SAPPHIRE 2013 News Roundup

May 15, 2013 By Leave a Comment
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Over 20,000 SAP customers, prospects, and partners descended this week in Orlando for SAPPHIRE NOW and the ASUG Annual Conference to explore how new SAP solutions, products, and services can drive efficiency, productivity and profits for their organization.

More than 80,000 checked out the conferences virtually, making this year’s events among the most popular ever. Historically, SAP leverages its annual SAPPHIRE conference as a platform for major announcements. This year was no exception.

From unifying its portfolio of cloud solutions on HANA to enabling a new fan experience in the sports and entertainment industry to the general availability of the SAP Business Suite on HANA to a new enterprise mobility management solution portfolio to launching the Fiori app collection to a new version of Business One, SAP announcements at SAPPHIRE have the show floor buzzing and industry pundits speculating on what it all means to SAP customers, partners and consultants.

To help you distill the major announcements made at SAPPHIRE, we’ve compiled a roundup of news articles and analyst commentary:

At SAP Sapphire, Co-CEO McDermott Plays Ball with Customers

SAP Launches Fiori: Consumer-Style Apps for Common Business Functions

SAP Hopes Its Software Can Score With Sports Teams

SAP CEO: HANA Is The Platform for All Future SAP Products

SAP Targets Sports Industry to Extend Its Reach for Consumers

SAP Sapphire 2013 Preview: Five Big Questions

SAP’s Sapphire To-Do List: Top Of Mind For Partners Will Be HANA, Cloud

2013 ERP Market Share Update: SAP Solidifies Market Leadership

SAP Expands Reach of App Store, Looks to Improve Reviews

The Art Of Reinvention: SAP Puts Its Weight Behind A Better, Faster And Stronger Cloud Computing Strategy

SAP Debuts Lumira; Self-Service Business Intelligence

Filed Under: SAP News, SAPPHIRE NOW Tagged With:

Innovation Engines to Roar at SAPPHIRE

May 10, 2013 By Leave a Comment
innovation 4

The first quarter of 2013 was SAP’s 13th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth for non-IFRS software and software-related revenue. What makes this financial performance particularly noteworthy are the three innovation engines that buoyed sales during what is typically SAP’s smallest quarter — namely, the cloud, HANA and mobility.

SAP notched near quadruple, triple and double-digit year-over-year growth, respectively, in these three solution areas — proof-positive that the company’s focus on the rapid delivery of innovative solutions is paying off.

An increasing number of organizations are embracing a cloud-first application strategy, and SAP is well ahead of its peers in providing enterprise-class cloud solutions. SAP posted a 385 percent year-over-year increase in cloud subscription and support sales and a 95 percent jump in deferred revenue from cloud subscriptions and support. The cloud business contributed approximately $36.72 million to SAP’s first-quarter earnings.

Equally impressive is HANA’s traction to date — over $800 million in revenues, ~1000 customers, 310 HANA-focused startup companies, and more than 30 ‘powered by HANA’ apps. In addition, SAP BusinessObjects, SAP Business Warehouse, SAP Business One, and the SAP Business Suite are all now powered by HANA and the just-announced SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud is sure to accelerate HANA adoption.

SAP also recently announced the SAP Mobile Platform on HANA cloud, making it simple to create, configure, distribute and manage mobile applications without having to install and maintain a platform server on premise. SAP will leverage SAPPHIRE to build on its strong mobility offering — and on its double-digit year-over-year revenue growth in mobility for Q1.

Read article by Optimal President Sam Sliman: Innovation Engines to Roar at SAPPHIRE

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Thought Leadership, SAP Cloud, SAP HANA, SAP Mobility, SAPPHIRE NOW Tagged With: ,

2013 IT Spending: Q1 and Predictions

May 3, 2013 By Leave a Comment
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SAP is leading a fundamental change in the IT industry and the Q1 results are a testament to the fact that SAP is winning the market. The IT spending predictions for the rest of 2013 imply that it will be a solid year of growth.

According to Forrester, IT spending will steadily improve in 2013 and 2014 as economic instability hurdles are cleared and an improving US economy combines with pent up demand to accelerate spending. In 2013, global IT spending will increase 5.4 percent and U.S. IT spending will top 8.3 percent, reports Forrester.

Gartner forecasts a $3.7 trillion global IT spending year in 2013, increasing 4.2 percent from last year. (Gartner includes Telecom spending in its IT forecast.)

IDC foresees worldwide IT spending exceeding $2.1 trillion in 2013, up 5.7 percent from 2012.

So what tech sectors will fare the strongest in 2013?

To help answer this questions, we’ve compiled a list of pundit predictions relating to hot tech trends, spending drivers and industry forecasts.

Check back frequently as our list is sure to grow! Did we miss anything? Drop us a comment.

  • Sectors within the IT market where there will be double-digit growth include SaaS, mobile computing, tablets, analytics, big data, and smart process apps.  (Forrester)
  • The world is in the middle of a technology shift that occurs only once every 25 years. The biggest category driving growth in the IT industry will be smart mobile devices, which will grow by almost 20 percent in 2013 to reach $430 billion dollars and generate nearly 57 percent of the industry’s overall growth. (IDC)
  • “Third Platform,” which represents mobile computing, cloud services, social networking, and big data analytics technologies all wrapped together, will drive around 90 percent of all the growth in the IT market from 2013 to 2020. (IDC)
  • Worldwide software spending is expected to grow 6 percent, followed by a 4 percent gain in services in 2013. (IDC)
  1. Mobile Device Battles
  2. Mobile Applications and HTML5
  3. Personal Cloud
  4. Enterprise App Stores
  5. The Internet of Things
  6. Hybrid IT and Cloud Computing
  7. Strategic Big Data
  8. Actionable Analytics
  9. In-Memory Computing
  10. Integrated Ecosystems
  • Top 10 Predictions 2013 (IDC)
  1. Worldwide IT spending: 2013 spending will exceed $2.1 trillion, up 5.7% from
    2012, driven by double-digit growth in the 3rd Platform foundations of mobile,
    cloud, Big Data, and social technologies — and by emerging markets’ growth.
  2. Emerging markets: IT spending will grow by 8.8% to over $730 billion — twice
    developed markets’ growth, 34% of all IT spending, and 51% of all IT growth.
  3. Mobile devices: Sales of smart mobile devices (SMDs) — smartphones and
    tablets — will grow by 20%, generate 20% of all IT sales, and drive 57% of all IT
    market growth. Without SMDs, IT industry growth will be just 2.9%.
  4. Tablet surge driven by minis: Mini tablets (sub-8in. screens) will account for as
    much as 60% of unit shipments — a remarkable leap from just 33% in 2012.
  5. Year of reckoning in mobile software: Mobile platforms that fail to crack the
    50% barrier of developers that are “very interested” in developing apps for them
    will be on a gradual track to demise. Microsoft now sits at 33%; RIM sits at 9%.
  6. Accelerated SaaS shopping spree: There will be over $25 billion in SaaS
    acquisitions over the next 20 months, up from $17 billion in the past 20 months.
  7. Rise of “industry platform as a service (PaaS)”: The number of industryfocused
    public cloud services platforms — less than 100 in 2012 — will increase
    tenfold by 2016, while “horizontal” PaaS will become more commoditized.
  8. Growing importance of line-of-business (LOB) executives: By 2016, 80% of
    new IT investments will directly involve LOB executives, with LOBs the lead
    decision makers in half or more of those investments.
  9. 3rd Platform data center disruptions: Converged systems and softwaredefined
    networks will drive growth and open the door for market share upheaval.
    “Bring your own ID” (BYOID) will bring consumerization into enterprise security.
  10. Big Data — from search to discovery and prediction: Big Data M&A will
    cluster in visual discovery, predictive analytics, and text and rich media analytics.
  1. Simplify IT and Transform Your Spending: Kick the 80/20 Budget Habit
  2. Lead the Social Revolution: Drive the Social-Enabled Enterprise
  3. Unleash Your Company’s Intelligence: Create the Enterprise-Wide Opportunity Chain
  4. Embrace the Engagement Economy: Merge the Back Office and the Front Office into the Customer Office
  5. Future-Proof Your IT Architecture
  6. Upgrade “Cloud Strategy” to “Business Transformation Enabled by the Cloud”
  7. Transform Big Data into Big Insights, Big Vision, and Big Opportunities
  8. Preside over a Shotgun Wedding: Systems of Record Marry Systems of Engagement
  9. Lead with Speed: CIO as Chief Acceleration Officer
  10. Bend the Value Curve: More Innovation, Less Integration
  • Big data to create 1.9M IT jobs in U.S. by 2015. (Gartner)
  • Big data is forecast to drive $34 billion of worldwide IT spending in 2013, with the figure for 2012 standing at $28 billion. (Gartner)
  • The application development and deployment (AD&D) software market is expected to reach $80.6bn in 2012, up 3.7% from 2011.It is however expected to rebound to higher single-digit growth in 2013 and beyond. (IDC)
  • During the 2012-2016 forecast period, the Process Automation Middleware (PAM) market is expected to gain momentum as enterprises seek more efficient ways to develop and maintain mission critical applications. (IDC)
  • Growth rates of end-user query, reporting, and analysis as well as advanced analytics have been high within the business intelligence market, and are expected to experience high single-digit growth in 2013 and beyond. (IDC)
  • Global spending on enterprise software, which includes application software and infrastructure software, may go up 6.5 percent to reach 296 billion dollars in 2013. (Gartner)
  • Spending on business-related IT services and IT product support services to increase by 5.2 percent to reach 927 billion dollars in 2013. (Gartner)
  • By 2015, organization integrating high-value, diverse, new information types and sources into a coherent information management infrastructure will outperform their industry peers financially by more than 20 percent (Gartner)
  • The big data analytic industry is positioned to expand at a compound annual growth rate of more than 54 percent through 2017. (MarketsandMarkets)
Filed Under: Optimal SAP Thought Leadership Tagged With:

Cloud Drives SAP’s Q1 Growth

May 1, 2013 By 1 Comment

SAP CloudThe first quarter of 2013 was SAP’s 13th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth for non-IFRS software and software-related revenue.

SAP performed better than all competitors in large part due to a significant uptick in its cloud business – which unlike most of the large software vendors, SAP breaks out separately in its financial reporting.

In Q1 SAP posted a whopping 385 percent year-over-year increase in cloud subscription and support sales and a 95 percent jump in deferred revenue from cloud subscriptions and support. The cloud business contributed approximately $36.72 million to SAP’s first-quarter earnings. SAP states that the company is on track to top $1 billion in cloud revenue this year and projects new-software and cloud-subscription sales growth of 11 to 13 percent in 2013, for a revenue contribution of 14 to 20 percent.

Along with reaffirming the company’s full-year financial guidance, SAP expressed confidence in its ability to achieve its goal of $2.5 billion in cloud revenue by 2015.

Industry pundits are equally bullish on the cloud, with Gartner citing cloud computing as one of the big developments that will have a major impact on the IT world over the next five years and Forrester predicting 22 percent annual growth in cloud computing through 2020.

Here’s a roundup of news articles on SAP’s Q1 financial reporting:

Radical Transformation in IT Buoys SAP’s Q1 Results

SAP Co-CEO: “Cloud computing business profitable”

SAP Defies Industry Trend with Sales, Profit Growth

SAP Confirms Forecasts After ‘solid’ First Quarter

Q1 Earnings, Revenue Up for Software Giant

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Thought Leadership, SAP Cloud Tagged With:

Meet Optimal at SAPPHIRE in Orlando

April 28, 2013 By Leave a Comment
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Schedule a meeting today. Contact Optimal
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Filed Under: ASUG, Optimal SAP Thought Leadership, SAPPHIRE NOW Tagged With: ,

Maximum Application Value, Peak Performance with SAP Data Integration Tools

April 26, 2013 By Leave a Comment

In today’s world of Big Data, value comes not from individual elements of data collected by an organization, but from the combination of data generated across an enterprise – from disparate systems in different functional organizations.

Real-time, enterprise-wide data integration is the best way for organizations to get the most out of their technology investments, derive insights and drive efficiencies.

Against the high costs of bad data and high-stakes challenge of data integration, SAP EIM solutions for data quality and data integration shine forth as gold.

Read articles by Optimal President Sam Sliman:

Information Steward Reduces High Cost of Bad Data

Maximum Application Value, Peak Performance with SAP Data Integration Tools

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Thought Leadership, SAP Big Data, SAP EIM
April 25, 2013 By 1 Comment
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49ers Tap SAP and the Power of HANA To Tackle NFL Draft!!

Filed Under: SAP News Tagged With:

Enterprise Information Management Reports, Trends & Predictions

April 18, 2013 By 2 Comments
information management

Emerging technologies, exploding data volume, velocity and variety, deepening dependency on mission-critical data-driven business processes and the ever-pressing need for advanced BI and analytics are driving accelerated investment in enterprise information management (EIM) solutions.

Gartner forecasts that the data quality tools market will show a compound annual growth rate of 14 percent over the next five years. Gartner also forecasts spending on data center systems to edge up to $147 billion in 2013, a 4.5 percent increase over the $141 billion spent in 2012. The figure will hit $154 billion in 2014, Gartner anticipates.

Finally, still looking into 2014, Gartner predicts that markets aligned to big data and other information management initiatives will significantly increase levels of investment across the entire spectrum of information management solutions.

As businesses continue to gather, store and process ever-increasing quantities of data, the demand for EIM solutions will grow even stronger, as will competition among vendors to innovate and develop new EIM products.

To help you stay up to speed and correctly oriented to today’s dynamic EIM landscape, we’ve compiled a roundup EIM reports, trends and predictions.

Enterprise Information Management in 2013: 7 Top Predictions (Information Management)

  • IIA expects far more personalization of product-driven analytics and elevation of analytics as a competitive differentiator.
  • Disruption of the traditional RDMS landscape & emergence of  in-memory computing and columnar storage are transforming the EIM landscape.
  • Heightened importance on real-time, enterprise-wide systems and data integration is driving EIM adoption.
  • Big data, virtual data centers, hybrid cloud adoption, data governance, stewardship and security are growing trends.

Emerging Technologies to Drive EIM Market, Says Gartner

  • The top technologies Gartner predicts will transform the EIM landscape include big data, semantic technologies, in-memory computing and data warehousing. At the same time, the research firm notes that the changing role of Chief Data Officer as well as other information centric roles is also having an impact on the current IM growth.
  • In-memory computing is an emerging paradigm, enabling enterprises to develop applications that run advanced queries on very large datasets, or perform complex transactions at least one order of magnitude faster (and in a more scalable way) than when using conventional architectures. In-memory computing opens unprecedented and partially unexplored opportunities for business innovation (for example, via real-time analysis of big data in motion) and cost reduction (for example, through database or mainframe off-loading).

2013 and Years Ahead Bring Less Control for Enterprise IT (Information Management)

  • Enterprise information leaks into social media channels will spike over the next few years. Gartner forecast 40 percent of enterprise contact information will have leaked onto Facebook via mobile apps by 2017.

Gartner Positions SAP as a Leader in the 2012 Magic Quadrant for Data Quality Tools

Gartner Positions SAP as a Leader in the 2012 Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools

Gartner Positions SAP as a Leader in the 2013 Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems

Enterprise Information Management Predictions for 2013 (Gadget)

BI Trends in Retrospect: First Call to Board the EIM Train (Business Intelligence)

Gartner: Big Data Will Help Drive IT Spending to $3.8 Trillion in 2014

SAP Rated as HOT Vendor in Ventana Research 2012 Value Index for Data Integration

Filed Under: SAP EIM Tagged With:

Party with Optimal at ICEBAR in Orlando

April 17, 2013 By 1 Comment
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Join ASUG, Optimal Solutions, and GlobalSource IT at the swankiest speakeasy this side of central Orlando for the Americas’ SAP Users’ Group Annual Conference VIP Reception.

Let live music and legal liquors transport you back to a time when the 18th Amendment ruled the day.

So head to a joint called the ICEBAR, where you can sip bootleg beverages and soak up scenes of a Gin Mill so real, it’ll give you the chills.

Date: Monday, May 13
Time: 7:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.
Where: ICEBAR Orlando, 8967 International Drive

RSVP

Filed Under: ASUG, Optimal SAP Event, SAP News Tagged With:

Information Steward Reduces High Cost of Bad Data

April 11, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Information Steward

The ability to process and analyze data has always been critical for our clients, but with today’s exponential data growth and increasing reliance on advanced analytics, crunching massive amounts of data to put accurate and timely information into the hands of decision-makers and drive mission-critical business processes has never been more vital.

Doing this successfully hinges heavily on the quality of data, which is increasingly difficult to ensure as volumes soar. ‘Garbage in, garbage out’ may be a cliché, but it is also a truism, and the consequences of bad data can be dire.

However, as is often the case, challenge and opportunity go hand in hand.  While exponentially growing data volumes pose significant challenges, the potential value of this data is enormous. From increasing operating margins to reducing costs to achieving efficiency gains to driving revenue, data properly harnessed underpins new waves of competitive advantage, productivity, innovation, and growth.

SAP BusinessObjects Information Steward, part of SAP solutions for enterprise information management (EIM), offers a range of tightly integrated data management tools within a unified framework to address many of the data quality issues that plague businesses today. Most importantly, Information Steward’s intuitive, role-based user interface enables business users to take direct control of data quality.

Read article by Optimal President Sam Sliman: Information Steward Reduces High Cost of Bad Data

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Thought Leadership, SAP EIM, SAP Information Steward Tagged With: ,

5 Guiding Principles, 18 Years of SAP Consulting Success

April 10, 2013 By 1 Comment
Suri

Optimal Solutions achieved a special milestone in March – its 18th year in business!

What began as a small team of SAP experts is today one of the largest, most recognizable, exclusively SAP consulting firms in the world.

Optimal CEO Gurvendra Suri reflects on the secret to Optimal’s success: 5 Guiding Principles, 18 Years of SAP Consulting Success

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Event Tagged With:

Three Things That Are Different About Design Thinking

April 2, 2013 By 1 Comment

More disruptive technologies have emerged in the world of enterprise IT during the past decade than perhaps ever before. In-memory columnar storage, mobility, the cloud, and social media top the list. Individually, these disruptive technologies create new business opportunities. Collectively, they drive a frenetic pace of innovation and business transformation.

At Optimal, we hear it all the time from our SAP customers: How do we embrace these new technologies while leveraging our existing SAP investments? What should we do first? What’s the long-term objective? What problems present the most risk? What opportunities present the most upside? How do we achieve genuine differentiation, create customer value and a sustainable competitive advantage?

Design Thinking has something to say on these issues.

In my last article, I talked about Design Thinking in terms of ‘right-brain’ vs. ‘left-brain’ thinking. The thrust of that article was that today’s challenges and opportunities demand a new way of thinking among business and technology professionals — a new approach that removes constraints of imagination and unleashes the potential of creativity.

In this article I’ll explore some of the ways in which Design Thinking differs from traditional IT development practices.

Read article by Optimal President Sam Sliman: Three Things That are Different About Design Thinking

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Thought Leadership, SAP Design Thinking Tagged With:

Optimal Celebrates 18th Year in Business!

March 27, 2013 By 1 Comment
Optimal 18

March 2013 marks Optimal’s 18th year in business!

We are proud to rank among the largest pure-play providers of SAP solutions and services in North America!

Thanks to all of our customers for trusting in Optimal.

Stop by booth 1036 at SAPPHIRE NOW and wish us a belated happy b-day!

Register for SAPPHIRE NOW today.

Filed Under: Optimal Solutions News Tagged With:

Fraudsters Beware: New Sheriff HANA In Town

March 21, 2013 By Leave a Comment
fraud

On March 19th SAP put all fraudsters on notice. There’s a new sheriff in town. Actually, it’s a new fraud detection and prevention solution that goes by the name of SAP® Fraud Management analytic application,  and it is powered by the SAP HANA platform.

According to the 2012 Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) reports that companies worldwide must absorb $3.5 trillion worth of fraud every year — reaching as much as 5 percent of annual revenue. Not small peanuts by any measure. Industries hit hardest by fraud, according to SAP, are insurance, public sector, banking, healthcare and utilities. In other words, industries where big data already exists and is growing by leaps and bounds.

Insurance is among the hardest hit by fraud (no surprise there), according to the ACFE report, with U.S. insurance companies facing up to $40 billion of non-health-related insurance fraud each year.

The SAP Fraud Management analytic application detects, investigates, analyzes and prevents possibly fraudulent irregularities for businesses and public sector organizations with big data environments.

Here’s a roundup of articles on the release of the SAP Fraud Management analytic application:

SAP Takes Aim at US$3.5 Trillion of Fraud

SAP Launches New Application to Deter Fraud

SAP Taking Aim at $3.5 Trillion Worth of Fraud with New App

Fraud Prevention in a Big Data Environment

Filed Under: Big Data, Optimal SAP Thought Leadership, SAP HANA Tagged With: , , ,

Optimal Supports Troops at USO Metro DC Event

March 20, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Optimal Helps Out USO

Optimal is proud to support US troops by helping to pack 540 snack packs for PACK 4 troops at a recent USO Metro DC Event.

Check out more photos on USO FB: https://www.facebook.com/USOMetroDC?ref=hl

Filed Under: SAP News Tagged With:

Stuck in an Innovation Rut? Try “Design Thinking“

March 17, 2013 By Leave a Comment

SAP Design ThinkingIf you’ve spent any time with SAP recently, no doubt you’ve heard all about mobility, analytics, the cloud and HANA – the products that represent innovation for SAP and are driving SAP’s record growth.

But today you’re just as likely to hear another catchphrase that has entered the fray – and it goes way beyond the product boundaries that traditionally define SAP: Design Thinking.

So what id What is Design Thinking?

Read article by Optimal President Sam Sliman: Stuck in an Innovation Rut? Try “Design Thinking“

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Thought Leadership, SAP Consulting, SAP HANA Tagged With: , ,

SAP Consultants: HANA is Your Future, Design Thinking is Your Ticket

March 6, 2013 By Leave a Comment
SAP Design Thinking

All SAP consultants getting up to speed on HANA have undoubtedly run across the term ‘design thinking.’

While the popular use of the term design thinking dates back to the early ’80s, and the first person to coin the term is debatable, SAP co-Founder Hasso Plattner made design thinking forever part of SAP lore when in 1970 he made it the centerpiece of the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany and established design thinking as the guiding intellectual philosophy and pragmatic hands-on process that would accelerate business innovation in general and HANA-powered innovation specifically.

In a nutshell, drawn from several sources, design thinking consists of three guiding principles, four rules and six steps. Design thinking principles: technical feasibility, economic viability and end-user desirability. Design thinking rules: the human rule (all design activity is ultimately social), the ambiguity rule (design thinkers must preserve ambiguity), the re-design rule (all design is re-design), and the tangibility rule (making ideas tangible always facilitates communications). Six design thinking steps: understand, observe, point of view, ideate, prototype, and test.

Got all that? Good. Because you’ll need to know it cold in tomorrow’s HANA- dominated world of SAP consulting.

But seriously, design thinking is really not all that complicated. In fact, it is an intuitive, even eloquent, new approach for solving today’s increasingly complex problems. Put succinctly, design thinking is an intensely user-oriented, highly collaborative, team-based, highly iterative approach for rapidly designing and developing innovative solutions to complex, ostensibly intractable, and often difficult to define problems.

Still confused? No worries. We’ve put together a list of resources that will help get you up to speed on design thinking in no time.

Introduction to Design Thinking

‪Innovation Academy Design Thinking at SAP‬

Design Thinking at SAP

Design Thinking in Action

Design Thinking on Display

10 Golden Rules for Design Thinking

The HPI School of Design Thinking in Potsdam is the first school for innovation in Europe

Hasso Platner’s book: Design Thinking

SAP User Experience Community

SAP HANA and Design Thinking (SAP HANA Community Blog)

SAP HANA Use Cases (SAP HANA Community Blog)

The End of the Beginning- SAP HANA has “crossed the chasm” (Great post by Jeffrey Word)

Design Thinking Presentation

Design Thinking: A new Approach to Fight Complexity and Failure

Design Thinking Big in Madrid

Design Thinking at SAP with Daniel and Michael

SAP Services Forum 2012

Filed Under: SAP HANA Tagged With: , ,

Meet Optimal SAP BPC Experts at Financials 2013

March 6, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Screen shot 2013-02-11 at 4.36.59 PMMeet Optimal SAP BPC experts at Financials 2013 in Las Vegas, March 19 – 22. Visit our booth or attend one of the Optimal-led sessions.

Learn more at Optimal Events

Filed Under: SAP BPC, SAP Financials 2013 Tagged With: ,

Database Cost, Complexity and Mission-criticality Vanquished by HANA

March 1, 2013 By Leave a Comment
No DATABASE

When I was young, my dad lugged home a Radio Shack TRS-80 with dual 8” floppy drives.  That machine captured my imagination (and ultimately defined my career), but it had very little to work with in terms of processor power and memory.  In high school I tinkered with newer and faster computers, and finally got my very own in college – a Zenith 80286-based PC with Windows 1.0, a black-and-white screen, 1MB of RAM and a 20MB hard disk.

It was 1987.

As a computer science student, I remember clearly the gymnastics required to program machines with so few resources.  It’s fair to say that programmers were obsessed with doing more with less – and it led to some of the most amazing feats of creativity and genius you can imagine.  But it also created complexity brought on by all the tricks used to skirt the constraints.  This complexity sometimes led to instability.  Remember the “Blue Screen of Death?”  A direct result of this phenomenon.

By contrast, developers today face an embarrassment of riches.  CPU power, RAM and storage continue to plummet in cost.  More and more is packed into form factors that are smaller and smaller.  The available development tools and the capabilities of enterprise applications and middleware are phenomenal.  Gone is the necessity of dealing first hand with severe resource limitations.

This is an opportunity for every SAP customer.

As we see at clients every day, complexity is the dark force that inevitably ratchets up costs in SAP landscapes, leading to bloated cost structures and operational instability.  World-class architectures rely on the innate capabilities of the platforms, use the appropriate tools suited for the task, and minimize expensive (and potentially destabilizing) customization.  A truly great SAP-based architecture should banish complexity to the extent possible in order to minimize TCO and lay down a reliable backbone for an organization.

This is why every SAP customer should be paying close attention to SAP HANA.  In a very real way, HANA has the potential to dramatically simplify enterprise architecture, reinforce stability and generate big savings as a result.

Read article by Optimal President Sam Sliman: Simplifying SAP in an Age of Vanishing Constraints

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Thought Leadership, SAP HANA Tagged With: ,

SAP’s Next Generation Drives 2013

February 22, 2013 By 1 Comment
sap_Next Generation

The years 2010-2012 were transformational for SAP as the company aggressively branched out from its ERP roots into analytics, mobility, big data and the cloud.

At this point, it’s safe to say the trends are official: SAP is no longer a primarily-ERP company and the so-called Next Generation products now dominate the revenue stream.

Looking ahead, these trends represent the technological forces that are bearing down on practically every SAP customer on the planet.

Read article by Optimal Solutions President Sam Sliman: SAP’s Next Generation Drives 2013

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Thought Leadership, SAP Analytics, SAP BI, SAP HANA, SAP Mobility Tagged With: , , , ,

SAP Spending Set to Soar in 2013

February 22, 2013 By Leave a Comment
SAP Spending

Both 2011 and 2012 were record years for SAP in terms of total revenue, and 4Q 2012 marked the company’s 12th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth in software and software related service revenue. SAP’s total revenue in 2011 was $19 billion, up by 14 percent from the previous year, and SAP’s total revenue in 2012 was $21.6 billion, up by yet another 14 percent from the previous year.

SAP has expressed confidence that it will continue its double-digit growth in 2013 and has re-affirmed its revenue target of $26.9 billion by 2015. In fact, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott believes that SAP’s total revenue may well top $28 or $29 billion by 2015.

To put these numbers in perspective, SAP’s projected growth is approximately 4x greater than what Gartner predicts for the industry and a full 2x faster than SAP’s closest competitor — Oracle.

So what makes SAP so bullish on its future growth? The answer lies in SAP’s leadership and innovation across its HANA, cloud, analytics/BI and mobility offerings.

Read article by Optimal President Sam Sliman: SAP Spending Set to Soar in 2013

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Thought Leadership, SAP Analytics, SAP BI, SAP Big Data, SAP HANA, SAP Mobility Tagged With: , , , ,

Tablets to Drive Enterprise BI

February 22, 2013 By Leave a Comment
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According to a recent Forrester survey, 24 percent of enterprises are using or piloting mobile BI applications, and another 37 percent are considering mobile BI implementation in the near term.

Cindi Howson, founder of BI Scorecard , also draws a strong correlation between mobility and BI adoption, re-igniting executive interest in 2013 and making BI more relevant to field and front-line workers. In last year’s Successful BI Survey, only 11% of respondents said their firms had successfully deployed mobile BI. BI adoption at those firms stood at 39% of employees, far ahead of the industry average of 24% of employees.

Perhaps more than any other mobile device, the tablet is likely to be the greatest catalyst for BI adoption in the enterprise, which according to the Consumer Electronics Association, is now the fastest growing category in CE history.

Apple introduced the iPad in 2010 and  is expected to sell $11 billion iPads to businesses in 2013, increasing to $13 billion in 2014.

Gartner is predicting tablet purchases by businesses will grow 3x by 2016 — describing tablets as “the key accelerator to mobility” for enterprises. Tablet purchases by businesses will reach 13 million units in 2012, says Gartner, more than tripling by 2016 to reach 53 million units.

Comscore estimates that there were 52.4 million U.S. tablet owners as of December 2012.

IDC forecasts the worldwide tablet market to top 123.3 million units in 2012, 172.4 million units in 2013, and 282.7 million units in 2016.

Forrester predicts that global tablet sales will rise from 56 million in 2011 to 375 million in 2016, while the Yankee Group predicts tablet sales will eclipse those of PCs by 2015. Gartner concurs, claiming that by 2015 media tablet shipments will reach around 50 percent of laptop shipments.

ABI Research expects low-cost mini tablets from Apple, Google and Samsung to drive tablet shipments to a record 145 million units this year, and claims enterprise interest will fuel tablet purchases in 2013 and beyond.

ABI also believes Windows-based tablets will begin to gain steam this year and that North America will remain the world’s top tablet market, responsible for over 50% of global tablet shipments in 2013.

The meteoric growth of the still nascent tablet category is astounding, and its impact on enterprise mobility will be both profound and long-lasting.

Filed Under: SAP BI, SAP Mobility Tagged With: , , ,

Meet Optimal SAP BPC Experts at Financials 2013

February 11, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Screen shot 2013-02-11 at 4.36.59 PM

Screen shot 2013-02-11 at 4.36.59 PMMeet Optimal SAP BPC experts at Financials 2013 in Las Vegas, March 19 – 22. Visit our booth or attend one of the Optimal-led sessions.

Learn more at Optimal Events

Filed Under: SAP BPC, SAP Financials 2013 Tagged With: ,

2013: A Watershed Year for BI Adoption

February 7, 2013 By Leave a Comment
SAP BI

According to BI industry thought leader and founder of BI Scorecard Cindi Howson, BI by any other name – “business analytics, “big data,” “intelligent forecasting,” “predictive analytics,” etc. – is still BI.

Cindi’s definition of BI is equally no-nonsense: “a priority technology that can help companies boost revenues, improve customer service or control costs by making better, faster decisions.”

Regardless of what you call it, the confluence of big data, mobility, cloud computing and in-memory technology is sure to make 2013 a watershed year for BI adoption.

According to a recent worldwide survey conducted by Gartner of 2,053 CIOs, representing more than $230 billion in CIO IT budgets and covering 36 industries in 41 countries, analytics and BI ranked as the top technology priority for 2013.

Gartner pegs the business intelligence market (including data warehouses and CRM analytics), as growing from a $57 billion market in 2010 to an estimated $81 billion by 2014.

More than 78 percent of respondents to a recent ChannelWorld survey expect IT spending to grow in areas of BI and analytics in 2013.

Nucleus predicts that BI adoption will double worldwide in 2013 as greater usability for non-expert end users, lower-cost and an uptick in self-service BI tools drive broader BI adoption.

Here’s a list of BI trends and predictions for 2013:

BI Predictions and Trends for 2013 (Gerry D.Cohen/Slashdot)

Business Intelligence and Analytics Need to Scale Up to Support Explosive Growth in Data Sources (Gartner)

Three Business Intelligence Trends in 2013 (Gartner)

Emerging Innovations for BI and Analytics (TDWI)

7 Top Business Intelligence Trends For 2013 (Cindi Howson)

New Trends in BI, Analytics and Social Media (Timo Elliott)

Top 10 BI Predictions for 2013 and Beyond (Forrester)

BI Predicted to Go Big in 2013 (Nucleus)

Big Things for BI in 2013 (Joe Mckendrick)

Business Intelligence and Analytics’ in 2013: Perfect Analysis (Computerworld)

Big Data and Beyond: 10 BI Trends for 2013 (Enterprise Today)

Three Don’ts, Four Do’s for Business Intelligence in 2013 (Dresner)

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Thought Leadership, SAP Analytics, SAP BI Tagged With: , ,

Predictions: 2013 IT Spending

January 24, 2013 By Leave a Comment

PredictionsThe IT spending predictions are in, and across-the-board, 2013 looks to be a solid year of growth.

According to Forrester, IT spending will steadily improve in 2013 and 2014 as economic instability hurdles are cleared and an improving US economy combines with pent up demand to accelerate spending. In 2013, global IT spending will increase 5.4 percent and U.S. IT spending will top 8.3 percent, reports Forrester.

Gartner forecasts a $3.7 trillion global IT spending year in 2013, increasing 4.2 percent from last year. (Gartner includes Telecom spending in its IT forecast.)

IDC foresees worldwide IT spending exceeding $2.1 trillion in 2013, up 5.7 percent from 2012.

So what tech sectors will fare the strongest in 2013?

To help answer this questions, we’ve compiled a list of pundit predictions relating to hot tech trends, spending drivers and industry forecasts.

Check back frequently as our list is sure to grow! Did we miss anything? Drop us a comment.

  • Sectors within the IT market where there will be double-digit growth include SaaS, mobile computing, tablets, analytics, big data, and smart process apps.  (Forrester)
  • The world is in the middle of a technology shift that occurs only once every 25 years. The biggest category driving growth in the IT industry will be smart mobile devices, which will grow by almost 20 percent in 2013 to reach $430 billion dollars and generate nearly 57 percent of the industry’s overall growth. (IDC)
  • “Third Platform,” which represents mobile computing, cloud services, social networking, and big data analytics technologies all wrapped together, will drive around 90 percent of all the growth in the IT market from 2013 to 2020. (IDC)
  • Worldwide software spending is expected to grow 6 percent, followed by a 4 percent gain in services in 2013. (IDC)
  1. Mobile Device Battles
  2. Mobile Applications and HTML5
  3. Personal Cloud
  4. Enterprise App Stores
  5. The Internet of Things
  6. Hybrid IT and Cloud Computing
  7. Strategic Big Data
  8. Actionable Analytics
  9. In-Memory Computing
  10. Integrated Ecosystems
  • Top 10 Predictions 2013 (IDC)
  1. Worldwide IT spending: 2013 spending will exceed $2.1 trillion, up 5.7% from
    2012, driven by double-digit growth in the 3rd Platform foundations of mobile,
    cloud, Big Data, and social technologies — and by emerging markets’ growth.
  2. Emerging markets: IT spending will grow by 8.8% to over $730 billion — twice
    developed markets’ growth, 34% of all IT spending, and 51% of all IT growth.
  3. Mobile devices: Sales of smart mobile devices (SMDs) — smartphones and
    tablets — will grow by 20%, generate 20% of all IT sales, and drive 57% of all IT
    market growth. Without SMDs, IT industry growth will be just 2.9%.
  4. Tablet surge driven by minis: Mini tablets (sub-8in. screens) will account for as
    much as 60% of unit shipments — a remarkable leap from just 33% in 2012.
  5. Year of reckoning in mobile software: Mobile platforms that fail to crack the
    50% barrier of developers that are “very interested” in developing apps for them
    will be on a gradual track to demise. Microsoft now sits at 33%; RIM sits at 9%.
  6. Accelerated SaaS shopping spree: There will be over $25 billion in SaaS
    acquisitions over the next 20 months, up from $17 billion in the past 20 months.
  7. Rise of “industry platform as a service (PaaS)”: The number of industryfocused
    public cloud services platforms — less than 100 in 2012 — will increase
    tenfold by 2016, while “horizontal” PaaS will become more commoditized.
  8. Growing importance of line-of-business (LOB) executives: By 2016, 80% of
    new IT investments will directly involve LOB executives, with LOBs the lead
    decision makers in half or more of those investments.
  9. 3rd Platform datacenter disruptions: Converged systems and softwaredefined
    networks will drive growth and open the door for market share upheaval.
    “Bring your own ID” (BYOID) will bring consumerization into enterprise security.
  10. Big Data — from search to discovery and prediction: Big Data M&A will
    cluster in visual discovery, predictive analytics, and text and rich media analytics.
  1. Simplify IT and Transform Your Spending: Kick the 80/20 Budget Habit
  2. Lead the Social Revolution: Drive the Social-Enabled Enterprise
  3. Unleash Your Company’s Intelligence: Create the Enterprise-Wide Opportunity Chain
  4. Embrace the Engagement Economy: Merge the Back Office and the Front Office into the Customer Office
  5. Future-Proof Your IT Architecture
  6. Upgrade “Cloud Strategy” to “Business Transformation Enabled by the Cloud”
  7. Transform Big Data into Big Insights, Big Vision, and Big Opportunities
  8. Preside over a Shotgun Wedding: Systems of Record Marry Systems of Engagement
  9. Lead with Speed: CIO as Chief Acceleration Officer
  10. Bend the Value Curve: More Innovation, Less Integration
  • Big data to create 1.9M IT jobs in U.S. by 2015. (Gartner)
  • Big data is forecast to drive $34 billion of worldwide IT spending in 2013, with the figure for 2012 standing at $28 billion. (Gartner)
  • The application development and deployment (AD&D) software market is expected to reach $80.6bn in 2012, up 3.7% from 2011.It is however expected to rebound to higher single-digit growth in 2013 and beyond. (IDC)
  • During the 2012-2016 forecast period, the Process Automation Middleware (PAM) market is expected to gain momentum as enterprises seek more efficient ways to develop and maintain mission critical applications. (IDC)
  • Growth rates of end-user query, reporting, and analysis as well as advanced analytics have been high within the business intelligence market, and are expected to experience high single-digit growth in 2013 and beyond. (IDC)
  • Global spending on enterprise software, which includes application software and infrastructure software, may go up 6.5 percent to reach 296 billion dollars in 2013. (Gartner)
  • Spending on business-related IT services and IT product support services to increase by 5.2 percent to reach 927 billion dollars in 2013. (Gartner)
  • By 2015, organization integrating high-value, diverse, new information types and sources into a coherent information management infrastructure will outperform their industry peers financially by more than 20 percent (Gartner)
  • The big data analytic industry is positioned to expand at a compound annual growth rate of more than 54 percent through 2017. (MarketsandMarkets)
Filed Under: Optimal SAP Thought Leadership Tagged With:

SAP on HANA is Here

January 17, 2013 By 1 Comment
SAP on HANA

In a global announcement last week simultaneously from Palo Alto, New York and Frankfurt, SAP delivered on its commitment to have its most popular application, SAP Business Suite, running on HANA, its breakthrough in-memory platform.

From marketing analysis to financial closes, receivables management, material resource planning, and consumer and social sentiment analysis, SAP on HANA increases business-process speed, drives innovation, and simplifies IT landscapes.

Optimal was among the select SAP partners asked to participate in the launch and provide a quote for the SAP press release.

Optimal believes this new option for SAP Business Suite customers is a big deal — one that is sure to keep HANA adoption trending strong in 2013 and beyond.

Read article by Optimal Solutions President Sam Sliman: Why SAP on HANA is a Big Deal

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Thought Leadership, SAP HANA, SAP HANA Consultants Tagged With: , , ,

SAP Business Suite on HANA Launch

January 16, 2013 By Leave a Comment
SAP_HANA_Speed-300x225

Optimal Solutions SVP Elliott Garofalo attended the SAP Business Suite on HANA launch event in New York and was interviewed by ChannelNomics writer Dave Courbanou.

Here’s a bit of Elliott’s perspective on the importance of SAP Business Suite on HANA:

SAP on HANA’s overall significance…

“I think you’re going to see an explosion of firms developing solutions that can be powered by HANA. It’s going show SAP in a new light and change the [real time analytics] game.”

SAP on HANA’s speed…

“Speed is a component, but it’s not the all-encompassing reason. It’s a compelling argument when you can take an 9 hour business job and complete it in 10 seconds, especially from a workforce capacity standpoint.”

SAP on HANA adoption…

“…clients have never been more willing to adopt it.” Instead, “…the biggest issue we have is where to start within an organization.”

Read ChanelNomics article: Leading With Speed a Potential Differentiator

Filed Under: Optimal Solutions News, SAP Analytics, SAP HANA, SAP HANA Consultants Tagged With: , , ,

Optimal ranked 11th Fastest-Growing Company in North Texas

January 14, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Dallas100logo540

Optimal Solutions was ranked the 11th fastest-growing company in North Texas by SMU COX Caruth Institute, making the Dallas 100 list for the 9th time — which is pretty impressive considering award winners are chosen on increased growth in sales, giving weight to percentage of growth and absolute dollar growth, in the three years preceding the event.

View Dallas 100 list for 2012

Filed Under: Optimal Solutions News Tagged With:

Optimal Quoted in SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA Announcement

January 10, 2013 By Leave a Comment

SAP today announced the availability of SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA, a new option for SAP Business Suite customers. SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA empowers customers to run their business in real time within the window of opportunity to transact, analyze and predict instantly and proactively in an unpredictable world.

Optimal Solutions was one of a few select SAP partners quoted on the powerful and positive impact of SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA.

Elliott Garofalo, senior vice president, Emerging Markets, Optimal Solutions Integration:

“SAP HANA is an innovation engine that transforms all facets of business — from speeding up existing applications and processes to inspiring applications and processes not available (or even imagined) today. We’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of SAP HANA’s full potential. With SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA, we have the opportunity to team with SAP to help customers drive efficiency gains through minimal disruptive game-changing innovation.”

Read SAP press release: http://bit.ly/TNrir7

Check out a replay of the press conference : http://bit.ly/11cHaYG

Filed Under: SAP News Tagged With: , ,

Optimal CEO Gurvendra Suri’s 2013 Forecast

January 6, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Suri 2013 Forecast

Dallas Business Journal editors asked the leaders of the 100 fastest-growing companies in North Texas to share their outlook on the new year. Their comments provide a window into growth prospects across a wide range of industries.

CEO of 11th-ranked Optimal Solutions Gurvendra Suri had this to say about Optimal’s prospects:

“Attracting and retaining SAP consultants that meet Optimal’s exacting standards for skill and professionalism is always a challenge — and one that is central to Optimal’s continued growth and success. We will redouble our effort to hire the best talent available and provide them with everything needed to ensure success — in their individual careers as well as in delivering value to our customers. We’re confident in our strategy and bullish in our outlook for 2013. We expect to grow Optimal’s revenue two to three times the market average over then next 12 months.”

Read article:Fastest-growing North Texas Companies Share 2013 Economic Forecast

Filed Under: Optimal Solutions News Tagged With:

SAP 2012 – A Year in Review

January 5, 2013 By Leave a Comment
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By Sam Sliman, President, Optimal Solutions Integration

In April of 2012, SAP celebrated its 40th birthday — and its maturation from a startup brainchild of five ex-IBM engineers into the world’s leading provider of enterprise application software with more than 55,700 employees and nearly 200,000 customers in 120+ countries.

In July, as reported by Bloomberg, with a valuation of $75.3 billion, SAP took over the top spot as the most valuable publicly traded German company, toppling the 164-year-old engineering giant Siemens. Today, SAP remains a heavyweight on the German DAX and is one of the most actively traded German stocks on the NYSE.

In October, SAP reported its best-ever third quarter, delivering strong performance across its core innovation areas of HANA, mobility and the cloud and notching its eleventh consecutive quarter of double-digit non-IFRS software and software related service revenue growth.

SAP also confirmed its full-year non-IFRS operating profit forecast for 2012 to be in the range of $5.92 billion to $6.65 billion.

We’ll have to wait until SAP reports its Q4 earnings in late January to confirm that the company is sustaining its strong momentum, but myriad factors indicate that SAP’s growth will continue in 2013 and beyond.

As reported in October by Reuters, SAP co-chief executive Bill McDermott has gone on record with the claim that: “[SAP’s] ambition is to grow with double-digit numbers for a very long time to come.”
In December, Standard & Poor’s Equity Research raised its DCF-based 12-month target price for SAP by $13 to $91 on increased confidence in SAP’s growth prospects in 2013 and beyond.

S&P increased its 2012 SAP earnings estimate of $0.11 to $3.55 and its 2013 earnings estimate for SAP by $0.76 to $4.41, citing SAP’s HANA, mobility and cloud initiatives as key drivers of SAP’s growth.
SAP certainly fired on all cylinders across these core innovation areas in 2012, and from what we see at Optimal, this strong momentum shows no signs of slowing.

Read Custom Apps – HANA’s Big Future, SAP Mobility Moves and SAP Flying High in the Cloud.

SAP co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe cites SAP’s innovation, nimbleness and markedly faster capability to deliver new products as pillars to SAP’s current and future success, noting that SAP has reduced by nearly 50% the time it takes to move a new product through development and bring it to market. What took 15 weeks in 2010, according to Snabe, today is accomplished in seven-and-a-half weeks.

Commenting on the unpredictable nature of business, Warren Buffet notes that the rearview mirror is typically clearer than the windshield. However, at the beginning of 2013, it is perhaps worth spending some time reviewing the many impressive milestones and accomplishments SAP achieved in 2012.

Here are two good sources for this:

SAP and the Habit of Winning
Looking Back at 2012

Wishing all a happy and prosperous 2013!

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Thought Leadership, SAP Consulting, SAP News Tagged With: ,

Optimal HANA Webinar: Why SAP HANA Now?

January 4, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Optimal HANA Webinar sm

Whether it is a “big data” issue or your desire to innovate beyond your current capabilities, SAP HANA presents a unique opportunity for your organization. Come learn from the experts at SAP and Optimal Solutions and what this means for you. Learn how you can build the best business case and test drive the solution before signing on the dotted line. Hear about best practices and lessons learned at T-Mobile as they completed two HANA projects focused on Customer and Marketing analytics. Now is the time to evaluate how best you can gain from this next generation technology paradigm.

When: January 17, 2013 | 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. (CDT)

Presenters:

Puneet Suppal, Database & Technology Platform Adoption, SAP America, Inc.

Jeremy Stierwalt, Solution & Practice Director, North America, SAP BI, Optimal Solutions Integration, Inc.

Alison Bessho, Director,HANA Solutions,Optimal Solutions Integration, Inc.

REGISTER TODAY!

For more information please contact:
amy.wilson@optimalsol.com

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Event, Optimal SAP Webinar, SAP HANA Tagged With: ,

Continuing Your Custom HANA App Education

December 19, 2012 By 1 Comment
SAP HANA EDU

Part of HANA’s beauty is that it is equally applicable to both the SAP and non-SAP worlds, and because of this, it is conceivable that in the not-too-distant future, there are likely to be more custom-built HANA applications touching non-SAP systems than commercially available ‘powered by HANA’ solutions marketed by SAP.

HANA’s ability to access and deliver information up to 100,000 times faster than what was traditionally possible, its unprecedented ability to run transactions and perform analytics on a single architecture, and its dramatic simplification and cost reduction of IT landscapes makes it too appealing, too transformative, too big for any single vendor or off-the-shelf format.

To assist you in continuing your custom HANA education, we’ve compiled a few helpful resources:

Don’t miss Optimal President Sam Sliman’s article: Custom Apps – HANA’s Big Future

Please feel free to drop us a note with more helpful HANA resources.

Filed Under: SAP Consulting, SAP HANA Tagged With: ,

Custom Apps – HANA’s Big Future

December 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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By Sam Sliman, President, Optimal Solutions Integration

SAP targets $422 million in HANA revenue for 2012 – an impressive number considering HANA was only made generally available in June 2011. However, this revenue is a mere pittance when one considers that SAP’s growing portfolio of powered-by-HANA solutions now tops 30, and that SAP intends to have the entire SAP Business Suite running on HANA by next year, and that HANA underpins SAP’s other two major growth drivers — mobility and the cloud, and that, moving forward, HANA will dictate how SAP conceives, designs, builds, and sells new products.

Yet even taking into account this considerable momentum and HANA’s current billing as the ‘fastest-growing product in SAP history,’ we’ve only just scratched the surface of HANA’s full market potential.

While impressive, all of the above covers only HANA as it relates to commercial SAP HANA products in primarily SAP-centric environments.

SAP’s goals for HANA transcend this vision. In fact, Steve Lucas, SAP global executive vice president and general manager of database and technology, recently noted that SAP’s “goal is to help organizations access, build and govern information value chains across all data sources […] be it from an SAP, custom or partner application, enterprise database or new data sources such as Hadoop.”

Lucas also pointed out that as of September of this year approximately 40% of SAP’s HANA customers don’t run core SAP applications.

Part of HANA’s beauty is that it is equally applicable to both the SAP and non-SAP worlds, and because of this, it is conceivable that in the not-too-distant future, there are likely to be more custom-built HANA applications touching non-SAP systems than commercially available ‘powered by HANA’ solutions marketed by SAP.

HANA’s ability to access and deliver information up to 100,000 times faster than what was traditionally possible, its unprecedented ability to run transactions and perform analytics on a single architecture, and its dramatic simplification and cost reduction of IT landscapes makes it too appealing, too transformative, too big for any single vendor or off-the-shelf format.

At bottom, more than simply a database on steroids, HANA is an innovation engine, one that will transform all aspects of business, from speeding up existing applications and processes — SAP- and non-SAP based — to inspiring custom applications not available (or even imagined) today.

In the words of SAP Executive Board Member and CTO Vishal Sikka. “HANA is more than a product. It is a new paradigm, an entirely new way to build applications. It is the basis for our own intellectual renewal internally at SAP […] and the basis for our customers’ and partners’ intellectual renewal—where we help customers rethink existing business problems and help them solve entirely new challenges using design-thinking.”

Or as industry watchdog Dennis Howlett puts it, “As a database replacement [HANA] may have some mileage but its greatest potential is as an engine that encourages the re-imagining of applications and the invention of entirely new classes of app.”

It is the organizations that develop innovative applications and unique processes and the businesses that find efficient ways to extract value from big data more quickly that create competitive advantage, grow market share and become leaders.

Here’s a sampling of how SAP is facilitating custom development with HANA:

SAP has started a $155 million venture fund to spur development of applications compatible with HANA.

More than 150 startups are participating in the SAP Startup Focus program, and SAP has signed commercial agreements with 20 of them to go productive with the SAP HANA One platform on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

SAP has made an instance of HANA available on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for applications that don’t exceed 64GB and has created the HANA Academy, through which developers can gain access to a free developer edition of HANA.

HANA’s built-in SAP BusinessObjects Data Services tool provides standard interfaces to existing applications, operational software, and other business applications — SAP and non-SAP.

Using the recently launched, open standards-based SAP NetWeaver Cloud platform, SAP customers and partners are now building impactful HANA applications across a wide range of industries and use cases that seamlessly integrate with SAP and non-SAP systems.

With SAP HANA AppServices in SAP HANA Cloud, developers can create next-generation applications using native SAP HANA, Java and other rapid-development services.

A selection of developer-friendly enhancements available in HANA SPS5 includes:
Predictive model markup language (PMML) support for the integration and sharing of predictive models.

- Extended application services designed to deliver native application server capabilities as a service to help developers develop 2 and 2½ tier applications within the HANA platform using HTLM5, JavaScript, SQLScript, XML/A, JSON, and ODATA. These services can be exposed for consumption by device-based applications or by other application servers.

- Embedded algorithms and business functions through extended application service capabilities via SQLScript or JavaScript, making it easier for developers to build HANA applications that embed advanced analytics.

- Business rules management is now a core component of the extended application services built into SAP HANA, allowing developers to add business rules to their applications without embedding these directly within software codes.

For more visit  Optimal SAP Thought Leadership

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Thought Leadership, SAP HANA, SAP News Tagged With:

Optimal Webinar: Why SAP HANA Now?

December 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Whether it is a “big data” issue or your desire to innovate beyond your current capabilities, SAP HANA presents a unique opportunity for your organization.

Learn from experts from SAP and Optimal Solutions what HANA means for you. This webinar will include actual customer experiences.

SAP HANA is real and here. Learn how to gain from this next-generation technology paradigm.

REGISTER TODAY!

When:  Tuesday, December 18, 2012  / 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. (CDT)

Presenters:

Puneet Suppal
Database & Technology Platform
Adoption, SAP America, Inc.

Jeremy Stierwalt
Solution & Practice Director,
North America, SAP BI
Optimal Solutions Integration, Inc.

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Event, Optimal SAP Webinar, SAP Analytics, SAP Big Data, SAP HANA Tagged With: , , ,

Optimal Webinar: Why SAP HANA Now?

December 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Whether it is a “big data” issue or your desire to innovate beyond your current capabilities, SAP HANA presents a unique opportunity for your organization.

Learn from experts from SAP and Optimal Solutions what HANA means for you. This webinar will include actual customer experiences.

SAP HANA is real and here. Learn how to gain from this next-generation technology paradigm.

REGISTER TODAY!

When:  Tuesday, December 18, 2012  / 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. (CDT)

Presenters:

Puneet Suppal
Database & Technology Platform
Adoption, SAP America, Inc.

Jeremy Stierwalt
Solution & Practice Director,
North America, SAP BI
Optimal Solutions Integration, Inc.

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Event, Optimal SAP Webinar, SAP Analytics, SAP Big Data, SAP HANA Tagged With: , , ,

Webinar: Update SAP Data Using Microsoft Excel

December 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Did you know that you can use Microsoft Excel to update information in SAP? Attend a free Webinar that Optimal and Winshuttle are sponsoring Thursday, December 13, 2012 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM PST. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Optimal and Winshuttle are combining services and software to make it easier for business users in your company to manage and update SAP data without IT assistance. Plus we can help you automate SAP business processes.

This 60 minute complimentary Webinar highlights how Optimal and Winshuttle can help you get the most out of your business’ current SAP investment and help make your SAP life easier.

At this Webinar, you’ll learn how to:

  • Enable business users to automate entering, managing and updating SAP data using software tools that they already know how to use like Excel, SharePoint and more
  • Automate SAP transactions in virtually every SAP module including HCM, FI/CO, MM, SD and many others
  • Improve the data quality of the information entered into SAP by reducing manual data entry errors
  • Shorten the “Time-to-Value” for SAP Implementations and Upgrades
  • Ensure Compliance with Security and Governance Standards
  • Reduce the time IT spends doing repetitive tasks and allow them to focus programming resources on the highest value initiatives
  • Lower SAP Application Support Costs

REGISTER NOW!

 

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Event, Optimal SAP Webinar

Optimal Webinar: Why SAP HANA Now?

December 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Whether it is a “big data” issue or your desire to innovate beyond your current capabilities, SAP HANA presents a unique opportunity for your organization.

Learn from experts from SAP and Optimal Solutions what HANA means for you. This webinar will include actual customer experiences.

SAP HANA is real and here. Learn how to gain from this next-generation technology paradigm.

REGISTER TODAY!

When:  Tuesday, December 18  2012  / 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. (CDT)

Presenters:

Puneet Suppal
Database & Technology Platform
Adoption, SAP America, Inc.

Jeremy Stierwalt
Solution & Practice Director,
North America, SAP BI
Optimal Solutions Integration, Inc.

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Event, Optimal SAP Webinar, SAP Analytics, SAP Big Data, SAP HANA Tagged With: , , ,

SAP Mobility Fuels Growth

December 1, 2012 By 1 Comment
SAP Mobility

SAP has gained 60 million mobile users in the past 15 months and aims to double sales of mobile software to $285 million in 2012. According to SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott, the company will probably maintain 100% revenue growth in mobility for “the foreseeable future.”

SAP has built out a formidable mobility offering, but will SAP’s recent mobility moves have impact enough to help propel the company over the one-billion-users mark?

Read article by Optimal President Sam Sliman:

http://bit.ly/UesAJm

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Thought Leadership, SAP Mobility Tagged With: , ,

SAP’s Aggressive Cloud Play

December 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment
SAP Cloud

SAP plans to double cloud revenue in 2012, reach $2 billion in category revenue by 2015, and grow its cloud market share thirty-fold over the next five years.

Numbers to date confirm that SAP is delivering.

Read article by Optimal President Sam Sliman: SAP Flying High in the Cloud

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Thought Leadership, SAP Cloud Tagged With: ,

Optimal Webinar: Why SAP HANA Now?

November 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Whether it is a “big data” issue or your desire to innovate beyond your current capabilities, SAP HANA presents a unique opportunity for your organization.

Learn from experts from SAP and Optimal Solutions what HANA means for you. This webinar will include actual customer experiences.

SAP HANA is real and here. Learn how to gain from this next-generation technology paradigm.

REGISTER TODAY!

When:  Tuesday, December 18, 2012  / 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. (CDT)

Presenters:

Puneet Suppal
Database & Technology Platform
Adoption, SAP America, Inc.

Jeremy Stierwalt
Solution & Practice Director,
North America, SAP BI
Optimal Solutions Integration, Inc.

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Event, Optimal SAP Webinar, SAP Analytics, SAP Big Data, SAP HANA Tagged With: , , ,

Optimal Webinar: Why SAP HANA Now?

November 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Whether it is a “big data” issue or your desire to innovate beyond your current capabilities, SAP HANA presents a unique opportunity for your organization.

Learn from experts from SAP and Optimal Solutions what HANA means for you. This webinar will include actual customer experiences.

SAP HANA is real and here. Learn how to gain from this next-generation technology paradigm.

REGISTER TODAY!

When:  Tuesday, December 18, 2012  / 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. (CDT)

Presenters:

Puneet Suppal
Database & Technology Platform
Adoption, SAP America, Inc.

Jeremy Stierwalt
Solution & Practice Director,
North America, SAP BI
Optimal Solutions Integration, Inc.

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Event, Optimal SAP Webinar, SAP Analytics, SAP Big Data, SAP HANA Tagged With: , , ,

ASUG TX Chapter Statewide Meeting

November 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The future is here: Mobile Dashboards & Business Objects Design Studio.

With Design Studio 1.0 recently released from SAP and new mobile functionality added to Dashboard Designer, we’ll review the key components of creating analytical interfaces and dashboards and deploying them on both mobile and non-mobile platforms.  We will provide a case study along with lessons learned from a current implementation we are performing for one of our clients.

Project Objectives:

  • Develop new dashboards to provide highly stylized visualizations on existing sales and distribution data in BW for desktops and iPads.
  • Evolve from BEX reporting
    • Currently BI adoption is very low and we rely on lots of individual broadcast emails of BEX to PDF.  Our goal is to provide a more intuitive, interactive analysis with advanced visualizations that allow drill down.
  • Overcome gaps in the current BI platform
    • Limitations of BICs with dashboards and webi reports
    • Performance and data limitations in dashboards and webi
    • HTML5 support – design once and deploy to desktop and  iOS
    • Overcome awkwardness of document linking (open doc, hyperlinking)
    • New BI customer, so developing in Xcelsius of questionable value
    • Improve usability over webi limitations
    • Improve Enterprise Portal experience for BI content

Featured Speaker:

Scott Sigsbey currently serves as a BI Solution and Practice Principle with Optimal. Scott has 13+ years of Business Intelligence & Analytics, Enterprise Performance Management, and Database and Technology related experience. His responsibilities include creating and delivering “business transformation” solutions. He is also responsible for sales cycles, practice growth & development, and leadership of the delivery team. Scott is a techno-functional expert in full life-cycle BI implementations and solution delivery.

Date: Friday, November 16, 2012
Location: Plano Center
2000 East Spring Creek Pkwy.
Plano, TX 75074

Register Today!

Filed Under: ASUG, SAP Analytics, SAP BI, SAP iPad Tagged With: , , ,

Optimal / SAP Big Data Forum – Boston, MA

November 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Learn how to leverage big data to make better decisions and prepare for growth by joining Optimal at the SAP Innovation Forum in Boston, MA, on November 15 , 2012.

REGISTER TODAY!

You’re not really sure how it happened, but, in the last 12 months or so, you were suddenly facing a Big Data problem, being told you were facing a Big Data problem, or, most likely, being told that you needed a Big Data solution. And, while Big Data is everyone’s problem, IT is responsible for addressing it.

Join SAP and Optimal Solutions at the SAP Innovation Forum on November 15, 2012, for an interactive exchange of ideas and insights about Big Data. Consider where to apply Big Data strategies and prepare for the challenges it brings forth, so you can optimize results.

Understand it. Define it. Identify it.

During the forum, CIO thought leader Eric Goldfarb will lead an executive conversation that explores how IT organizations can:

  • Define Big Data and transform the infrastructure and services you have today to compliment your Big Data solution
  • Enable your business users to make better decisions and plan for future growth by leveraging Big Data solutions to provide them with improved access to hidden and visible information
  • Consider new opportunities and challenges that will present themselves as you move forward in implementing your Big Data strategic plan
  • Determine what information is of value among all the information that will be available, not only at your fingertips, but everyone’s

About our speakers

Eric Goldfarb has served as CIO/EVP for public and private organizations of all shapes and sizes, from midmarket to Fortune Global 500 companies. Goldfarb is a widely published thought leader in the discipline of applying information technology to business needs. He has co-authored and published five books, including Ways to Reduce IT Spending, (2004). His articles have appeared in Computerworld, CIO Magazine, and BusinessWeek.

Kevin Fay, VP of Analytics, is responsible for driving the Business Intelligence, Enterprise Performance Management, and Governance Risk and Compliance business for SAP across the East Coast. Before joining SAP in 2012, Kevin spent 12 combined years with Oracle and Hyperion. Most recently, he served as VP of Sales for Enterprise Accounts in the Financial Services group responsible for selling ERP, EPM, and CRM. He has also held several other senior sales positions, including regional manager for New England sales for Hyperion before being acquired by Oracle in 2007.Kevin graduated with honors from Southern New Hampshire University where he earned a BA in Accounting

Filed Under: Big Data, Optimal SAP Event, SAP Analytics, SAP Consulting, SAP HANA Tagged With: , ,

Optimal Webinar: Why SAP HANA Now?

November 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Whether it is a “big data” issue or your desire to innovate beyond your current capabilities, SAP HANA presents a unique opportunity for your organization.

Learn from experts from SAP and Optimal Solutions what HANA means for you. This webinar will include actual customer experiences.

SAP HANA is real and here. Learn how to gain from this next-generation technology paradigm.

REGISTER TODAY!

When:  Tuesday, December 18, 2012  / 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. (CDT)

Presenters:

Puneet Suppal
Database & Technology Platform
Adoption, SAP America, Inc.

Jeremy Stierwalt
Solution & Practice Director,
North America, SAP BI
Optimal Solutions Integration, Inc.

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Event, Optimal SAP Webinar, SAP Analytics, SAP Big Data, SAP HANA Tagged With: , , ,

ASUG Affiliate-Sponsored Webcast

November 12, 2012 By 1 Comment

The Future Is Here – Mobile Dashboards and SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio

When: November 12, 2012 | 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. (EST)

Why: Join ASUG Platinum Affiliate member Optimal Solutions for its webcast, The Future Is Here – Mobile Dashboards and SAP® BusinessObjects™ Design Studio.

With SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio 1.0 recently released, this webcast will review the key components of creating analytical interfaces and dashboards and deploying them on both mobile and non-mobile platforms.

Register Today!

Filed Under: ASUG, Optimal SAP Webinar, SAP BusinessObjects, SAP Dashboards, SAP Mobility Tagged With: , , ,

ASUG TX Chapter Statewide Meeting

November 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The future is here: Mobile Dashboards & Business Objects Design Studio.

With Design Studio 1.0 recently released from SAP and new mobile functionality added to Dashboard Designer, we’ll review the key components of creating analytical interfaces and dashboards and deploying them on both mobile and non-mobile platforms.  We will provide a case study along with lessons learned from a current implementation we are performing for one of our clients.

Project Objectives:

  • Develop new dashboards to provide highly stylized visualizations on existing sales and distribution data in BW for desktops and iPads.
  • Evolve from BEX reporting
    • Currently BI adoption is very low and we rely on lots of individual broadcast emails of BEX to PDF.  Our goal is to provide a more intuitive, interactive analysis with advanced visualizations that allow drill down.
  • Overcome gaps in the current BI platform
    • Limitations of BICs with dashboards and webi reports
    • Performance and data limitations in dashboards and webi
    • HTML5 support – design once and deploy to desktop and  iOS
    • Overcome awkwardness of document linking (open doc, hyperlinking)
    • New BI customer, so developing in Xcelsius of questionable value
    • Improve usability over webi limitations
    • Improve Enterprise Portal experience for BI content

Featured Speaker:

Scott Sigsbey currently serves as a BI Solution and Practice Principle with Optimal. Scott has 13+ years of Business Intelligence & Analytics, Enterprise Performance Management, and Database and Technology related experience. His responsibilities include creating and delivering “business transformation” solutions. He is also responsible for sales cycles, practice growth & development, and leadership of the delivery team. Scott is a techno-functional expert in full life-cycle BI implementations and solution delivery.

Date: Friday, November 16, 2012
Location: Plano Center
2000 East Spring Creek Pkwy.
Plano, TX 75074

Register Today!

Filed Under: ASUG, SAP Analytics, SAP BI, SAP iPad Tagged With: , , ,

ASUG Affiliate-Sponsored Webcast

November 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The Future Is Here – Mobile Dashboards and SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio

When: November 12, 2012 | 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. (EST)

Why: Join ASUG Platinum Affiliate member Optimal Solutions for its webcast, The Future Is Here – Mobile Dashboards and SAP® BusinessObjects™ Design Studio.

With SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio 1.0 recently released, this webcast will review the key components of creating analytical interfaces and dashboards and deploying them on both mobile and non-mobile platforms.

Register Today!

Filed Under: ASUG, Optimal SAP Webinar, SAP BusinessObjects, SAP Dashboards, SAP Mobility Tagged With: , , ,

Optimal Webinar: Why SAP HANA Now?

November 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Optimal SAP HANA Webinar

Whether it is a “big data” issue or your desire to innovate beyond your current capabilities, SAP HANA presents a unique opportunity for your organization.

Learn from experts from SAP and Optimal Solutions what HANA means for you. This webinar will include actual customer experiences.

SAP HANA is real and here. Learn how to gain from this next-generation technology paradigm.

REGISTER TODAY!

When:  Tuesday, December 18 2012  / 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. (CDT)

Presenters:

Puneet Suppal
Database & Technology Platform
Adoption, SAP America, Inc.

Jeremy Stierwalt
Solution & Practice Director,
North America, SAP BI
Optimal Solutions Integration, Inc.

Filed Under: Optimal SAP Event, Optimal SAP Webinar, SAP Analytics, SAP Big Data, SAP HANA Tagged With: , , ,

Optimal / SAP Big Data Forum – Greensboro, NC

November 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Learn how to leverage big data to make better decisions and prepare for growth by joining Optimal at the SAP Innovation Forum in Greensboro, NC, on November 7, 2012.

REGISTER TODAY!

You’re not really sure how it happened, but, in the last 12 months or so, you were suddenly facing a Big Data problem, being told you were facing a Big Data problem, or, most likely, being told that you needed a Big Data solution. And, while Big Data is everyone’s problem, IT is responsible for addressing it.

Join SAP and Optimal Solutions at the SAP Innovation Forum on November 8, 2012, for an interactive exchange of ideas and insights about Big Data. Consider where to apply Big Data strategies and prepare for the challenges it brings forth, so you can optimize results.

Understand it. Define it. Identify it.

During the forum, CIO thought leader Eric Goldfarb will lead an executive conversation that explores how IT organizations can:

  • Define Big Data and transform the infrastructure and services you have today to compliment your Big Data solution
  • Enable your business users to make better decisions and plan for future growth by leveraging Big Data solutions to provide them with improved access to hidden and visible information
  • Consider new opportunities and challenges that will present themselves as you move forward in implementing your Big Data strategic plan
  • Determine what information is of value among all the information that will be available, not only at your fingertips, but everyone’s

About our speaker

Eric Goldfarb has served as CIO/EVP for public and private organizations of all shapes and sizes, from midmarket to Fortune Global 500 companies. Goldfarb is a widely published thought leader in the discipline of applying information technology to business needs. He has co-authored and published five books, including Ways to Reduce IT Spending, (2004). His articles have appeared in Computerworld, CIO Magazine, and BusinessWeek.

Join us for a round of golf and networking

After the forum, be our guest at The Grandover Resort for an afternoon of golf and networking. We look forward to seeing you in Greensboro, NC..

Filed Under: Big Data, Optimal SAP Event, SAP Analytics, SAP Consulting, SAP HANA Tagged With: , ,
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