The Evolution of Business Software: Focus on the Consumer
At the SAP Tech Ed Live 2015 conference this week, SAP formally unveiled its SAP Digital Boardroom application built on top of the SAP Cloud for Analytics service that is aimed specifically at members of corporate boards. The company is also moving to integrate its SAP Jam community software directly within its hybris e-commerce application portfolio.
SAP also revealed that it has launched an SAP Vehicles Network service through which organizations can leverage data generated by vehicles to access everything from fleet management software to applications that access gas pumps and parking meters via a mobile device.
As part of its shift to the cloud, SAP is clearly zoning in on line-of-business applications that will drive adoption of the SAP HANA platform. At present, SAP claims it now has 1,300 customers using SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA since officially launching the ERP suite on HANA last February.
To further that adoption, SAP is trying to get the senior executives in the organization to appreciate the merits of in-memory analytics applications that will enable them to interactively drill down into various reports in real time. Jayne Landry, senior vice president of solution management for SAP, says that the SAP Digital Boardroom is specifically designed to enable corporate executives to perform what-if analysis on business models.
SAP is also making a concerted effort to drive adoption of the hybris e-commerce platform that SAP is positioning as a backend transaction engine, which can be used to drive revenue via customers with whom the organizations have created a relationship using SAP Jam community software.
The degree to which SAP ultimately succeeds with HANA has a lot to do with the quality of the application experience that it ultimately provides. To that end, SAP is making it clear that the number of application options it intends to provide on HANA will be many and varied.
