in energy efficiency at Palo Alto. This is expected to lead to a reduction of over 807 tons in carbon emissions per year for the next four years. On the customer front, a growing number of companies worldwide are deploying SAP’s fully baked offering of sustainability solutions to achieve a range of sustainability goals -- from reducing carbon footprints to improving compliance to ensuring employee health and safety. Forrester estimates a 90% jump in worldwide spending on carbon and energy management software from $165 million in 2010 to $315 million in 2011. Whether initiating a sustainability plan or adjusting a strategy that is already in place, SAP’s solutions help you save green by going green.
For more on SAP sustainability, read Inside SAP’s Sustainability Push
9. SAP appliance deployment
The business and financial benefits of deploying an appliance are straightforward enough --reduced costs, rapid time to value, ease of use, and simplified administration gained by eliminating complexity associated with integrating and servicing the hardware, storage, software and communications components bundled in an appliance to provide ready-made functionality -- from security and encryption to Web optimization, BI and advanced analytics. SAP’s new High-Performance Analytic Appliance (SAP HANA) ups these benefits to unprecedented heights by revolutionizing the data services layer within an appliance. Specifically, SAP’s in-memory database technology axes the need for a relational database, and with this the time, costs and limitations of reading and writing to discs. SAP’s co-innovation program for HANA with partners such as IBM, Cisco, Fujitsu and Intel, among others, is well underway, and 2011 is the year SAP customers will reap the fruits of HANA and co-innovation as a wealth of innovative BI and analytic appliances make the scene, enabling more value from data, more employees making smarter decisions, more innovation without disruption, and of course, more bang and better performance for your appliance buck.
For more on SAP appliance strategy, read SAP’s Pragmatic Appliance Strategy
10. SAP in the cloud
Putting aside the technical debate on what constitutes cloud delivery (single vs. multi tenancy, Web-based vs. private clouds, etc.), the immediate and very real benefits of cloud computing (on-demand, SaaS, PaaS -- pick your term) are driving very strong interest and very real adoption rates. Fast implementation, minimal upfront expense, little-to-no training, low total cost of ownership, no internal management, no capacity planning -- the list of cloud benefits goes on. Of the 204 participants in a poll running on the Optimal SAP Blog and the Optimal SAP Projects Blog, 85% express interest in learning more about a hosted, subscription-based delivery model for SAP. SAP includes on-demand in its three-pronged product roadmap strategy launched in 2010: “on-premise, on-device, and on-demand.” It is important to note the interlinking (if not interdependence) with which SAP binds these three elements. A 2010 SAP study of 250 CIOs found that 71% of software deployments are on premise, 17% are on demand and 13% are on mobile devices. This was out of line with what businesses saw as "ideal": 47% on premise, 31% on demand and 22% on mobile. According to the study, businesses expect to step closer to these ideals over a three to five year period. By 2015, they expect the on premise, on demand and on device split to be 51%, 28% and 21%, respectively. So, the question before SAP customers in 2011: What on-demand percentage makes the most sense for your business?
For more on SAP in the cloud, read:
Is Subscription SAP Set to Soar?
Cloud Computing? On-Demand? Saas? What’s in a Name?
How Do You Take Your SAP?
Manufacturer Start Up Nuestro Queso Goes From O$ to $20 million with Hosted, Subscription SAP
