CIO-Reinvented Blog - By Prashanth Rai

SAP Teched Keynote - Zia & Leo (Live Blogged)

Zia Yusuf, kicks off the session.

Special reference to contributors and mentors

1. 470 xabytes of information
2. 1.9 billion trade every 60 mins
3. 50% worlds business transactions touch an SAP system with 75000 customers
4. 1000 people join the SAP community network everyday, 12th largest in the EU
5. 52 countries collab in teched
6. 4500 people attending SAP teched

New initiative - Collboration withh innocentive , open innovation market place. - SAP innovation and technology pavilion. As of Sep22 1002 onboard - Democratization of innovation

 - Leo's turn now

First time addressing the TechEd audience, business and IT dont speak the same language.

Story about of hot air ballon and lost in fog joke, IT - perfectly accurate and completly useless answer, Business - You have no clue where you are and where you are going and you are blaming IT.

Customers to connect , collaborate , co-innovate

Overall perspective.

Transformational Forces

• Good old slides on business network ( Moving from Value Chain to Business network) - Network Shared risk - Better management risk
• Business Network - Relationship driven / Corporate boundaries have beomce fluid.
• Consumerization
• Need the IT environment to manage / support the Business Network
• Asian Paints (Case Study)
  • Paint a heavily commoditised industry
  • Extend the business model - Service Provider
  • Transformation to an End to End service company
  • Asian Paints Web / Phone based collaboration - Ties up with the painter / manages paint / manages payments etc
  • External Painters ranked
  • 400000 houses in first year
  • 25% referred other customers
  • Asian paints orchestrator of the network
  • SAP Infrastrcture for both Paint an Service business
  • ERP / CRM - Composite Apps
  • SMS interface
  • Business Int Analytics to benchmark painter
  • Predictive for future requirements
  • IT Requirements that are key to drive this transformations - Efficiency , Flexibility & Insight (Across the network)

User experience a key focus area of investment

• Harmonized UI - Standardized
• Enterprise search - search box for all enterprise applications
• Atlantic - Duet for Lotus

Weekend upgrade - Enhancement Packages (Applying and Enhancement pack is simpler than a support pack) - Entire suite two enhancement pack a year. Solution Manager  - Business Process change analyzer - Study Impact of enhancement pack. Solution Manager is the corner stone for enterprise support. Solution manager manages the custom code also. Truly harmonized end to end business processes.

Enterprise support - Is not useful - Quote saying "That statement alone makes the difference"

Horizontal Solutions address the functionality needs , but doesnt manage the end to end business view / business use case.

Professional Certification for Business Process Experts  ( Check out BPX community)

Customer Case Study : Hugo Boss AG

• 2003 fundamental shift in Fashion
• Versatile - Fashion truly unpredictable
• Bigger Varieties of brands
• Move from a push model to a pull model
• Standardized the processes
• Connected the network to the fashion manufacturers (flat files / paper)
• Collect and Analyze the POS data at all possible points - Open Architecture BI , Feedback on design trends, Supply chain etc.
• Moved from 4 collections to 52, with one week delivery windows - Flexible architecture.

Closed Loop Strategy to Execution

• Strategy
• Decision
• Monitoring
• Process Requirement
• process Execution
• Events
• Insight

BI XY3 - BI for the Masses

GRC - Composite Apss - Along with Cisco - Governance at Network level

Ian Kimble Demo1 Business Objects 

Demo2 - Galaxy

Ecosystem

Talks about the Innovation Pavillion

SAP Eco hub - Online Solution Market Place (Both SAP and Partner Solution ) - Wonder when the are going to come up with the Onlie Services Market place powered by the community.

Ian Kimble - Demo Eco Hub

View of the Architecture for the portfolio

Request/ Suggestion to Upgrade to ERP 6.0

Tags: sap - sapteched - sapteched08 - keynote - liveblogged

Prashanth Rai

Customer financing for Infor Customers by IBM

Infor recently announced a new financing relationship with IBM Global Financing the largest IT financier in the world. The new agreement will enable Infor’s customers around the world to finance products from Infor’s entire line of enterprise business software, as well as complementary hardware and services, through IBM Global Financing. Under the terms of the agreement, Infor’s channel partners can also offer financing to their customers through IBM Global Financing.

Are we going to see more from where this came from ?

“Most organizations today walk a narrow line between preserving day-to-day cash flow and making fiscally prudent investments to improve their business,” said Robin Pederson, chief operating officer, Infor. “The expansion of our relationship with IBM will help to make this decision easier.”

The new financing relationship provides many benefits to Infor's customers. For example, organizations can move forward with their technology initiatives while spreading up-front payments over time, conserving cash for other investments. Companies can also put technology to work immediately to establish a stronger competitive edge, rather than delaying until the next budget cycle.

Excerpts from the Forrester Blog

This program provides Infor's customers with:

• Access to a line of credit for key tech investments. Similar to other IGF deals, the program includes more than just Infor's entire line of business software. Other eligible items include software, services, hardware, and maintenance.
• Flexible payment options. Customers can spread traditional up-front payments over time. Flexible payment plans for loans or lease extend up to 60 months. Interest rates are country specific.

Key facts about the deal:

• Geographies: All
• Products: All products, No IBM hardware or software required
• Length of program: Up to 5 years, typically 24 to 36 months
• Interest rates: Country specific
• Partner eligibility: Open to all partners
• Program inclusion: software, services, hardware, and maintenance.

The bottom line.
Vendor-led financing options and payment alternatives provide users with opportunities to avoid up front payments and efficiently deploy capital. While financing options do not address the issues of recurring costs for support, upgrade, and hardware infrastructure, the bundling of professional services, hardware, and other related software offerings provide a compelling business case to choose one preferred IT vendor while deferring capital outlays. Financing will continue to prove to be the game changer in this consolidating and competitive software market.

Tags: it - financing - ibm - infor - erp - infrastructure - future

Prashanth Rai

Interesting reads of the day!

Interesting articles or items read today:

A Recent Goldman Sachs report sees growth in IT spending dropping from 7% last year to 5% this year...and near steady rock bottom levels at the end of the year.  That says declining budget GROWTH (vs. declining budgets). Major spending areas?  Cost cutting, vitalization, server consolidation, application integration, and data center consolidation….sounds like a theme going. Once these Y2K like efforts are done…watch out.

Source: 1

Your Next outsourcing destination Ghana - Ambassadors from 41 countries recently toured California. Among the reasons: to learn how the U.S. high-tech sector operates and to make a pitch for their home countries as sources of tech talent.

Source: 2

Tech Hiring still on the rise - In June, the number of information-technology pros employed in the U.S. reached 3,907,800–an all-time high, according to the National Association of Computer Consultant Businesses, an industry group for tech-consulting companies. Each month, the NACCB scours through Bureau of Labor Statistics data to find IT-related jobs. In June, the number of these jobs only increased by 1,700, but that was enough to set a new record. For the year, U.S. businesses have added almost 90,000 IT pros, which is a lot, considering that the U.S. has lost 438,000 jobs over the same period. The gains are a reminder that while growth in IT spending may be slower than in past years many research firms have revised downward their forecasts for corporate tech spending recently the sector is still growing.

Source: 3

Technology Diffusion - How long are technology adoption lags? Can cross-country differences in technology adoption lags account for a significant fraction of cross-country GDP disparities? Diego Comin of Harvard Business School and Bart Hobijn of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York develop a new benchmark to understand the diffusion process of individual technologies and the consequences that this has for aggregate growth. This benchmark provides a rationale for the evolution of diffusion measures that include how many units of technology each adopter has adopted in addition to the traditional extensive margin. The model is estimated to obtain measures of adoption lags for 15 technologies in 166 countries. Key concepts include:

• Adoption lags are large. On average, countries have adopted technologies 47 years after their invention.
• There is substantial variation across technologies and countries. 
• Over the past two centuries, newer technologies have been adopted faster than old ones. 
• The remarkable development records of Japan between 1870 and 1970 and of the so-called East Asian Tigers in the second half of the 20th century all coincided with a catch-up in the range of technologies used with respect to industrialized countries. 
• Adoption lags account for at least 25 percent of cross-country per capita income differences.

Source: 4 

India IT Export to Middle East - India’s IT exports to the Middle East are expected to cross $1.30 billion in 2008, an increase of 30% compared to $1 billion last year, Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council of India (ESC) said. According to ESC, an autonomous body under the Indian Ministry of Communications and IT, Indian IT exports are growing at more than 30% annually and are expected to cross $50 billion this year and touch $100 billion by 2012. “IT exports from India to the Middle East, particularly to the UAE, have increased substantially in recent years. We see huge potential for further growth as ESC is devising new strategies to expand its market-share in the region,” ESC regional director for the Middle East and UAE Kamal Vachani said.

Source: 5

Tags: Outsourcing - offshoring - India - technology - hiring - IT - Ghana

Prashanth

SaaS See Saw!!!

SaaS Applications/Companies in the "enterprise space" is an area of growing interest both in the board room and the CIO's office. SaaS has slowly begun eating into enterprise IT budgets, and now accounts for about $4.2B in spending, and growing at a speed of 22.3%.

Though this sounds primarily positive but on closer review the signals received are more conflicting, on the one side we hear a lot of the successes and converts of enterprises moving down the path. On the other side we hear the old concerns of privacy, security, risk , the overall cost equation from a customer point of view when looked at from a 5 year window point of view etc which is leading to reluctance from the CIO's.

Another concern that seems to be exploded in the recent past is the ability for the SaaS vendors to exist profitably and whether the current prices offered by these SaaS vendors are sustainable. This topic has become hot after the recent earning call of SAP and the comments around their BBD - Business By Design (SaaS delivered ERP - for the SME).

Some thinking around the reason for this problem:

SaaS may well prove to be less profitable than many software companies, pundits and investors anticipate. It’s certainly the case today. As noted earlier, the median TTM EBITDA margin of the 18 public companies in the SEG SaaS index was 6.1%, considerably lower than the 11.2% median TTM multiple of the 211 publicly traded software companies comprising the SEG Software Index. In fairness, the margins should improve as certain one-time expenses are absorbed and subscription renewals kick in.But it’s the pricing side of the equation that may ultimately prove to be the greatest deterrent for large enterprise SaaS adoption. As SaaS providers begin to fully grasp their higher than anticipated implementation, integration and infrastructure expenses, and as SaaS grows market share among large enterprises, it’s a safe bet SaaS providers will revisit their pricing models – and bite the hand that feeds them.

What is SAP Saying on BBD?

• The SAP Business ByDesign 2008 debut will focus on six countries, where all the current productive early customers are based. Additional country rollouts in 2009.
• It is expected to take around 12 months to 18 months longer than the original 2010 target to reach the SAP Business ByDesign $1 billion revenue and 10,000 customer potential.
• SAP said “SAP Business ByDesign innovations and technologies for the existing solutions and this will contribute significantly to the overall revenues of SAP in 2010.”
• BusinessByDesign will have significantly less than 1,000 customers in 2008.

Here is a comment from the co-CEO explain the reasoning

SAP co-CEO Leo Apotheker says that Business ByDesign, the application giant’s high-profile software as a service product, was delayed because of its total cost of ownership for the company.

“We’ve announced a price point and now we’re working backwards,” says Apotheker.

That’s a fancy way of saying SAP hasn’t figured out how to make money at its $149 per user per month price point.

This seems to be more SAP trying not to give jitters to the investor community / wall street than anything else, Yes they have some technical /architectural /economic model things (all are connected) to work out but alls not over for BBD or SaaS as the doomsayers would like you to believe.

But on the brighter side there are still a lot of positive indicators,

Worldwide total software revenue for software as a service (SaaS) within the enterprise software markets is projected to surpass $5.1 billion in 2007, a 21 percent increase from 2006 revenue ($4.2 billion), according to Gartner, Inc. The market is poised for strong growth through 2011, when worldwide revenue will reach $11.5 billion.

An recent survey of 850 enterprise users by McKinsey & Co. and the Sandhill Group shows that SaaS has moved into the mainstream. Respondents identified SaaS as the most important technology trend influencing their companies, with 74 percent of enterprise customers saying they are “favorably disposed to adopting SaaS platforms.”

SaaS moves from 37 to 18 as an enterprise IT spending priority. It would seem, and many industry pundits would have you believe, SaaS has won the day among large enterprises. According to the October 10, 2007 Goldman Sachs IT Spending Survey. Although SaaS had ranked 37 – dead last – in GS’ May 16 survey, it had moved halfway up the list to 18 in only a few months.

Thoughts at this time - SaaS is here to stay, As a model there were a few things wrong about the economics of ASP and it failed in its new avatar SaaS it might still have some problems, but I don’t believe they are big enough to have CIO's side track it completely. CIO's will continue to be cautious and we will see SaaS making more in roads into the enterprise, but primarily in the periphery and another important thing to watch out for is how the Platform As A Service movement plays out.

Source: 1, 2, 3

Tags: bbd - business+bydesign - a1s - sap - sme - saas - on+demand

Prashanth Rai

SAP Raids the EPM/CPM Space....Oracle/Hyperion Losing ground?

Some time back I had a post up on SAP's "CPM Acceleration Program" which was a program focused on ridding Oracle / Hyperion from the sites that are primarily SAP. One of the key result this program was having was a replacement each day.

Now in a recent press release SAP highlighted some of the wins they are having in the EPM/CPM space.

SAP reported that over the past several months more than 100 customers worldwide purchased SAP® solutions for enterprise performance management with the intention to replace Hyperion solutions from Oracle. Among those customers are: Ballast Nedam N.V., Foundation Coal, KPN Telecom B.V., Rezidor SAS, Sandvik AB, Skandia Informasjonsteknologi AS and TPG Headoffice BV.

By the looks of it looks like Oracle's surround SAP strategy isn't working as well. Though SAP's new product releases and acquisition might have something to do with it. I believe that a lot of it has been brought on by Oracle themselves. They are not providing current and future customers clarity on the direction that they are going. There are so many directions indicated out there, that I don't think even oracle employees are clear about it. Not sure how much the 100 customer loss is going to hurt Oracle, but if they don't get a clear coherent product strategy /road map out fast there are going to be bigger losses down the line.

Tags: oracle - Hyperion - EPM - CPM - sap - BO

Prashanth Rai

Rationalization - Start with putting the Business First!

In continuation to an earlier post, where I focused on the need for Rationalization in the IT industry, In the next few posts I am going to touch upon some of the aspects / approaches that I believe will bring about the required change. This is a first post in that series.

Today across the whole IT Ecosystem the focus seems to be always about the technology/ code/version/contractors etc, never are the conversations or focus really about the business and its needs /objectives priorities. IT and Business seem to be on two different planets. Business talks about getting newer /better /cost effective services/products delivered to the customer faster while IT Departments are wondering which version of ERP needs to be implemented or should the which vendor to take 3 XXX resources from. And then there are the IT Service providers who spend bulk of the time thinking if they should  be talking about data center consolidation or offshoring a the support desk to reduce cost etc. IT Departments and the service providers do need to think or work / market these initiatives/areas, but they shouldn't forget that these initiatives sometimes (very few times) really make a sizable impact on the bottom line of the company and no impact at all on the topline.

The IT ecosystem needs to get out of the world they are living in and move to the same planet as the business people and start thinking of the business and their objectives as the only priority.

But I think this is easier said then done and lot of things have to fundamentally change in the way IT is organized to make this happen. But nothing is more important than executive commitment. Not the CIO, the CEO and the business leaders will need to be IT savvy so that they can push their organizations in every possible way to leverage IT capabilities to drive competitive advantage in their business, they shouldn't approach IT as help/enabler to just run the business, but a factor that can drive exciting change in the business.

Few companies have very visibly used IT as a competitive differentiator in the way they do business, a oft repeated example is WALMART. But how many other companies have been able to - "Embed IT into the Business Process - Driving differentiation / competitive advantage. Does IT even have this objective on the Radar?

This is a two way street business leaders/teams need to stop looking at IT as a group you go to once the business / processes etc are defined so that IT team can enable with tools to help it to run smoothly. But should involve IT in the phases of strategic planning and idea inception phase itself to make this happen. For their share IT needs to be able get people on board who can participate on this table at this level of discussion, resources who are able to speak the language of business along with the IT relevant TLA's. The focus of this team(Business Technologists) is to work directly with the business team of the company  in the development, prototyping and evaluation of innovative ideas/processes.

This needs to happen at all levels, I cant think of many organizations where the CIO is part of the strategic planning of organization. If the CIO isn't a part of this thinking /creation process - The Organization is not taking advantage IT to deliver value, Its just being looked upon as support service that enables the plans set by the business.

Tags: cio - offshore - outsource - business+technology - rationalization - IT - IT+Department - IT+Services

Prashanth Rai

Image Source: Google Images - CartoonStock

The Chinese Calendar is right - 2008 is the year of "Rat"ionalization

As the New Year effect wears off, I realized that after many plans of putting out predictions for the year to come, I still haven't gotten around to publishing them, but after thinking about it from various points of view, I realized that my strongest prediction was one which was more from a broader view of the "Information Technology" Industry as a whole.

2008 - The of year of IT Rationalization 

The more you think about it , see it , feel it  - the more you feel frustrated at the state of the Information Technology Industry. My frustration is across the board from the fundamental models which are flawed, to irrelevant outputs and abysmal delivery record. At this time this post might begin to sound like a rant , but I think there is more to it.

Though 2008 is already being touted as being the year of recession. And even though it might not be signaling the end of a "boom" period based on previous experience, that is exactly what it is. 2008 will be the year of rationalization - This is the year that the IT industry starts going down the path of being rational. Rationalization in every aspect and in every sense.

Customers (Business users - Yes they are the real customers for this industry) are dissatisfied to the extent that I think there is a prevailing sense that IT projects are irrelevant in the overall scheme of things and are at best only replacement to the paper world that existed in the last century.

I remember in one of the keynotes at the Software 200* Series of Conferences, Ray lane put up an Ad (CA's if I remember right) where the Software Sales person keeps asking the IT Manager how many licenses he wants to buy today , not listening or caring about what the customer is saying or wants or needs. That is true to every part of this industry at this time, just that the question varies, "How many bodies do you want today", "How many lines of code do you want today" , "In how many years do you want the solution" etc etc. Nobody is really focused on what the "business needs" are today. 

Why are things this way? - Well I am sure all of us can hazard a lot of guesses, but that is not important or relevant, What is important is to see/understand how the Information Technology industry as a whole (CIO's, Internal IT Departments, Software Vendors, Consultants, IT Services Vendors etc) is going to respond to this and how the world of business is going to force all these stakeholders towards RATIONALIZATION.

I see some silver linings, I see and strongly believe in the whole on demand / SaaS movement and where its going. Yes there are lot of things that still need to be fixed/ unraveled in this model and its still in its evolutionary path. But there is no doubt in my mind that it is the way of the future. When I think about this model a little more I wonder if the model of SaaS should evolve up a path where we stop looking it as Software(Bulk of Code/functionality/Module) as a Service or Application(Bulk of Code/functionality/Module) as a Service but develop BusinessService / BusinessOperation / BusinessResult As A Service (Sounds crude, but you get the point). And this can be accompanied by a composition environment which allows "MashUp's of of these Business Services" delivering the complete functionality that is required by the User/Customer. The scalability of this model and its applicability for business / mission critical operations might seem questionable and I don't know the answer. But I am rather sure that more than 80% of the operations in an enterprise can be catered to in this approach.

Once we go down this path further , there is another trend converging which is of the way we see the working approach, pattern of the Information worker of the future - Which is more and more Web2.0 based. The Google-Gen are going to be these Information Workers, their primary tools are those that are blocked in most current "CIO" governed environments. But they and their working approach will align well with the whole concept of BusinessService / BusinessOperation/ BusinessResult As A Service.

Explaining the title: As per the Chinese Calendar, 2008 is the year of the "RAT", Hence the play of the words.

Happy New Year to the Chinese, May we live in interesting times.

Prashanth Rai

Technorati Tags: cio - bsaas - boaas - braas - 2008 - rationalization - future - IT - information+technology - it+services - saas - on+demand

Image Credit: 1

Success Imperatives for Business Process & Application Professionals - Forrester

Excerpt from a Forrester blog post:

List of Success Imperatives for Business Process & Application professional's :

1. Become a more business-process-oriented organization
2. Define a strategy and framework for governing all enterprise app decisions
3. Prepare for next-generation packaged applications and architectures
4. Continuously improve customer relationship management processes and technologies
5. Continuously improve supply chain processes and technologies
6. Continuously improve human capital management processes and technologies

5 key trends on Business Process & Application Professionals

1. Dynamic Business Applications;
2. Web 2.0 and tech populism;
3. software-as-a-service (SaaS);
4. business process centers of excellence (COEs);
5. The evolving business analyst role.

Tags: business+process - Application - forrester - cio

Prashanth Rai

Why IT Projects fail

Fellow Enterprise Irregular Michael Krigsman has an interesting post/interview on a study on IT Project Failures, Some key outputs of the study:

• 62% of organizations experienced IT projects that failed to meet their schedules
• 49% suffered from budget overruns
• 47% had higher-than-expected maintenance costs
• 41% failed to deliver the expected business value and ROI
• Business-critical software and services projects are clearly failing to deliver on the business objectives they set out to achieve. They take too long, cost too much and are riddled with defects.
• 1 in 3 companies’ IT projects fail to perform against expectations

Also has an interview with N.Chandrasekaran, Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer of TCS.

Here are my views on some of the reasons why projects fail in my experience (nothing insightful - just points that come to the top of my head)

1. Wrong people / Resources  - E.g Vendors are driven by utilization and other self serving financial metrics rather than looking at the best interest of the project
2. Not committing the best people in the organization (vendor/internal) to work on the project
3. Change Management - Not enough / right effort to manage the change
4. Looking at the IT System as an enabler to the existing process, Instead of fundamentally rethinking the process with technology. Just moving the inefficiency from paper to computer/Internet.
5. Investing in the social system around the IT Project
6. Gang Wars  - Inter Departmental fights - Power plays
7. Lack of alignment or interest of the parties involved (IT Dept, Finance, Purchasing, Vendor - Sales, Vendor - Delivery etc)
8. No clear objective definition , communication & buy in across the stakeholders
9. Adhoc efforts - Not fitting into the larger scheme of things in terms of organization objectives and IT Governance model.

I am sure there are a lot more , What are your thoughts?

Tags: outsourcing - cio - it - information+technology - failure - tcs - ei - enterprise+irregular

Prashanth Rai

SAP Influencer Meet - Day 1 (Live Blogged - Will refine)

VP Global Comm- Don Bulmer

340 industry thought leaders (Bloggers got mentioned)

37 customer and customer organization - Sharing their success storied

32 Partners - Co Innovation

Theme is Business Network Transformation

Introduction to Peter Graph EVP Global Marketing

Boston 5 yrs - 30 influencers

• 2003 - Technology Innovation - Focus on SAP Netweaver - Applications company to a applications company on an open platform
• 2004 - Enterprise SOA Roadmap (We stick to the roadmap) , Concluding the road map with CRM 2007. Delivered - Business Process Platform. Tech Platform with ready to run enterprise services. Delivers on Integrated End to End process, can be deployed in a modular way on the same platform. More than 2000 ES, More than half codified along with partners. Companies will buy into an ecosystem not just a platform
• 2005 Architecting the Industry  - Ecosystem , Million SDN registrations, 2000+ partner solution
• 2006 - First incarnation of the business process platform - MySAP ERP - 5800 productive customers (DVD With Great customer stories). 75% plan on upgrade in mid 2008. Enhancement Packages approach touched up , Non Disruption pattern - Stable Core.

Business Movements & IT Trends

• 1990 - BPR - C/S . ERP
• 2000 - E-Business - Internet Architecture , Ecom
• Today - Business Network Transformation - Enterprise SOA, ,Business process platform

Henning Kaggerman

Goes back to his Sapphire Presentation,

Speed , 4 Driving force

• Deregulation
• Globalization
• Technology
• Commoditization

Move from a product vendor to a solution vendor,

Forced Business to Transform

From built to last , to a Build to adapt network - Opportunity is greater, in the form of sharing.

How can we deliver results as 1 company

• Network Readiness , Ongoing portfolio optimization
• React like one company
• Move from efficiency to agility
• Move from company and control model  to connect and collaborate view
• internal R&D to Co innovation
• Uniformity to Diversity

BNT happens in Developing countries also, Virtual Production Business model of Li-Ning (Book by Henning)

• Book translated to Chinese, to find companies who are doing the innovation.
• Not competing on low cost manufacturing, but by co-innovation
• Connect dealers to production

Business Networks types

Collaborative Network

1. People Centric
2. Communication based
3. Adaptive
4. Actionable Analytics

Co-ordinated Network (Innovation to scale)

1. Efficiency computing
2. Automation
3. Process Innovation

E.g Grainger

Whole Sale distribution market

Customer Service is key differentiator

• Simplify cross business network process from 9 to 3
• Reduce Expensive call center activities by 60% (sourced items)
• Minimize customer wait time.

Demo Retail in Virtual Worlds (SAP Research)

SL / Switzerland - Both connected to retail back end solution

4 Types of Business Network Models

• Collaborative / Coordinated
• Internal / External

IT as an Enabler for Business Network

Business network is required across the different organization sizes - Across the SAP customer segmentation and product portfolio. Products ready to do that.

SOA + BPP - Enabler's of BNT

Stable core and innovation thru - Enhancement Packages - "Implementation was even simpler than a support package" - ThyssenKrupp AG . 100000 Mandays in development of enhancement packages.

Accelerated innovation without risk

• Enterprise SOA by Evolution (Integration, Continuous Innovation,Innovation both from an App Side , Technical side) - Active business process management with SAP NW 7.1 - Netweaver CE. Executed Models, Descriptive Model - Not faster than ABAP, But customer experience was 300% better. Bring cost and performance down by 10.

Composition Example -

• Online Citizen Service City of Hagen 50 Process Template's in an online portal "ready to implement" for other authorities
• Move from common design ,to innovation with Web Dynpro Islands.

Differentiation and breakthrough innovation - At the edge processes without disruption

• E.g Enterprise SOA by Design
• Business By Design - First Enterprise SOA by Design solution
• Model and Services based
• New Modular application deployments
• based on Netweaver 7.1

Coexisting of Evolution and Radical Innovation , Both Netweaver 7.0 and 7.1 exists. This is primarily for large enterprises. For small and medium, size packaged end to end - SAP All in One and SAP business By Design.

New Paradigm - Model based development

External (Transparency and flexibility)

Internally (Industrialized software development)

Better Support for business user

Emerging trends are reshaping the Business Environment

• Demographics - Consumer like expectation, Lean Consumption platform, third party mashups
• Web 2.0
• Nature of Work- Context over information

Task user to Business user.

Demo Ian Kimbell - Business Planning and consolidation - Just plain old Outlooksoft - SAP Logo included.

Transformation of Traditional Apps - E.g HR (optimize talent from service business)

Business User platform - Platform Agonistic , Performance Management,, GRC included.

Business Objects plan - <Slide> BO - 80% tool set

SAPS road map , 2008 -2010

Strategic Direction - More functionality , Open Business process platform, For all sized, Employees in all roles. <Slide>

Fastest adoption in 35 years

Demo of SAP CRM 2007 which was launched today , "The next generation of CRM applications will be deigned to appeal to sales, marketing and customer service professionals." Ed Thompsson Gartner. Some nice UI Capabilities.

Ian Kimbell is having bad demo day. Slow response and got timed out.

Valero Customer - 0.15 % of revenue is IT budget.

Peter Graf is back

Jim Snabe - Corporate officer 

Process Flexibility

Responsible for Business Suite

• New Business Requirements, Flexibility without Chaos , More differentiation, More Collaboration and more visibility
• Business Process Requirements - Standardization, Openness & flexibility , Governance.

SOA not the only answer, not silo'd apps. Need to look at world in horizontal layering.

Innovation for differtiation and Stability / Reliability

3 Steps to move from Silo world to BPP

SAP the Target Architecture - Bring apps closer together, integrated process.

• Build stable business process platform - 5 yr stability
• Enhance to BPP , without disruption - Enhancement package technology
• Innovate on top of a business process platform

1. Step 1: Bringing application together , Each of the 3 letter acronyms to use Netweaver, Harmonize UI. Run seamlessly across the enterprise. Total process integrity across processes.
2. Step 2: Enhancements delivered with out need to upgrade. With out forcing upgrade. Dramatic Reduction of TCO., Selective Upgrade deployments.
3. Step 3: Innovation via Enterprise services maintaining process integrity - External process can leverage the process governance framework in SAP

After 3 yrs of investment ready , Evolutionary path of SOA

1. Acquire - Accumulate Functionality
2. Enable - Business Suite
3. Compose - leverage SOA

Proof Points of Delivering on Road map

1. Adoption - R/# to ERP easier then moving to vita
2. Enhancement pack - 3rd  , Excellent
3. Service Enable BPP, 2000 odd enterprise services, Repository by industry context. (Need to deep dive on this)
4. Compose on top of BPP - differentiate - Are composites the way to go?

Consequences:

Need reduction of costs with increased flexibility

Reposition of the business suite, move from Application centric(Integrate Software) to Value centric(Enable customer stories - Support end to end processes - Back end platform and composition)

Conclusion

1. Process Integrity - Key to SOA Success
2. Business Suite - Offers and incremental approach to SOA
3. Breakthrough interms of process flexibility on top
4. Buying % patter with change from TLA based buying to end to end process.

Need to define Business Suite in Wikipedia.

Peter Zenke

Jokes about over 200 Peters in SAP

Radical Innovation

Slides from 2003 -Enterprise Services Architecture - Delivered in 2003, Business for networked enterprise. Extended Order to Cask process. was the example given. Cant solve with existing technology.

Radical Innovation SAP Business By Design

Looks like the SOA roadmap and business by design development was started at the same time.

Don't need full blown ERP, Need an integrated package with the range of functionality

• Product Innovation
• Services Innovation
• Go to Market Innovation

30 Something deployment units, Deployed independently also.

Megatenancy - Volume deployment - Each tenant at the DB level is different.

Demo of the configuring the business process platform

Highlights community aspect within byDesign

No team required for adapting , reference system / templates available.

Granularity of the deployments units - Currently 30. Cross boundary between deployment units only through messaging.

Another demo on SAP BBD - Functionality is cool , visualization can do with work.

Another Peter from Zenke's team, Focused on development methodology - specifically on BBD

Talks about how they are eating their own dog food by developing BBD based on the pricipals they are now propogating.

Focus on the model based paradigm

Model based development and SOA - BNT, Personal Productivity , Light weight Composition & 3rd party integration.

Demo - Dynamic Processes Control

Zenke is back

Side By Side:

Engineering approach, Design the solution and engineer the implementation.

SAP business Suite side by side with SAP Business by design.

New applications will come into being because of the whole side by side paradigm. - Process Extensions

Klaus Kreplin - In charge of SAP Netweaver Development

One platform aspect - Everything is on one system - Netweaver, Across the market segmentations

One set of knowledge , tools etc

Focuses on the SAP netweaver composition environment - CE

user productivitiy, process transformation, Edge processes and exception managemen  - Use cases for Compositions

Now does the galaxy piece - Business Process Management

Tags: sap - sap+influencer+07 - sapinfluencer07 - keynote

Prashanth Rai