Try Out SAP HANA in a Big Data Scenario

Originally posted on SAPHANA.com on October 24, 2013…

Just in time for SAP TechEd, I’m pleased to announce the public beta of the trial cloud for SAP HANA. Our first released scenario is SAP HANA One and Big Data – Processing Wikipedia Data with Hive and Analyzing with SAP HANA and SAP Lumira.

The trial cloud for SAP HANA provides you fast, free access to pre-configured SAP HANA landscapes built for specific use cases. This lets you see how to work with SAP HANA through short tutorial activities.

On Cloud Transformation vs. Disruption

Originally posted on Oct 22, 2013 at SAPHANA.com…

In Silicon Valley, many of the start-ups birthed or relocated here are out to replace incumbent technology companies and disrupt entire industries. Venture capitalists only invest when they think they’ve found those new companies who have the chance to shoot for the moon, even if it’s a big challenge. They mitigate their risk by betting on several companies at the same time.

“Disruption” isn’t the kind of conversation that SAP has with it’s customers. Instead, SAP speaks of “non-disruptive evolution” in terms of lower order change and “business transformation” in the case of higher order change.

Business transformation is a high-value retooling of existing business models allowing companies to realize new opportunities.
[SOURCE] © Elvert Barnes, used according to Creative Commons License

Unveiling A Longer Term Vision for SAP HANA One – New Article in SAP Insider

My latest article for SAP Insider, co-written with my developer colleagues, has just been posted.

“SAP HANA One Illuminates new Possibilities” is a deeper dive into the subject of  my blog “SAP HANA One – SAP HANA in a Light Bulb.”

For those of you already familiar with SAP HANA One, what’s new for you in the article is that we reveal a longer vision for the SAP HANA One bundle:

The Future of SAP HANA in the Cloud

SAP HANA One continues to evolve at a rapid pace, updating at least quarterly to include functionality from new versions of SAP HANA software and datasets. Planned future updates will include SAP HANA support package stack 6, as well as templates and adapters for scenarios that may include:

• MySQL application data connectors
• Elastic turbo-charging of specific SAP ERP business processes
• Public sector-specific applications, such as healthcare fraud detection and education
• Powerful bundled server-side business intelligence tools

Hypocritical Innovators, Making Smartphones Smart, Salesforce Promises to be Green, and SAP HANA Crowns Hadoop

Some Good, Fast Reads From Last Week

Greetings Geek Marketing readers.

The last couple of weeks I have been pouring my heart into developing content for a few new initiatives I’m involved with. This has left me with little time to keep the Geek Marketing blog fresh. However, I’m very much looking forward to sharing some awesome things my various teams are developing.

In the meantime, there are a few blogs I read over the last week that I keep thinking about, so I thought I’d share them with you. No, they aren’t in any particular theme, just some cool stuff.

[SOURCE: © raider of gin, used according to Creative Commons License]

Coming out of my content cave to share some good reads…

For Fun: If IT Products Were Marketed Like Cereal & Offbeat Analogies for IT Cloud Strategy

Found some pictures I made over the last couple of years as social media gags about the IT industry.

If IT products were marketed like cereal:

Where SAP HANA and SAP HANA One Fits Into Modern Application Architecture

Cross posted from my blog at SAP Community Network:

Yesterday Jeffrey Hammond, VP and Principal Analyst with Forrester, posted an excellent blog laying out a vision for modern custom enterprise application architecture.  In his blog, “The Best Way to Develop Mobile Apps? Don’t Develop Mobile Apps!”, Mr. Hammond makes the point that custom application projects shouldn’t just be thinking about an app that fits a mobile device, but take a system engineering approach considering modern technologies and architectural trends such as cloud computing, web services, and big data in addition to mobile device platforms. What I especially like about his blog is his simple explanation of how these fit to create applications with the following characteristics:

• Omnichannel
• Elastic
• API-oriented
• Responsive
• Organic
• Contextual

Modern application architecture based on mobile platforms, cloud computing, big data, and web services – reality or Munchkin Land?

Characteristics That Make SAP HANA Use Cases Suitable for Cloud Deployment

Cross posted from my blog at the SAP Community Network…

So I’ve decided to take an approach that might sound backwards: discussing use cases and opportunities for a certain deployment option of SAP HANA without first looking at business requirements. While I’d never start a business case this way, I think it’s instructive to decompose the technical characteristics of cloud applications, see how they mesh with the characteristics of SAP HANA applications, and relate these to potential requirements of use cases.

 Typical Characteristics of Cloud Applications

Those more familiar with traditional SAP HANA deployments may be less familiar with the world of native cloud applications.The best definition of cloud computing that I’ve seen was created by the National Institute of Standards. Part of this definition of cloud computing is 5 essential characteristics:

• On-demand self-service
• Broad network access
• Resource pooling
• Elasticity
• Measured service

While the service model in which you subscribe to a cloud application may not provide the subscriber of a service all these characteristics, they are inherent in the supporting infrastructure.

[SOURCE: From ASUG 2012 Annual Conference © SAP and Asuret, used with permission]

In Wine Making and Cloud Computing Choose the Right Service Levels To Achieve Your Goals

Cross posted from my blog at the SAP Community Network.

I’m one of the few people in the cloud marketing team at SAP who’s been involved in supporting nearly all categories of SAP’s cloud offerings in the last couple of years: from virtualization and public cloud support to the software service offerings to our platform service offerings. These different offerings can help you migrate your on premise SAP software into cloud environments, deliver configured software as a service via the web, and develop and deliver custom software in the cloud. Which you might choose boils down to whether you want to retrofit what you have, take new capabilities via the Web, or need to build your own solution. I’ve commented on these as components of a cloud program extensively in my blog series “Turning Cloudy Chaos into an IT Strategy – Part I.”  Part II, and Part III. For an excellent discussion of IT as a Service, see SAP Mentor Sina Moatamed’s blog “The Era of Demand Supply IT Begins”.

If Wine Making Were Like IT

If you read my recent Blog It Forward blog, you’ll know that I’m an amateur wine maker. I’m also a user of Wine making as a Service (WMaaS) offerings.  Ok, that sounds really geeky, but I do find an analogy in how I engage in my hobby and how customers use the various cloud services I’m in charge of marketing at SAP  – we marketing people think in analogies all the time.

When I first started wine making I did it in house. In the analogy, this would be the equivalent to writing my own software and deploying it to servers I manage in a server room. I literally implemented my own winery in my garage with hardware I purchased and leased – fermented the grapes in a primary fermenter, pressed them, racked the wine into 5 gallon glass storage containers, and let them bulk age in storage in my garage until it was time to bottle some number of months later.

My former garage winery – table is the winery lab, to the right are 5 gallon glass jars of chardonnay and petite syrah in bulk aging.  [Source – © Greg Chase, under creative commons license, use w/ attribution]