So take a look at my musings on the event here: (if the video doesn’t show up, check here)
SAP is committed to IoT – As SAP stated in a press release earlier in the week (see here), SAP plans to spend over 2B Euro on the next 5 years to build its position in IoT. The move makes a lot of sense as SAP has a strong install base in manufacturing and other IoT relevant industries – and these customers are high price, high quality manufacturers who have to come up with an IoT strategy for the customers of their things. Time is of essence in IoT as it is the only next generation application use case where there is worldwide consensus that it has to run in the cloud. Even cloud skeptical decision makers in Europe are firmly in the cloud camp, given volume, velocity and uncertainty as key characteristics of any IoT implementation.
Trenitalia is an early adopter – The event was held in Italy as Trenitalia is an early customer of SAP’s IoT Package ‘Vehicle Management’, with the plan to manage all of the railway’s rolling stock with SAP. During the event we were riding a FrecciaRossa 1000 train and looking at the digital exhaust of the ‘train thing’ while riding the train. Trenitalia expects to be done implementing SAP IoT by 2018, with all rolling stock being managed with the solution. New best practices in preventative maintenance are getting tangible for Trenitalia, e.g. scheduling maintenance based on usage, wear and tear vs. the usual hours of operations. Trenitalia technicians will also know before a train rolls into the maintenance facility, what they will have to service on the train. Trenitalia CEO Morgante pointed out that the IoT information will help to make the maintenance technician work more diverse and interesting, a worth to note wrinkle in the usual full of concern discussion on the repercussions of technology on the future of workers.
SAP knows it’s a long journey – Despite early adopters like Trenitalia, SAP realizes that IoT is a long game. On the product side it is good to see that SAP has realized that the usual standard application approach cannot be the solution to make customers successful with IoT, but that a combination of pre-packaged capability together with the HANA Cloud Platform (HCP) is needed. Trenitalia was a showcase for the SAP IoT package Vehicle Management. SAP plans to ship general horizontal, vertical (e.g. Smart Cities) and application specific packages (e.g. Vehicle Management). But SAP is not going to build all applications in house, but sees the need of acquisitions – with the acquisition of PLAT.ONE and Fedem. PLAT.ONE brings SAP good horizontal capabilities that will help building IoT solutions on top of HCP, e.g. lifecycle management for IoT devices, broad device connectivity as well as important IoT edge capabilities. Fedem solves a ‘secondary’ IoT problem, related to having models that tell operators how a thing will behave in the real world, with more or less available physical measuring points. The technology around the digital twin that Fedem has developed becomes crucial when IoT adoption rises, especially on new products / things, where industries have little experience how long they last, what exposure to e.g. elements they can withstand and what durability they will have overall. A long term investment that can develop into a crucial differentiator for SAP in a few years.
Equally SAP realizes that with the current Industrie 4.0 (by purpose with the German spelling) conversation is helping the vendor, but needs more amplification. So SAP plans to open IoT labs, in Berlin, Johannesburg, Munich, Palo Alto, Sao Leopoldo and Shanghai. Probably a necessary move to get the word out and educate customers on the possibilities and best practices around IoT.
MyPOV
A very good event, probably the best I have attended in a long time, for sure the best SAP has done (and I have been to a few / attend a lot, maybe too many events). Watching IoT information live, while being a passenger in the train / thing is just. pretty cool. With introductory presentations in Rome, a dual customer and SAP led presentation on the train, interrupted by video messages from CEOs and heads of development / IT, an event in a train museum, a maiden voyage on a train, an agenda lead 50% by the customer, both CEO’s of vendor and launch customer present etc. – all made this a very well executed and impressive event. And SAP’s ambition to invest 2B Euro over the next 5 years in IoT is certainly worth a similar event. SAP is doing many things right in IoT, basing the offerings on its PaaS with HCP, offering packages, acquiring basic, key and differentiating capabilities, and evangelizing the capabilities, these are all the right steps going forward.On the concern side SAP still needs to clarify its BigData in general and it’s Hadoop strategy specifically, acquiring Altiscale (my take here) is a step in the right direction, so was Vora (here my take at GA). But IoT – and all next generation applications need a Hadoop answer that runs on cheap HDD, as well as a supported IaaS platform answer. And while I understand the SAP strategy in regards of IaaS is evolving (partnerships with IBM (see here), Microsoft (see here) and AWS (for BW/4HANA – see here)) – the support for Hadoop on HDD in regards of official platforms support is - overdue. SAP needs to answer both to become a viable partner for IoT, eliminating all ‘big’ question marks enterprises have today. ‘Small’ question marks always remain, but SAP needs to eliminate the big ones to really play in IoT better sooner than later.
In closing SAP CEO McDermott shared on the question on what the audience can do to propel digital transformation (from yours truly), that DaaS – Data as a Service – is something to look at – both an opportunity for customers and for SAP. Good to hear SAP / McDermott mention that and starting to tackle that 4th ‘aaS’ area.
Back to the event, well done by Trenitalia and SAP, very few things that could have done better, congrats to an almost perfect event. As for SAP IoT, lots of good moves, but some key decisions are still missing, have to be made. The good news is - they are not hard and could come sooner than later.
Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below (if it doesn’t show up – check here).
And more on SAP:
- First Take - SAP BW/4HANA - Data Gravity and Cloud win - read here
- Event Report - SAP SuccessFactors SConnect - Push on all fronts - read here
- Event Report - SAP Insider Vienna - HCP, BI and SuccessFactors are the takeaways - read here
- Event Report - SAP Sapphire 2016 - Top 3 Positives & Concerns: SAP changes - probably for the better - read here
- First Take - SAP Sapphire Day #2 Keynote - read here
- News Analysis - SAP and Microsoft usher in new era of partnership to accelerate digital transformation in the cloud - read here
- First Take - SAP Sapphire Bill McDermott Day #1 Keynote - read here
- Event Preview - SAP Sapphire 2016 - What to expect and look for - read here
- News Analysis - Apple & SAP Partner to Revolutionize Work on iPhone & iPad - read here
- Progress Report - SAP SuccessFactors makes good progress - now needs appeal beyond SAP - read here
- News Analysis - SAP HANA Vora now available... - A key milestone for SAP - read here
- Event Report - SAP Ariba Live - Make Procurement Cool Again - read here
- News Analysis - SAP SuccessFactors innovates in Performance Management with continuous feedback powered by 1 to 1s - read here
- Event Report - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Good Progress sprinkled with innovative ideas and challenging the status quo - read here
- News Analysis - WorkForce Software Announces Global Reseller Agreement with SAP - read here
- First Take - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Day #1 Keynote Top 3 Takeaways - read here
- News Analysis - SAP SuccessFactors introduces Next Generation of HCM software - read here
- News Analysis - SAP delivers next release of SAP HANA - SPS 10 - Ready for BigData and IoT - read here
- Event Report - SAP Sapphire - Top 3 Positives and Concerns - read here
- First Take - Bernd Leukert and Steve Singh Day #2 Keynote - read here
- News Analysis - SAP and IBM join forces ... read here
- First Take - SAP Sapphire Bill McDermott Day #1 Keynote - read here
- In Depth - S/4HANA qualities as presented by Plattner - play for play - read here
- First Take - SAP Cloud for Planning - the next spreadsheet killer is off to a good start - read here
- Progress Report - SAP HCM makes progress and consolidates - a lot of moving parts - read here
- First Take - SAP launches S/4HANA - The good, the challenge and the concern - read here
- First Take - SAP's IoT strategy becomes clearer - read here
- SAP appoints a CTO - some musings - read here
- Event Report - SAP's SAPtd - (Finally) more talk on PaaS, good progress and aligning with IBM and Oracle - read here
- News Analysis - SAP and IBM partner for cloud success - good news - read here
- Market Move - SAP strikes again - this time it is Concur and the spend into spend management - read here
- Event Report - SAP SuccessFactors picks up speed - but there remains work to be done - read here
- First Take - SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect - Top 3 Takeaways Day 1 Keynote - read here.
- Event Report - Sapphire - SAP finds its (unique) path to cloud - read here
- What I would like SAP to address this Sapphire - read here
- News Analysis - SAP becomes more about applications - again - read here
- Market Move - SAP acquires Fieldglass - off to the contingent workforce - early move or reaction? Read here.
- SAP's startup program keep rolling – read here.
- Why SAP acquired KXEN? Getting serious about Analytics – read here.
- SAP steamlines organization further – the Danes are leaving – read here.
- Reading between the lines… SAP Q2 Earnings – cloudy with potential structural changes – read here.
- SAP wants to be a technology company, really – read here
- Why SAP acquired hybris software – read here.
- SAP gets serious about the cloud – organizationally – read here.
- Taking stock – what SAP answered and it didn’t answer this Sapphire [2013] – read here.
- Act III & Final Day – A tale of two conference – Sapphire & SuiteWorld13 – read here.
- The middle day – 2 keynotes and press releases – Sapphire & SuiteWorld – read here.
- A tale of 2 keynotes and press releases – Sapphire & SuiteWorld – read here.
- What I would like SAP to address this Sapphire – read here.
- Why 3rd party maintenance is key to SAP’s and Oracle’s success – read here.
- Why SAP acquired Camillion – read here.
- Why SAP acquired SmartOps – read here.
- Next in your mall – SAP and Oracle? Read here
- Event Prieview - SAP TechEd 2015 - read here
- News Analysis - SAP Unveils New Cloud Platform Services and In-Memory Innovation on Hadoop to Accelerate Digital Transformation – A key milestone for SAP read here
- HANA Cloud Platform - Revisited - Improvements ahead and turning into a real PaaS - read here
- News Analysis - SAP commits to CloudFoundry and OpenSource - key steps - but what is the direction? - Read here.
- News Analysis - SAP moves Ariba Spend Visibility to HANA - Interesting first step in a long journey - read here
- Launch Report - When BW 7.4 meets HANA it is like 2 + 2 = 5 - but is 5 enough - read here
- Event Report - BI 2014 and HANA 2014 takeaways - it is all about HANA and Lumira - but is that enough? Read here.
- News Analysis – SAP slices and dices into more Cloud, and of course more HANA – read here.
- SAP gets serious about open source and courts developers – about time – read here.
- My top 3 takeaways from the SAP TechEd keynote – read here.
- SAP discovers elasticity for HANA – kind of – read here.
- Can HANA Cloud be elastic? Tough – read here.
- SAP’s Cloud plans get more cloudy – read here.
- HANA Enterprise Cloud helps SAP discover the cloud (benefits) – read here
Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.
