Business software maker SAP has embarked on several ventures to strengthen its cloud and big data portfolio, and the company is pushing through with this approach.  Alongside a couple of new developments in recent weeks, SAP has appointed Michael Naimoli as the new head of its Life Sciences Industry Business Unit.  Naimoli is anything but new to the healthcare industry, bringing 20 years of experience working in the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industries.

“As SAP continues to expand its portfolio of innovative solutions for the life sciences industry, Naimoli will help drive the company’s leadership efforts in providing strategic software solutions to life sciences organizations around the world. He will report to John Papandrea, senior vice president and global head of Health Sciences, SAP AG.”

Healthcare is one of the areas that SAP is targeting with its new public analytics offering, developed in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund.  In a joint announcement the two unveiled a couple of ‘interactive population dashboards’ that aggregate population data and allow users to observe “the impact of population increases on key areas.”  This data can be accessed from the web at  www.7billionactions.org by individuals users, although the dashboards are also designed to help organizations around the world gauge key data trends in specific regions.

SAP is focusing on a different type of trend as well. A recent study by the company reveals that 80 percent of the organizations in its UK & Ireland-based customers predict their SAP deployments will stretch beyond on-premise infrastructure, compared to only 19 percent a year earlier.

In many ways, SAP is looking to bundle up its relevant trends in as many ways as possible. The company showcased BusinessObjects Business Intelligence OnDemand during TechEd 2011, an as-a-service version of the SAP HANA in-memory data analytics appliance.