What’s the status of SAP SE’s key cloud initiatives, including enterprise resource planning, Hana and machine learning?

SAP Sapphire Now, which starts today in Orlando, Florida, will shed some light on these three major development initiatives that the German software maker has been focused on for the past 10-15 years. SiliconANGLE will be covering the SAP Sapphire Now event with live, exclusive commentary and interviews from our studio news desk, theCUBE.

The most significant news to look for at SAP Sapphire Now is any concrete evidence relating to how far and quickly the company is building its Enterprise Resource Planning, according to George Gilbert, big data analyst at Wikibon Research (Wikibon is owned by the same parent company as SiliconANGLE). “They worked on one for 10 years and finally flushed it down the toilet after they realized it wasn’t working. That was extremely significant because that put them 10 years behind competitors in cloud conversion. In the last couple years, they’ve started over. Yet to rebuild an application the size of a full ERP system, especially one for sophisticated enterprises, is a multi-year journey,” Gilbert said.

S/4Hana is another of the initiatives that the company has dedicated a lot of its time to. A challenge facing the company, however, is scalability, Gilbert stated. SAP released a major update to its S/4Hana Cloud product earlier this year. New features include project management capabilities, machine intelligence and SAP CoPilot, a digital assistant that’s similar to Apple Inc.’s Siri.

SAP reported strong progress for its in-memory database, Hana, in its first quarter financial results, with the addition of 400 new Hanacustomers, bringing the total to 5,800.

Another key focus for SAP is machine learning. Last month, the company announced SAP Fieldglass Live Insights, a new machine learning-powered, data-driven insights service. The service will make it possible for organizations to benchmark, plan, predict and simulate external talent scenarios.

In March, SAP launched the SAP.iO Fund, a $35 million fund and SAP.iO Foundry program that will assist startups to get off the ground. While the program and fund are open to any startup with innovative ideas to build out SAP’s ecosystem, SAP officials added that they are particularly interested in those that use “frontier technologies,” such as blockchain and machine learning.

At SAP Sapphire Now, theCUBE will explore how far down the line the company is with incorporating machine learning into its product lineup.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

There are various ways to watch all of theCUBE interviews that will be taking place at SAP Sapphire Now, including SiliconANGLE TV and YouTube. You can also get all the coverage from the event on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE’s coverage starts today at 12:00 p.m. till 8:30 p.m. EDT.

SiliconANGLE TV

You can watch all of theCUBE’s exclusive interviews and commentary from SAP Sapphire Now on the dedicated SiliconANGLE TV page.

Watch on the SiliconANGLE YouTube channel

All of theCUBE interviews from SAP Sapphire Now, which runs until May 18, will also be loaded onto SiliconANGLE’s dedicated YouTube channel.

Cubecasts

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on both SoundCloud and iTunes, which you can enjoy while on the go.

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE at this year’s Sapphire Now event, include various SAP executives Dan Lahl, vice president of product marketing; Emily Mui, senior director of product marketing, Hana Cloud Platform; Michael Hill, director of product marketing, Hana Cloud Platform; Floyd Strimling, global vice president, PaaS, SAP Cloud Platform; Scott Harrison, senior director America’s ISV and digital commerce business; and Sanjay Kulkarni, global head of Hana enterprise cloud architect and advisory.

Watch live coverage of SAP Sapphire Now

You can watch live coverage of the keynote presentations on the official SAP Sapphire Now event site, as well as on theCUBE.

Bill McDermott, chief executive officer of SAP, and Bernd Leukert, a member of the executive board and products and innovation at SAP, will present on Tuesday, May 16 at 9-10:30 a.m. EDT.

Bert and John Jacobs, co-founders of Life is Good Inc.; Rachel Dratch, comedian and actress; and ASUG executives Geoff Scott, chief executive officer, and Keith Sturgill, chairperson, will present on Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. EDT.

Hasso Plattner, chairman of the supervisory board of SAP, will present on Wednesday at 9:00 a.m. EDT.

(* Disclosure: Some segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE are sponsored. Sponsors have no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Image: Sapphire Now