A few days ago SAP formally launched its newest offering, its BW product as BW/4HANA. No surprised on HANA, as it dominates branding with SAP these days, the 4HANA suggests a sister relationship to the OLTP / ERP S/4HANA.
So catch the video of the key areas to watch:
No time to watch here is the one slide summary:
Want more detail, then read on:
Data Gravity Wins – The concept of data gravity, that more data will attract and almost like a black hole ‘suck’ in lesser data has been talked, written about a lot (see my March 8th 2013 post on this here). The question of course was – when will land mark products and vendors account for this shift. With the launch of BW/4HANA SAP – maybe unwillingly – caters to data gravity. As enterprises are building next generation applications that they can only scale in the cloud, the need to complement that information with key data and processes from its other enterprise systems. With offering BW/4HANA SAP basically offers all SAP ERP information as available for enterprises who want to build these next generation applications.
Cloud Wins – While SAP both offers BW/4HANA on its venerable HEC (HANA Enterprise Cloud) and AWS, it is pretty clear that the AWS platform is the winner. With X1 instances of up to 15 TB of RAM, AWS has provided a platform for SAP customers that cannot only run the largest BW/4HANA deployments, but also S/4HANA – should customers realize the size of these platforms. To procure and operate similar machines on premises (and also on HEC as I think) is not cost effective, especially in the days of early deployments.
SAP goes multi-platform – SAP has been signing IaaS partnerships now for close to a year, starting with IBM (read here), then Microsoft Azure (read here) and now Amazon’s AWS. It is a sign of SAP not pushing that much its own cloud infrastructure but starting to leverage partners. We may see a comeback of the former database choices, but this time for IaaS. A good move by SAP as it needs to support multiple public cloud infrastructures… likely AWS at this point was the only IaaS partner to allow a BW/4HANA deploy at this scale.
And a major win for AWS, getting more of the SAP load, though starting with a new offering with BW/4HANA. But AWS is in there for the long run, and if things work out as I think they will work out – the data gravity of the next generation applications has already ‘sucked in’ the enterprise data warehouse… nothing holding back the transactional system. SAP makes it easy – as they all run on HANA, the same / similar platform.
For SAP customers this means another proof point that, if they want to remain a SAP customer, they need to adopt HANA. No surprise, we have seen data points before, but by now it is clear there will be no course reversal in the HANA destination. And it also means to make platform decisions for next generation applications first, the rest – the data warehouse and the transactional systems will follow suite. When SAP as largest enterprises vendor does it this way, there is little room to do it differently as an enterprise. Closer to IaaS it means likely that HEC is not a final destination to run SAP applications, with manifold implications.
So congrats to SAP to honor data gravity and ship a large scale product in V1 on a public IaaS, congrats to AWS to snatch some load with massive long term potential. Stay tuned.
Cloud Wins – While SAP both offers BW/4HANA on its venerable HEC (HANA Enterprise Cloud) and AWS, it is pretty clear that the AWS platform is the winner. With X1 instances of up to 15 TB of RAM, AWS has provided a platform for SAP customers that cannot only run the largest BW/4HANA deployments, but also S/4HANA – should customers realize the size of these platforms. To procure and operate similar machines on premises (and also on HEC as I think) is not cost effective, especially in the days of early deployments.
SAP goes multi-platform – SAP has been signing IaaS partnerships now for close to a year, starting with IBM (read here), then Microsoft Azure (read here) and now Amazon’s AWS. It is a sign of SAP not pushing that much its own cloud infrastructure but starting to leverage partners. We may see a comeback of the former database choices, but this time for IaaS. A good move by SAP as it needs to support multiple public cloud infrastructures… likely AWS at this point was the only IaaS partner to allow a BW/4HANA deploy at this scale.
MyPOV
A good move by SAP, that may not even realize what it has done: Move customers to the public cloud with an offering, where they cannot even argue why it should not be there. SAP customers with next generation applications will want their business context and data next to their next generation applications data, to enable the necessary new business processes. SAP has the opportunity to provide more micro services on top of that and monetize them. And I would not be surprised to see customers follow with S/4HANA into the public cloud – once all their BW data is there, why hold back on the transactional system? And: It does not make sense for companies to buy, operate and maintain 15 TB in memory machines, when they can get them in 7 locations from AWS on demand – right away, with SAP support. Why buy, implement and carry the risk of installing and operating BW/4HANA right.And a major win for AWS, getting more of the SAP load, though starting with a new offering with BW/4HANA. But AWS is in there for the long run, and if things work out as I think they will work out – the data gravity of the next generation applications has already ‘sucked in’ the enterprise data warehouse… nothing holding back the transactional system. SAP makes it easy – as they all run on HANA, the same / similar platform.
For SAP customers this means another proof point that, if they want to remain a SAP customer, they need to adopt HANA. No surprise, we have seen data points before, but by now it is clear there will be no course reversal in the HANA destination. And it also means to make platform decisions for next generation applications first, the rest – the data warehouse and the transactional systems will follow suite. When SAP as largest enterprises vendor does it this way, there is little room to do it differently as an enterprise. Closer to IaaS it means likely that HEC is not a final destination to run SAP applications, with manifold implications.
So congrats to SAP to honor data gravity and ship a large scale product in V1 on a public IaaS, congrats to AWS to snatch some load with massive long term potential. Stay tuned.
And more on SAP (more on AWS below): And more about SAP technology:
- 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
More on AWS:
- Event report - AWS Enterprise Summit 2016 Frankfurt - The German Road to Cloud adoption is ... long - read here
- News Analysis - Amazon Web Services Cloud now speaks… Hindi - Indian AWS Data Centers available - read here
- News Analysis - Salesforce selects AWS as preferred Public Cloud Infrastructure Provider - Good move - read here
- Event Report - AWS re-Invent - AWS lobbies for the enterprise - DB and IoT are the cheese - read here
- First Take - AWS reInvent Wednesday Keynote - Good start & AWS is going for the enterprise read here
- Event Preview - AWS re-Invent 2015 - watch / read here
- Event Report - AWS Summit Berlin - AWS spricht Deutsch - but when will the Germans speak cloud? Read here
- News Analysis - AWS learns Hindi - Amazon Web Services announces 2016 India Expansion - read here
- Event Report - AWS Summit San Francisco - AWS pushes the platform with Analytics and Storage [From the Fences] read here
- Event Report - AWS re:invent - AWS becomes more about PaaS on inhouse IP - read here
- AWS gives infrastructure insights - and it is very passionate about it - read here
- News Analysis - AWS spricht Deutsch - the cloud wars reach Germany - read here
- Market Move - Infor runs CloudSuite on AWS - Inflection Point or hot air balloon? Read here
- Event Report - AWS Summit in SFO - AWS keeps doing what has been working in the last 8 years - read here
- AWS moves the yardstick - Day 2 reinvent takeaways - read here.
- AWS powers on, into new markets - Day 1 reinvent takeaways - read here.
- The Cloud is growing up - three signs in the News - read here.
- Amazon AWS powers on - read here.
Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.
