UPDATED 09:30 EDT / MAY 17 2012

SAP Strives for Unified Experience, Even with Varied Underlying Systems [VIDEO]

In their ongoing coverage of SAP SAPphire at #theCube, John Furrier and Dave Vellante interviewed Dinesh Sharma, VP of SAP Cloud Marketing to discuss the company’s new directions (see full video below).  Sharma explained SAP’s new emphasis on money, people and suppliers, a shift from their earlier focus on integrated application.  The transition is a part of SAP’s aim to allow clients to tailor their own suites for more efficient cloud solutions.

Furrier asked about the implications of Oracle’s 6-year Fusion project for SAP platforms and Success Factors.  Sharma responded: “[SAP] does not want to be religious in terms of platforms…trying to pull everybody on to one platform.”  Sharma referred to Success Factors ability to grow within different technology stacks.  “Even within a number of acquisitions they’ve been able to continue to successfully run them because the customer sees a unified experience…they don’t need to have the underlying platform be exactly the same.”

Having recognized different patterns in software consumption SAP will now provide more loosely coupled suites.  Customers consume software at different paces and cycles within various parts of the organization.  For example, corporate financial may have a much longer time cycle and some of the social areas will be on a faster cycle.  Given these trends SAP will “now provide solutions along a continuum, ranging from collaboration to social.”

Social competencies will play a major role in SAP’s future solutions.  “We’re thinking of social as being embedded in absolutely every application from now on…we won’t be releasing anything that doesn’t have social capabilities from the get go.”

Furrier and Vellante continued their discussion of SAP to focus on the company’s internal structure and new directions in public-private cloud solutions (see the second half of the interview here).

Vellante asked about Employee Central’s core functionality.  Sharma explained that SAP invested significantly in Employee Central to make it more functional for Success Factors: “Employee Central was a Success Factors product when we acquired the company.  What we’ve done is put it into kinda warp speed with the resources that we’re able to bring to bear from SAP.”

Forecasting the look of the cloud 3 to 5 years ahead, Sharma suggested it would be more of a mixture between public and private.  For example, SAP solutions will allow clients to take their own installations and put them into a private cloud.  Applications will not be as one-dimensional, but will give users the versatility to solve problems “at the speed of business, not at the speed of where systems potentially get in the way of business.”  SAP is also working toward a new platform in java, ruby and other application environments.  They predict this expansion will grow their reach to millions more people.

Vellante suggested SAP will have to be strategic in expanding its client base beyond sizable organizations stating: “Nobody thinks about writing a Facbook App on SAP, but your goal has got to be to appeal to those individuals.  And, that is a major challenge for a company that has always focused on its largest customers.”  Going forward, Sharma says SAP will create technology with millennial perspectives, particularly those coming out of college, in mind.


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