SAP CEO jim mcdermott kicked-off the 30 th annual SAP customer conference with his usual football pep rally keynote on how SAP is winning in customer needs for the ‘ best run businesses’.Define cognitive learning theory hasso plattner, chairperson of the SAP supervisory board delivered his usual keynote, and by the view of this editor, the contrasts could not be starker.Define cognitive learning theory

The bulk of the opening keynote outlined yet another set of promises. They included committing to deliver native integration of data across all SAP cloud technology stacks ( ariba, fieldglass, concur, success factors) by the end of this year, that nearly all existing business applications will be migrated to the SAP public cloud platform.Define cognitive learning theory further, the qualtrics acquisition promises to integrate operational and customer experience focused data with significant potential for SAP and existing qualtrics customers.Define cognitive learning theory

Sharing the opening keynote was ryan smith, co-founder and CEO of qualtrics. Smith defined for the audience what experience data actually consists of, namely customer, product, employee and brand related data, buyer sentiments and actions.Define cognitive learning theory he characterized the SAP partnership as the opportunity to now leverage experience data with SAP’s business operational data, which has been a 16-year objective.Define cognitive learning theory if readers have not assessed by now, the target buyers for qualtrics are sales, marketing and product management teams, and represents a market space which SAP believes is much broader and more lucrative than ERP.Define cognitive learning theory

One noted highlight of the opening keynote was the unannounced appearance of apple CEO tim cook and pitched his company’s strategic collaboration with SAP on artificial intelligence (AI), machine-learning and augmented reality technology leveraging the apple ipad as the preferred mobile device.Define cognitive learning theory SAP CEO mcdermott indicated to the audience that his company would be doubling down on that apple partnership to include expanding ios support on the SAP ariba platform and ios and apple mac support for SAP cloud applications.Define cognitive learning theory

He once again schooled the sapphire audience on the latest technical changes being made to the HANA database and that most SAP customers can run the database from DRAM resident memory as opposed to database calls.Define cognitive learning theory A revised strategy calls for portioning data by date relevancy, with older data archived on disk and most current data in persistent memory without the need for pre-aggregation.Define cognitive learning theory he further declared that: “ HANA is too good a database to confine to ERP systems.”

A totally new application, SAP HANA cloud services was announced, complete with an on-stage demonstration.Define cognitive learning theory introduced was gerrit simon kazmaier, newly appointed senior vice president of HANA and analytics. The application is still in beta, seeking additional customers, and thus not of general release.Define cognitive learning theory no doubt, the announcement was pushed for sapphire audience consumption, but similar to the SAP S4 HANA application suite announcement several years ago, pre-announced without a lot of substance.Define cognitive learning theory

Plattner provided his usual refreshing candor with SAP audiences, admitting that his initial expectations for HANA maturity took two years longer.Define cognitive learning theory he acknowledged that initial implementations of S4 HANA applications were challenging for customers, and that data configuration is extremely important.Define cognitive learning theory he then explained that one of the reasons that SAP is now pivoting toward the strategy that all customers should migrate their SAP instances to the public cloud is to provide better management and tuning of HANA by SAP engineers, as opposed to customers or system integrators.Define cognitive learning theory he further acknowledged that SAP is in the process of revisiting its technical development leadership structure to reflect new faces.

We call reader attention to our prior blog commentary reflecting on SAP’s recent Q1-2019 financial performance.Define cognitive learning theory we noted the declaration of ambition 2023, a rather aggressive effort defined as tripling cloud subscription and support revenues and growing total revenues to more than € 36 billion, with gross margins upwards of 78 percent.Define cognitive learning theory further declared was the stated goal of a dividend payout ratio of 40 percent or more of the prior year’s profit after tax.

We highlight the above for readers because it helps to explain SAP’s aggressive goal to move the bulk of the company’s on-premise customers to the cloud on an accelerated timeline.Define cognitive learning theory add the indicators from hasso plattner that SAP seeks to better control and optimize HANA performance by leveraging the cloud maintenance update model, and the admission that SAP S4 HANA upgrades remain challenging for customers, including a shortage of qualified consultants.Define cognitive learning theory

Regarding the new presence of activist investor elliott management, there was little elaboration. McDermott indicated in his news briefing that the relationship with the activist has been very collegial, that SAP represents the best investment in the software market.Define cognitive learning theory when asked by a german media reporter, hasso plattner indicated no formal contact with elliott thus far, but acknowledged shareholder feedback on improving the company’s profitability.Define cognitive learning theory

As indicated in a prior SAP focused commentary, for the existing customer base, this year’s sapphire set the stage for the next significant inflection point of the company, the stated fourth major systems development cycle.Define cognitive learning theory we strongly suspect that indeed, customers have pointed questions and feedback, either pro or con in nature. This will especially concern SAP’s manufacturing and supply chain management customer groupings.Define cognitive learning theory

From our lens, SAP’s former strategy of growing cloud via major acquisitions must now come to grips with the needs for more aggressively moving on-premise customers to the public cloud.Define cognitive learning theory this will likely lead to rather active customer boardroom discussion and decisions in the months to come, and a heightened escalation of competition in the cloud technology arena, including supply chain management.Define cognitive learning theory