SAPPHIRE 2018. In an Orlando conference center, far a long way from Walldorf SAP holds its annual convention, boldly going wherein no one has long gone earlier than.
But enough of this negative allegation to Star Trek even though it pretty units the tone. The first days gave a deep view into the enterprise approach.
Condensed into two press releases the company laid out its vision of the future of CRM and intelligent enterprises.
And, doing so, shot a few broadsides at the competition, particularly Salesforce.
The News
?The legacy CRM systems are all approximately income; SAP C/4HANA is all about the client ? Whilst you join all SAP applications together in an sensible cloud suite, the demand chain right away fuels the behaviors of the deliver chain? Stated SAP CEO Bill McDermott.
SAP intends to benefit this link of front- and once more workplace with the resource of absolutely integrating an augmented suite of solutions that base on the SAP Hybris Cloud answers into the virtual middle, the transactional once more give up. This integration is finished via the SAP Cloud Platform.
Additionally, it is fusing the brand new immoderate profile acquisitions Gigya and CallidusCloud into the solution.
C/4HANA; supply SAP
The Customer Data Cloud is what has been Gigya.
This model, in addition to S/4HANA, might be supported via using the SAP HANA Data Management Suite, which is essentially a beefed up Master Data Management Solution across the SAP Data Hub.
The second press release is about AI, IaaS, and more AI. SAP starts to talk more about conversational AI and Leonardo, as well as blockchain get more to the forefront.
Mostly at the again quit.
The larger Picture
The CRM suite is lower back!
This is an inevitable consequence of the ongoing Clash of the Titans, aka platform war and the realization that customer experience is actually a platform play. Just that the suite now looks different from how it looked like say, 15 years ago, when we saw huge monolithic applications like the venerable SAP CRM, or Siebel CRM.
What remains is wherein as a minimum Salesforce struggles ? A commonplace facts model under the suite.
I am, frankly, not so sure about Oracle and Microsoft here, but think that they are following a route similar to SAP. And then there is Adobe, which takes the way from marketing into commerce in a pretty strong move. The acquisition of Magento might be game changing, also considering the strong relationship to Microsoft.
Especially Salesforce is forging ahead establishing new abilities for their customers to build new business models by helping their customers and improving internal efficiencies. Being the undisputed number one in the CRM market, Salesforce is the natural target of the other tier one companies. And as I (e.g. here), as well as others, have written: Salesforce is vulnerable.
AI and conversational client interfaces cannot be finished without.
Conversational user interfaces are what will change our way of using computers as helpers. They are what makes computing ambient computing. So there needs to be significant investment in this area. There are lots of specialists around, of which SAP acquired one.
Blockchain wants to be covered, in any case.
In my eyes, blockchain remains a topic for the back end. Ledgers, monitoring and tracing, and so on. Identity appears to be on the verge, after which there are a number of advertising and marketing related mind that I individually despite the fact that do no longer regard as confirmed enough to be viable. Time will inform. Being a big dealer technique that one desires to have a foot in that sport.
My PoV and Advice
For the eager observer it changed into all in the coming. SAP usually turn out to be a group enterprise. Even R/2 and R/three have already got been suites right from the start. While a few a part of the announcement is achieved via a rebranding the general photo is powerful. It plays to SAP?S strengths of being capable of supply prevent-to-give up.
A caveat is that SAP is still affected by a lack of mindshare as regards to CRM. The company is addressing this for severa years now, however it is despite the fact that no longer in which it needs to be. But the photo is improving as the solution suite is strong. Maybe not everywhere as sturdy because the opposition, but the promise of integration and the sheer energy behind a determined SAP is truely convincing. I recognize of Marketing Cloud wins against Adobe no matter the reality that some, for entrepreneurs, vital functionality is more potent in Adobe. Similarly are there (pre acquisition) wins of Cloud for Sales/Callidus against Salesforce Sales Cloud and their CPQ. A commonplace denominator right here is that customers did now not understand how clean to use and effective the SAP software is.
Lacking mindshare, wrong perception.
But, what this says is that CallidusCloud, along side Gigya, were a number of the pleasant acquisitions that could were made (properly, include Hybris proper right here).
Putting the the the front administrative center applications beneath the Hybris emblem once more the day definitely helped, too. After growing momentum there may be brand harmonization now, that's a notable element.
Still, my recommendation to SAP is to look for low setting cease end result which can be of gain to the users. It isn't always all about the consumer. It is also now not all about the remarkable possible in the back of-the-scenes capability, except it's far of clear benefit to a large customer organization.
Win the hearts of the users, too! They are folks who're craving for having their assignment made easier. Helping them might be plenty less headline-worth, but it will pay off in spades.
This is where the intelligent enterprise, machine learning, and especially conversational user interfaces, come into picture. The announcement about this is relating to the back office but then there are use cases for the front office, too. Build them, talk about them. Some of them are even already there. But when it e.g. comes to AI based opportunity scoring even I think of Clari, not SAP – which is a shame.
Conversational AIs and machine studying have become table stakes. It is good to peer SAP productizing SAP Leonardo an increasing number of. So a long way it seemed extra like a consulting solution, but this appears to alternate to the higher now.
Offering blockchain offerings seems to be a need to nowadays. It is clean that SAP specializes in the back stop aspect right here. I am positive there is probably some viable consumer dealing with use cases however those though need to mature. Till then it is right to beautify contemporary grounds in place of looking to disrupt.
As a piece aspect be aware, and also searching into Gartners 2018 Magic Quadrant of IaaS answers, SAP is betting on the right horses. IBM indicates up for the private cloud solutions best and is partnered for non-public cloud deployments. Google, AWS, and Azure are to be had for public cloud deployments. The next IaaS infrastructure to be partnered with for public cloud deployments need to be Alibaba Cloud.
All in all, SAP appears on a roll.
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