SAP's major US developer and technology conference, TechEd, kicks off this week in Las Vegas, featuring keynotes from platform solutions president Steve Lucas and Bernd Leukert, global head of products.
As Constellation Research analyst Doug Henschen notes in his own preview of the event, major announcements are expected to include a new Cloud for Analytics service as well as an update on the new S/4HANA application suite.
While the keynote material will be the subject of much attention and analysis, TechEd's massive session agenda provides greater immediacy and interest for customers and partners. While I won't be at this year's event, I dug through the catalog and highlighted some sessions I'd make a point to attend if I were.
SAP's Own Journey to S/4HANA
Dogfooding is a time-honored tradition among software vendors, and SAP doesn't depart from it. On Tuesday, SAP will present a session that describes its move to the Business Suite on HANA and planned migration to S/4HANA:
Explore the international adoption road map for the implementation and learn best practices involved in setting up the project. We talk about insights gained from performance testing and look at how SAP runs its ERP system on S/4HANA. We'll go over our project plan to implement S/4HANA OP1503 SAP internally; we’ll look at the steps needed to ensure a successful migration.
POV: Given the scope of SAP's project and the stakes involved in its success, any customer exploring a move to S/4HANA should get value out of this session.
Cloud Foundry and HANA Cloud Platform: The Convergence
From the session abstract:
SAP plans to integrate the open runtime platform Cloud Foundry, the industry standard for open platform-as-a-service (PaaS), into SAP HANA Cloud Platform. In this session we explore the impact of this evolution, the capabilities that Cloud Foundry adds to the SAP PaaS (such as multi-runtime support and community services) and a preliminary road map.
POV: While SAP wants customers to adopt HANA Cloud Platform as an extensibility and integration framework, Cloud Foundry has emerged as an industry leader in PaaS. The details of how the two platforms will work together are crucial.
SAP Cloud Integration: What's In the Works
Customers will get an update on SAP's cloud integration plans on Tuesday, as the session abstract describes:
Many organizations have invested years and money to connect their on-premises landscapes. They expect continuity and nondisruption as they anticipate and adopt cloud innovation from SAP. This session outlines our strategy for cloud integration and provides a current status of our cloud integration portfolio with a focus on SAP HANA Cloud Integration technology.
POV: Most SAP customers will end up with hybrid environments versus a full-blown move to the cloud, making it crucial for SAP to provide robust prebuilt integrations as well as integration tools.
SAP UI Technology Roadmaps: Seeking Clarity
There are many scheduled TechEd sessions on Fiori, the cross-platform user experience technology SAP is using for all new product development.
While seemingly off to a decent start with the customer base, Fiori remains in its infancy and the fact is that SAP has a sizable collection of older UI technologies in wide use among the customer base. One session promises to give customers clarity into their future:
Learn more about the road map of SAP's most important UI technologies and clients. Get to know their key characteristics, current capabilities, and features, and what to expect for the future. Examples of topics to be covered include: SAPUI5, SAP Web IDE, floorplan manager (Web Dynpro for ABAP), SAP NetWeaver Business Client, SAP Fiori launchpad, and SAP Enterprise Portal.
POV: After pushback from user groups, SAP made Fiori inclusive with maintenance payments, reducing the financial cost of implementing it. Still, it will be years before most customers are able to retire older UIs in favor of Fiori—assuming they even want to—so the information delivered here is of significant importance.
