Day 2: SAP SAPPHIRE NOW Keynote Highlights
SAP SAPPHIRE NOW opened with co-founder Hasso Plattner who took the stage to bring the Intelligent Enterprise from concept to reality. Plattner led with the statement, “The Intelligent Enterprise is not a marketing story thriving in buzzwords. It is a logical consequence of what is possible today using modern technology in enterprise applications.” The Intelligent Enterprise is also not just an ERP story but one that crosses business units, business processes and data repositories. The Intelligent Enterprise eliminates redundant aggregates, enables real time analytics and can run massive parallel processes. Requests are handled “on the fly” and you are always prepared. It is enabled with AI-powered and self-learning mechanisms that help companies redefine the way work is done.
At the center of the intelligent enterprise is the SAP S/4HANA Cloud and the SAP HANA Data Management Suite. The top innovations for SAP HANA Data Management Suite included: Data Pipelines; Text and Search; Spatial and Graph; Data Anonymization; and Persistent Memory
SAP CTO Björn Goerke took the stage to talk more about the SAP Cloud Platform. Supporting the SAP S/4HANA Cloud is a diverse ecosystem of packaged content, 950+ partners, and 1000s of APIs and integrations.
And the SAP Cloud ecosystem is just continuing to grow. Goerke made a number of supporting announcements including:
So, Then What is Holding Back Customers from the Move to S/4HANA?
With all this greatness, then why hasn’t everyone moved to S/4HANA? Ironically, the biggest challenge holding clients back is change in the form of all the modifications and customizations they’ve made to their existing systems. Platner states “It is unfortunate to see clients not be able to take upgrades and fall five year behind the SA IT Office.” Companies are now stuck with systems that have become too big and too complex to change. SAP has recognized this as the biggest roadblock to adoption of new technologies. So much so that they have completely blocked the ability to change source code or change the core on the SAP cloud platform. The new mantra was echoed by SAP CTO Björn Goerke. "Keep the core clean. Bring extensions to the outside."
But still this doesn’t address the massive challenge S/4HANA presents to existing SAP clients with large customized environments. This is where partners and automation come into play. Worksoft offers intelligent automation that helps clients discover and document existing processes, identify process deviations and then build supporting end-to-end business process test automation that mitigates risk as changes go into place.
The move to S/4HANA is not an easy one but as Hasso Plattner stated, “we can’t afford to fall that far behind.” Organizations must enable our teams with the processes and tools needed to change. YETI is a great example of a company that recently undertook an Intelligent Enterprise strategy and leveraged intelligent automation to ensure their transformation went smoothly and successfully. Intelligent automation from Worksoft made it possible for YETI to mobilize cross-functional teams and create a robust, unified testing program for SAP and its connected enterprise landscape.