Sapphire 2015 Orlando - simple and non-disruptive

Strictly speaking, there was nothing new this year. For many, the trip to Orlando will therefore have been in vain. There were enough exciting and interesting buzzwords that could be filled with content - but in the keynotes, SAP CEO Bill McDermott and Chief Technology Officer Bernd Leukert contented themselves with the general and familiar.

On the last day of Sapphire, Professor Hasso Plattner saved the day with an outstanding presentation, preventing what was already a disaster. Plattner spoke plainly!

From his presentation alone, every CIO and CCC manager can now build their own S/4 roadmap for the coming years. Plattner's key message: Hana is complex.

In-memory computing is a sophisticated science and technology. SAP has the knowledge and ability to hide this complexity not only on the surface with Fiori, but also in application development.

"Run Simple" can apply to certain parts that are visible in the end user's environment. In total, however, "Run Simple" and "non-disruptive" would be a sham.

S/4 Hana is a paradigm shift, see also the cover story in this issue. But Hana is also a standardized SQL database, which means that the entire SAP software stack can run on Hana.

Performant and optimal? "Of course not," said Plattner in Orlando - but SAP is working to ensure that every line of code from ERP/ECC 6.0 and S/7 (SAP Business Suite 7) is revised and optimized for the Hana platform.

On the first day, SAP CEO Bill McDermott challenged the visitors: Reimagine your Business. What is that supposed to mean? Ever since the fall of 2013, when Gartner analysts urgently warned of the digital tsunami; ever since the technology association Bitkom preferred to talk about IoT (Internet of Things) and Industry 4.0; ever since leading IT providers and consultants have been reciting the digital transformation mantra; the SAP community has known that established, proven and successful R/3 business processes need to be adapted.

Data driven? What is Bill McDermott trying to tell us? The term data mining has been around for ten years and every CEO, CFO and CIO knows that there is a treasure trove of information hidden in the mountains of data available.

Even more so when IoT is available across the board. This knowledge about the treasure trove of data in companies has been known for a long time - thanks Bill for the clarification!

What is really new is the ability to transform the treasure trove of data into information for operational business in "real time". Hana has really brought about a paradigm shift here, see the E-3 cover story in this issue.

Hana is a database and ERP platform that makes optimum use of the latest processor technology from Intel Xeon and IBM Power and thus also brings simplification (Run Simple).

But that's not what Bill McDermott meant in Orlando! His disrespectful suggestion was to throw the past overboard and take off with Simple Finance (S/4 Hana).

McDermott reduces complexity not through technology, but through a release change, which, as we know, has never been simple at SAP. Switching to the S/7 successor (SAP Business Suite 7) can be an option, as Sapphire in Orlando showed, but S/4 Hana is not yet the perfect answer for every use and business case, as Professor Plattner pointed out on the last day of Sapphire.

On February 3, 2015, SAP launched S/4 Hana, the next-generation business suite. It is designed to help companies simplify their business processes in the digital economy.

S/4 is based entirely on the Hana in-memory platform and uses the Fiori user interface for personalized use. Around 370 customers have currently opted for S/4, although SAP does not disclose how many of them are already in production.

Industry experts estimate that there will be around a handful. With the release of the S/4 Cloud Edition, SAP is expanding the scope of the solution. In addition to the solutions already available for the areas of marketing and professional services, customers are now also able to manage their entire company via the cloud.

The digital core solution provides solutions for finance and accounting, controlling, procurement, sales, production, maintenance, project management and product lifecycle management. Both existing and new customers can use the cloud version of S/4 via a subscription model.

"With SAP S/4 Hana Cloud Edition, we are delivering on our promise to offer customers complete freedom of choice when implementing our next-generation business suite"

explained SAP Chief Technology Officer Bernd Leukert on the second day of Sapphire.

"SAP S/4 Hana can now be used either in the on-premise model, in the cloud or in a hybrid environment. This software provides existing customers with a digital business platform that enables new business processes based on on-premise or cloud applications."

"Many companies have reached a turning point in terms of their IT landscape and innovations in business processes. They require extended functions, need to support their users with new user interfaces and merge previously separately managed business processes and isolated applications into a holistic corporate system"

explains Joshua Greenbaum, Principal at Enterprise Applications Consulting.

"For this to happen without major disruption to ongoing business operations, a cloud-based solution is required that also supports hybrid environments with the latest technical innovations."

The current core of S/4 is Simple Finance and, as Hasso Plattner explained in his presentation, the rest of the SAP software also runs with Hana, but has not yet been optimized and cleaned up.

There are still many aggregates here that Plattner rightly spurned. This means that only Simple Finance supports real-time information in financial transactions. The Simple Finance solution, which was presented in June 2014, is the first step in S/4's 2025 roadmap.

"As the largest cane sugar refinery in the world, our company has to manage complex processes while taking into account highly fluctuating raw material prices and ongoing changes in cost structures"

explains Don Whittington, CIO of Florida Crystals and the companies of the ASR Group.

"With SAP Simple Finance, our finance department can provide us with real-time information in a simple and convenient way."