Biztel, MyTel, and the Silver Bullet with a Woman’s Name

Why Everyone Should Care about SAP’s Newest Technologies

Over the past three years, just as SAP appeared destined to become The Boring Old Man of the applications solutions industry, it has introduced three elements that have breathed life, youth, and new interest into its eco-system: Biztel (Business Objects/business intelligence), MyTel (mobile applications) and a silver bullet with a woman’s name that speeds up the whole process. While all three of these elements represent a fine champagne for technology-minded industry analysts, I am not a technologist and yet am enamored all the same. Taking the elements one by one…

BizTel


The leaps-and-bounds evolution of business intelligence in the SAP installed base since their Business Objects acquisition has recently made me remember a pair of opposing anecdotes about executive reporting.

Anecdote 1: Constant Craving


Some years ago, I had a client who was obsessed with getting all the intelligence imaginable. At one point, frustrated with his insistence upon obtaining levels of business intelligence that his software could not provide, I told him he would have to be patient “but give me a few years and we’ll install telepathic communications.” He was taken aback and I think, for at least a few seconds, he utterly believed me. And was charmed.

Anecdote 2: The Fig Leaf

Many years earlier, when I was a CIO, our Chief Commerce Officer defined a core sales report that he had to have delivered to his desk every morning. “Without that information, I can’t do my job.” For a few weeks, I delivered the report myself and laid it perfectly on the corner of his desk. One day I forgot but did not receive a call. The next I purposefully did not deliver it. Another day, and another. After about nine working days, I found myself in the CCO’s office listening to him describe other reporting requirements. As he did so, his gaze wandered to the corner of his desk. “And I didn’t get my core report today.”

“It’s been nine days,” I told him, “that you haven’t been able to do your job.”

If I had to choose between these two men as to which I would prefer as a client, it would be the one who believed, if only for a few seconds, that in time he would have telepathic processing. I believe he would know what to do with it while my former CCO colleague would not.

At one end of the spectrum is the executive who craves intelligence for all the right reasons; at the other end of the spectrum is the executive who uses a lack of information as a fig leaf. I’ve been at this for thirty-six years and am highly aware that the Cravers have too seldom been satisfied.

With Business Objects, however, we are seeing what is around the once elusive corner.

For those who are wondering just what has changed in the SAP market, I offer these simple observations:

SAP’s Business Warehouse was vastly inferior to Business Objects, not only in its “biztel” capabilities but also in terms of the “lead-up” utilities by which clients can enable business intelligence (data selection, cleansing, and organization or “cubing”).

By virtue of the fact that SAP had actually made a major acquisition, its senior management was hugely focused on justifying the investment and thus went all out to evangelize Business Objects and to incorporate the technology into mainstream SAP. (Note: until recent years, SAP was not an acquirer. Instead, they created various partnering lines, most of which have proven to be highly successful.)

Business intelligence is a slam dunk complement to SAP business process enablement.

Business disappointment in IT efficacy has led to a wave of business intelligence consulting contracted directly by business clients bypassing their own IT. Another example of constant craving.

In sum, I am observing for the first time a turn towards client numeracy (“a 20% rise in near-term pipeline will probably overcome our 12% drop in last month’s sales) as opposed to client literacy (“our sales results suck”). This twist in the marketplace is helping to reposition SAP as a business solutions asset rather than simply another applications platform.

MyTel


INTERIOR – Executive Suite Atop a Skyscraper - Noon

A Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning sits behind a huge desk and addresses the Admin Assistant who has clearly been summoned.

SVP (to his admin assistant): Bring me the updated sales report.

Admin Assistant: You already have it.

SVP: No, I don’t.

Admin Assistant: Yes, you do.

SVP (looking around his office): I don’t see it anywhere.

Admin Assistant: On your iPhone.

SVP (slapping his forehead): Ah, quite right.

The SVP punches the face his iPhone. CLOSE UP on iPhone to reveal a three-dimensional pie-chart of day sales by geographic region.

As skeptical as I can often be, I admit to the belief that the deployment of mobile applications resulting in the remote delivery of intelligence to a hand-held personal device is an ultimate step in information and business technology. Consider this: that quarter century ago, instead of putting a printer paper listing onto my Chief Commerce Officer’s desk each morning, I can now spend that time seeking new graphics expressions of business intelligence for him (like switching regional sales from a three dimensional dynamic pie chart to a “what if” enabled sliding bar).

Beyond the fact that mobile applications can be delivered to various personal display devices is the socio-psychological barrier that has been broken. Consider the evolution of business reporting over the past forty years:

• Printouts (black ink on green & white sprocketed paper)
• Printouts (black ink on white paper without sprockets)
• Black and white (or green on black) cathode ray tube display (numbers and figures only)
• Four color cathode ray tube display including basic graphics (bar charts, pie charts, et al)
• Laptop screen 3-D color graphic dashboards

While I am using the term MyTel for what is actually “SAP Anywhere”, I am told that the use of tablets is driving mobility even more than phones due to increased “real estate”. Prior to tablets and smart phones, none of the report delivery methods ever became the object of envy. (“Hey, Ricky! Check out this great printout!”) However, both smart phones and tablets are in and of themselves hot subjects across all business spectra. Thus, the addition of “cool” technology like business intelligence can inspire envy and thus slip credibly under the heading of “viral”. When intelligence goes viral, evolution follows.

The Silver Bullet with a Woman’s Name

Viral does not stand in line. Viral does not take a message. If what you seek does not appear on your screen within seconds, you may well start seeking something else. Thus, SAP has added the silver bullet named HANA to assure that when you flip to your tablet to check out sales activity, you have only to tap a few times and results will arrive, in shapes and in colors, within seconds. Understanding the depth and density of data required to compose those shapes and colors will give you a great appreciation of la belle dame known as HANA.

HANA is an in-memory computing engine that is vastly accelerated. While accelerated computing speed can benefit many aspects of an SAP installation, I am here interested in what it can do for business intelligence.

SAP claims that it has implemented a real-world scenario on SAP HANA that demonstrates the ability to perform arbitrarily complex queries on over 450 billion records in a matter of seconds.

They Said It Was Their Strategy. They All Say That. But This Time I Believe Them. And I Refuse to Blush.


It is difficult to impress hardened industry analysts and most of us have been all over these developments for months now with questions that begin with “If that’s true…” and “If it really works…” In addition to my own queries, I have followed those of another half dozen analysts with more technology background than I possess. My angle is business oriented and I am sometimes at odds with those analysts. Not this time. As a result of my continuing assessments since last year’s SAPPHIRE, my resistance has finally melted and I can now buy into the vision without feeling like a vendor troll.

Back when SAP acquired Business Objects, were they aware of how attractive mobile applications would become if they were delivering business intelligence? Apparently yes. Did this awareness lead to a recognition that for business intelligence to work satisfactorily they might need an in-memory accelerator? Again, it appears that the answer is yes.

Thus, this suite of new elements appears to be the fruit of execution launched by strategy that was inspired by a vision. Such a trifecta has not happened for SAP since the announcement of three-tier client server technology in late 1992. And we all know what happened shortly thereafter.

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Regular readers of this blog will, I'm sure, be surprised to read a posting like this one, but hey, there's more.
Join me and experts from the SAP Consulting organization for a webcast series covering these topics, “Make the Most of Your SAP Solutions: A Roadmap for Enabling SAP Innovations”, click here for more information and to register for the three webcasts .
http://fm.sap.com/images/WhiteRhino/innovations_series_0511/HTML_pages/lp.html?SOURCEID=Blog ).

We kick off 5-31-11 with a webcast focused on BI, address HANA and In-memory computing on 6-14-11, and close out the series with a look at mobile SAP solutions on 6-28-11.