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

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:

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]

How Platform-as-a-Service Turns Business Ideas into Business Innovation

My latest article for download: How Platform-as-a-Service Turns Business Ideas into Business Innovation

Or see in the online version of SAP Insider.

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]

Interesting Feedback from SAP Customers About Hybrid Cloud in Recent Webinar

Cross posted from my blog at SAP Community Network…

Yesterday I had the pleasure to speak at an SAP webinar covering IT strategy for cloud computing and how customers are evolving a hybrid approach. This is a topic I’ve been working on since SAPPHIRE NOW Orlando this May, and I am gratified to find there is still a lot of interest in the subject. Since you can watch the recording of the webinar yourself I won’t repeat too much here.  However, the attendees were very generous with their participation by asking several good questions and sharing their opinions in two interesting polls.

Adoption of Cloud Computing

In the first poll we asked attendees a multiple answer question about which ways their company has adopted cloud computing. As a result, some responders answered in more than one category, so each answer is a % of total respondents clicking that category, and percentages to the question will add up to more than 100%. To my surprise almost 30% of respondents said their company is not leveraging cloud computing. That seems very high for me, even for the most conservative SAP customers. I suspect if the IT department did an audit of the different systems their lines of business used, they’d find at least a few software services – and this doesn’t include services brought in virally by employees on their own. Also interesting is that 15% of attendees reported that they are already supporting their developers through a platform as a service. This isn’t far off from a recent IBM survey that finds 16% of their respondents use PaaS and see strategic potential, while an additional 33% use PaaS incidentally. Not included in either poll is any indication as to what each respondent considers to be the definition of “platform as a service.”

Adding on New Capabilities with SaaS – Part III of Turning Cloudy Chaos into an IT Strategy

Cross posted from my blog at the SAP Community Network…

This blog continues the discussion started in Part I of Turning Cloudy Chaos into an IT Strategy and Part II – Retreading Existing Systems to Leverage Cloud Technology.  In this blog we examine how Software as a Service fits into a hybrid IT Strategy for cloud computing.

If your company has extensive investments in on premise ERP such as SAP Business Suite, then pursuing an add-on approach with Software as a Service can be an agile way for your company’s departments to roll out new systems of engagement to users. Such a strategy should consider the business needs being solved in relation to other needs within the company such as information management and integration of business processes.

Figure 1: SAP’s vision of end-to-end business processes supported by both on premise and cloud-based applications.

[Source: SAP]

Retreading On Premise Systems to Leverage Cloud Technology – Part II of Turning Cloudy Chaos into an IT Strategy

Cross posted from my blog at the SAP Community Network.

This blog continues the discussion we started with Turning Cloudy Chaos into an IT Strategy Part I.  Here we examine how existing on premise systems of record such as SAP Business Suite can be brought into a cloud-centered IT strategy.

Relationship of benefits of cloud computing to use cases
[SOURCE: (C) 2012 SAP, available under Creative Commons License, use with attribution]

Turning Cloudy Chaos into an IT Strategy Part I

Cross posted from my blog at the SAP Community Network…

Yep, cloud computing is here. In fact, the cloud is probably all over the place if your company is like many.

Now, your CEO sends you an email saying, “I need you to give a presentation to the board about our corporate strategy for moving to the cloud.” You think, “Uhh, Ma’am, we’re kind of already in the cloud. I guess we need a strategy now.”Your CFO is notes a significant rise in employee expense claims for Amazon, “Wow, they sure are reading a lot of books!” Each department head has their favorite software as a service application. You have no idea what server the HR’s department’s new custom employee vacation request application is running on. Already, the marketing department is complaining about out of synch customer data again after you cleaned up the on premise CRM system last year.

Get in front of the cloud mob and turn it into a
parade. [PHOTO SOURCE]

Nine Ways The Human Resources Department Should Be Connected to a Cloud IT Strategy

Cross posted from my blog at SAP Community Network…

A brief twitter chat session with Jarret Pazahanick, an HCM consultant and SAP Mentor with an interest in better HR processes, had me pondering how an HR department’s business strategy would relate to a comprehensive IT cloud strategy.  Developing a cloud-centered IT strategy is the subject of an ASUG pre-conference event that I’m helping organize the day before the ASUG 2012 / SAPPHIRE NOW conference on May 13.  Seats are still available if you are interested in signing up.