Notably outspoken tech visionary and SAP SE co-founder Hasso Plattner gave his thoughts on a wide range of subjects during the third-day keynote at SAP’s Sapphire Now conference Orlando, Florida. He encouraged SAP to get into the cloud as quickly as possible and discussed why machine learning is exploding right now.

“Look out into the future. How do we build modern apps that have intelligence, with basically unlimited resources? And how does that change the way that we go forward?” said Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick) (pictured, left), discussing Plattner’s approach during the keynote.

Frick and George Gilbert (@ggilbert41) (pictured, right), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, discussed Plattner’s keynote insights, the history behind many of SAP’s business decisions and why machine learning can be challenging for organizations. (* Disclosure below.)

Machine learning for enterprises

Machine learning is exploding right now thanks to current memory capabilities to store data and make it available for later processing, Plattner stated in his keynote. While Plattner showed a rich roadmap for SAP moving forward, he was puzzled that they weren’t further along with the technology, Gilbert noted.

Enterprise application vendors have found machine learning challenging for two primary reasons, Gilbert stated. First, on the technical side, machine learning is different from traditional analytics, which was essentially Online Analytical Processing, providing backward-looking business intelligence. Machine learning, on the other hand, is forward-looking predictive analytics.

The second challenge is that machine learning is a different sell to enterprises. For business intelligence, it’s basically selling reporting on what happened to department heads or function leaders to increase efficiency within organizations, Gilbert explained.

“Whereas when you’re selling predictive capabilities, you’re not selling efficiency, you’re selling transformational outcomes,” he said.

During the keynote, Plattner also revealed his thoughts on Tesla cars, why information technology is like a hockey game, modern software design and why all manuals should be thrown away.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of SAP Sapphire Now. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for SAP Sapphire Now. Neither SAP nor other sponsors have editorial influence on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE