As of the SuccessFactors acquisition earlier this year, SAP now owns two enterprise social collaboration platforms, StreamWork and Jam. Though SAP has established a roadmap for overlapping HCM applications, designating that SuccessFactors tools will be the products for the cloud and SAP’s own client-server applications will be the products for on-premise deployments, the future of StreamWork and Jam remains uncertain.

SAP developed StreamWork as a software-as-a-service using open source tools. The application’s tools are focused on enabling collaborative decision-making. Along with general social networking features as profiles, activity feeds, and groups, SAP StreamWork offers features that specifically support desicion-making processes such as agenda and timeline tools, collaborative pro-con tables, polls and voting, and SWOT tables. Recently, SAP added a collaborative process modeling tool to StreamWork.

SAP made StreamWork generally available in March 2010. Since then, SAP has added native integration with various SAP applications such as CRM, PLM, and Strategy Management. Most recently added a feature to StreamWork that allows users to view and discuss SAP analytic dashboards from within StreamWork.

StreamWork’s OpenSocial and REST based APIs allow it to integrate with a wide variety of third party tools as well. For example, StreamWork supports close integration with Google Apps, allowing users to log in to StreamWork from Google Apps, and enabling Google Doc sharing from within StreamWork. Integration with Scripd allows users to read Microsoft Office Documents directly within StreamWork. StreamWork also connects with Evernote, Box and many others.

SuccessFactors Jam came on the enterprise collaboration scene a little later than StreamWork, debuting in October 2011, not long before SAP announced that it would acquire SuccessFactors. SuccessFactors built Jam as a fusion of two acquired products, CubeTree and Jambok. Jam gets its overall framework, including profiles, feeds, wikis, blogs, polls, and file sharing, from CubeTree and its content-creation tools from Jambok. The tools from Jambok allow users to record webcam videos or video screen capture from within Jam.

Jam integrates with SuccessFactors’ learning management system, supporting formal training, as well as informal peer-to-peer training through videos, wikis and other content. Jam also integrates closely with SuccessFactors’ onboarding processes and performance review system. Jam’s most prominent third-party integration is with Microsoft SharePoint.

Jam and StreamWork certainly have different strengths. Jam’s content creation and sharing tools make it a useful tool for formal and informal learning, while StreamWork’s tools optimize it for collaborative decision making. Areas of overlap, however, include the basic structure of the applications (both are cloud platforms centered around users with profiles and various activity streams), support for viewing documents of various formats directly within the collaboration platform, and mobile applications.

As matters stand currently, it would be possible for two departments in the same company to deploy different SAP collaboration platforms which are not currently integrated. In the areas where enterprise collaboration applications have been the most successful such as finding experts, improving collaboration between departments, and reducing volume of email, however, a unified platform has more potential to produce positive results.

SAP certainly has an opportunity to integrate the complementary features of Jam and StreamWork in a way that will provide more value for enterprises. Though SAP has not announced how this will take place, Holly Simmons, a Senior Director of Marketing at SAP, disclosed that teams are working on bringing the two different platforms together based on specific use cases. It is possible that both platforms might remain with integration points between them to support specific use cases. It is more likely that the complementary features of one will be absorbed into the other. Gartner Research Director Sunil Padmanabh has predicted that SAP will import features and functions of Jam into StreamWork. On the other hand, SAP has indicated that Jam is here to stay, at least in association with the learning management portion of SuccessFactors talent management suite.

Despite the current uncertainty surrounding Jam and StreamWork, it is clear that SAP devoting resources to solving the problem of enterprise collaboration. SAP’s March hire of Sameer Patel, well known and respected in his field as an expert in enterprise collaboration, as Global Vice President, Enterprise Social Software makes it more likely that SAP will be able to deliver a unified collaboration platform.

The rise of the iPad as a preferred device  for viewing business intelligence dashboards, SAP’s choice of a “mobile first” strategy, and the demise of mobile Flash caused some to question the future of the popular dashboard design software Xcelsius (renamed SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards). Dashboards built with Xcelsius are based on Adobe Flash and consequently will not display on any iOS device, and in a few years, when Mobile Flash reaches the end of its life, Xcelsius Dashboards will not be compatible with any new mobile devices at all. Without a serious overhaul to Xcelsius, the end of the Mobile Flash era would mean the end of Xcelsius as well.

In order to clarify plans for Xcelsius in particular and SAP BI Dashboards in general, SAP published a Statement of Direction and hosted a webinar with Mico Yuk, an SAP Mentor and fierce advocate of Xcelsius software.

SAP’s Steve Lucas revealed earlier that an HTML5 version of Xcelsius should be coming this year, but in the Statement of Direction and associated webinar, SAP was more specific about its plans for this conversion. The conversion will take place in two phases. In the first phase, anticipated to come about sometime around the end of 2012, SAP Dashboards/Xcelsius will get HTML5 support for the most commonly used dashboard components. In the second phase, SAP Dashboards will receive HTML5 support for less commonly used dashboards. HTML5 versions of Xcelsius Dashboards will make them compatible with the vast majority of mobile devices.

SAP’s long-term plans, however, indicate that the addition of HTML5 support is likely to be the last innovation that Xcelsius/SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards will see. SAP will focus its attention on Project Zen, also known as SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, Edition for Application Design. Zen is a new toolset under development by the Analysis team, which also worked on SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, Edition for MS Office, and SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, Edition for OLAP. Zen will be a group of technologies, composed of a semantic layer, a runtime environment, and a design environment. Zen is designed with mobile devices in mind, and renders applications and dashboards directly into HTML5.

At first, Zen will only support SAP HANA and SAP BW as data sources. This first version of Zen should be a viable replacement for another of SAP’s dashboard tools, SAP BEx Web Application Designer. In the next phase of development, Zen will absorb much of the functionality in Xcelsius/SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards. Zen will get all of the dashboard components that Xcelsius has and, like Xcelsius, will support some third-party plug-ins. It will also gain additional features such as annotations and dashboard bursting.

In the final phase of SAP’s current roadmap for Zen, Zen’s semantic layer will be broadened to include many types of data beyond SAP data. At this point, Zen will have all the functionality that Xcelsius has, except for Adobe Flash support, and will, in addition, be able to use HANA as a data source.

Convergence into Zen is the overall theme of SAP’s roadmap for dashboards. SAP will put the useful features of Xcelsius and BEx Web Application Designer into Zen, add even more features, and seat them on a runtime environment that can access many different data sources and render visualizations in HTML5. Once the Zen architecture is complete, SAP will offer conversion tools to bring Xcelsius Dashboards and BEx Web Application Designer content over to Zen. The self-service solution Exploration Views will be brought onto the Zen runtime in the final phase as well.

SAP has reassured customers that they will be able to hold on to Xcelsius/SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards if they would like to. Nevertheless, Zen is the direction that SAP BI Dashboards are headed.

SAP’s CIO, Oliver Bussmann, shared in a recent interview with Fran Foo of the Australian that SAP is preparing to deploy HANA, SAP’s in-memory technology, as the database for its internal SAP ERP system.

Using a model called “SAP runs SAP“, SAP Global IT implements SAP’s software before shipping it to customers in order to provide timely feedback to the development teams and to boost customer confidence.

SAP HANA, which initially appeared as an analytics appliance, made its debut as an in-memory database in SAP’s BW on HANA solution. SAP Global IT moved SAP’s internal BW system to the HANA database in September 2011, a couple months before releasing it to a select few customers as part of its ramp-up program.

Bussmann predicted that HANA would replace the traditional databases currently used by SAP products in roughly five to ten years. In leading SAP Global IT’s migration of SAP’s current databases over to HANA, Bussmann will be taking a necessary step in making that prediction come true.

SAP HANA has delivered high speeds when applied to scenarios involving the analysis of static data, but using an in-memory database to support an enterprise transactional system represents uncharted territory. Bussmann admitted that he does not yet know how much the ERP database migration to HANA will cost, or how much additional effort it will require.

SAP’s internal implementation of HANA as the database for its ERP system will be a significant test case for SAP customers who are considering an implementation of HANA for ERP. Based on this test case, customers will have the assurance that any major bugs have been resolved and will have proof that the database can sustain a global organization before implementing the HANA database to support their own critical applications.

Earlier this year, Vishal Sikka, SAP’s CTO, said that the plan was for SAP to offer support for HANA as the database for ERP sometime in the fourth quarter of 2012. SAP seems to be holding steady to this ambitious timeline, as Oliver Bussmann said that SAP’s internal implementation of the HANA database for ERP should be complete at the end of this year, or early next year.

Even though SAP is building its HANA portfolio quite rapidly, it may take a few years before most SAP customers can, or should, implement HANA for ERP. In a research report published last fall, technology research firm Gartner advised SAP customers to prepare for a migration of all SAP systems to HANA within the next three to five years. Ray Wang of Constellation research, predicts that HANA will not be a viable database for major SAP transactional systems until 2015 for several reasons, including time required to work out bugs and performance, and scarcity of administrators and consultants with HANA skills

SAP is adding predictive analysis software to its BI portfolio. The new software, named SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics is currently being tested by a select group of customers in the ramp-up phase, and is expected to be generally available later this year. Predictive analysis can help businesses make decisions that reduce costs, increase revenues, maximize efficiency, or improve customer satisfaction by revealing trends and cause-effect relationships from past data as well as modeling future outcomes. Areas where predictive analysis has been commonly applied include customer retention, fraud detection, and risk management.

SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics fills out the BusinessObjects portfolio, which contains a planning tool (SAP BPC) but is focused on applications that report on and offer visualizations of static past data. There is an existing BusinessObjects application for predictive modeling named SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Workbench, but it is based on IBM’s SPSS modeler. SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics, as a product owned wholly by SAP, will likely replace Predictive Workbench.

SAP’s new Predictive Analytics software can analyze data from a variety of sources including both SAP and non-SAP data. It supports a variety of predictive algorithms as well. BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics contains its own algorithms, but can also use algorithms from SAP HANA or from the open-source statistical computing language R, which is the most common standard for predictive analysis.

With the release of SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics, SAP aims to make predictive analysis more widely accessible by packaging it in a user-friendly interface that includes advanced data-visualization, which includes, among other things, scatter plots, cluster analyses, and parallel-processing charts as well as drag-and-drop functionality. While an intuitive interface may make predictive analysis more palatable to business users who lack the knowledge required to use a highly specialized statistical program, it remains to be seen whether the software alone will enable business users at large to make accurate and valuable business predictions. If it were easy to manage large volumes of data and accurately identify cause and effect relationships within that data, data science would not be a growing, highly-compensated profession.

SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics will be available as a standalone deployment, however, it is optimized for use with SAP HANA, SAP’s in-memory database with a built-in statistical function library. Jason Kuo, Group Product Marketing Manager at SAP BusinessObjects, expects that Predictive Analytics will most commonly be adopted by customers who integrate it with an SAP HANA and BW deployment.

SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics is the latest development in SAP’s gradual assembly of specific uses for its powerful but expensive new in-memory database. With the general release of SAP BW on HANA, SAP Finance and Controlling Accelerator, and pending releases of SAP BPC on HANA, and now SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis, SAP is building a comprehensive array of in-memory analytics applications, but will analytics alone be enough to make it worthwhile to adopt HANA?

HTML5 is the future of the web, especially the mobile web. This next generation of the most common web-language supports additional semantic elements, scalable vector graphics, an offline cache, and in combination with CSS3, can support high-quality interactive graphics. HTML5′s abilities make it more a user interface design platform rather than a markup language, and with ever-increasing browser support, open-standards HTML5 has become a viable alternative to the proprietary platforms Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight for delivering rich web content.

While HTML5 is coming into maturity as a standard for rich web content, Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight are waning in usefulness, especially for delivering content to mobile device users.

Steve Jobs, in his famous 2010 letter, “Thoughts on Flash“, predicted that “open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices” while criticizing Flash as unsuitable for mobile devices and explaining why iOS devices would never support Adobe Flash. Nineteen months later, Adobe shared that they would not continue to develop the Mobile Flash Player beyond release 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry and would focus on innovating for mobile devices through the medium of HTML5. Without new releases, Flash support on mobile devices will die out. It is very likely that future releases of the Android operating system will not support Flash.

Microsoft Silverlight has not gained a wide reach among mobile devices. iOS never supported Silverlight, no doubt for many of the same reasons that Steve Jobs enumerated for rejecting Flash. Windows Phones, of course, support Silverlight, and so does the Symbian platform, but Android and BlackBerry do not. While still committed to developing Silverlight, Microsoft has shifted its strategy toward HTML5, realizing that HTML5, not Silverlight, will allow for the greatest reach across platforms.

HTML5 is in the final stages of development, but already most mobile browsers support at least a subset of the new features in HTML5. Most desktop browsers offer good support for HTML5 as well, and Internet Explorer, which currently lags far behind other major browsers in its current release (IE9), will offer significantly better support for HTML5 features in the next release (IE10).

Adobe and Microsoft have cast their lot in with HTML5 because HTML5 is positioned to become the main cross-platform tool for delivering rich, interactive web applications, while Flash and Silverlight are limited to particular devices and operating systems. It is inevitable for SAP, with its “mobile first” and device agnostic strategies, to embrace HTML5 as well. Indeed, SAP already has plans to incorporate HTML5 across its applications.

One of SAP’s first ventures into HTML5 was the redesign of SAP.info, SAP’s official web magazine. As a magazine, SAP.info does not require HTML5′s new interactive features which Internet Explorer does not yet support. SAP.info’s new HTML5 and CSS3 design, debuted in November 2011, uses features such as scalable graphics and page layout so that the site will appear as an appropriately-sized app on any device rather than a fixed-width web page. SAP’s new online publication, Milestones, which celebrates 40 years of SAP, uses even more features of HTML5 and CSS3 to optimize the experience for touch-screen devices, including navigation between pages by swiping.

The transition to HTML5 within SAP’s on-premise and on-demand applications will take time, as Flash and Silverlight have become entrenched in the SAP landscape as means of delivering rich web-based content. Business ByDesign, SAP’s flagship cloud offering, is built entirely on Silverlight. SAP has line-of-business cloud offerings based on Silverlight as well, such as Sales OnDemand. The SAP Store is also built with Silverlight. Xcelsius (renamed Business Objects Dashboards), a popular business intelligence dashboard solution, is based on Flash. SAP StreamWork requires Flash. So far, SAP has had to design native iOS mobile apps for each of these examples, including the Mobile section of the SAP Store, because of the incompatibility of iOS with Flash and Silverlight.

SAP already plans to convert Xcelsius (Business Objects Dashboards) and Business ByDesign to HTML5 within the next year. The HTML5 version of Xcelsius should be available sometime this year. The HTML5 version of Business ByDesign will have to wait until Internet Explorer 10 is released before the HTML5 and CSS3 features necessary for running Business ByDesign are supported by all major desktop browsers, and should be released sometime in 2013.

SAP is also creating a number of tools to help developers make HTML5 applications for SAP data. SAP has issued a beta HTML5 User Interface toolkit, named SAPUI5, which developers can combine with data called from an SAP system via the oData protocol to create web-portal or mobile applications. A PaaS for developing web-portal applications that will support the new HTML5 standard, named Portal OnDemand, is also forthcoming from SAP.

Earlier this week, SAP announced a trio of partnerships with Adobe, Appcelerator, and Sencha that will provide three frameworks for developers to use when developing HTML5 mobile applications. Adobe PhoneGap, Appcelerator Titanium, and Sencha Touch are all open-source tools for developing mobile applications in HTML5 and provide varying support for native, hybrid and mobile-web applications.

SAP’s press release about these new partnerships emphasizes that they will make SAP mobile application development much more accessible to the millions of developers already familiar with Adobe PhoneGap, Appcelerator Titanium, and Sencha Touch. Greater accessibility to developers is necessary for SAP to realize its vision where 80% of apps will be developed by SAP’s Partners. As SAP integrates HTML5 and HTML5 tools across its landscape, cloud, portal, and web-client applications will also become more accessible to developers with HTML5 skills.

The adoption of HTML5 will bring many advantages beside the opening of the SAP ecosystem to a wider range of developers. The flexibility and elegance of HTML5 will allow, although not guarantee, the development of interfaces for SAP applications that are more visually striking. SAP applications based on HTML5 will perform better than applications that require plug-ins such as Flash and Silverlight. Widespread adoption of HTML5 across the SAP landscape will help to smooth and integrate the user experience between desktop computers to mobile devices. As SAP has shown with its web magazines, it is possible to design a single page in HTML5 and CSS3 that scales well across devices.

Last fall, SAP added Right Hemisphere, maker of visualization software that allows enterprises to manage and share 3-D and 2-D visual information, to its portfolio. Some integration work has been completed and SAP now offers three of Right Hemisphere’s tools re-branded as SAP Visual Enterprise Applications.

Deep Server, Right Hemisphere’s core product, has been renamed SAP Visual Enterprise Generator. This processing and publishing engine allows 3-D and 2-D visual information to be shared across the enterprise by transforming CAD or other 3-D models into many other 2-D and 3-D formats. Over 120 formats are supported.

Deep Exploration has been renamed SAP Visual Enterprise Author. This tool can be used to create and edit 3-D designs and animations.

SAP will offer Right Hemisphere’s Deep View as SAP Visual Enterprise Viewer. Users of this application can view 3-D models and animations and collaborate with other users.

Right Hemisphere has had ties to SAP since 2007 when SAP Ventures bought a stake in Right Hemisphere. Since then, SAP had been using 2D and 3D visualization tools from Right Hemisphere in its PLM portfolio and had integrated Right Hemisphere’s Deep View into its Complex Assembly Manufacturing Solution.

SAP will continue to offer its Visual Enterprise Applications as standalone products, and will also work to integrate them with more areas of SAP’s ERP portfolio.

SAP’s Visual Enterprise Applications can already merge visual information with text and other business data in SAP’s PLM module. SAP’s goal is to enable a visual enterprise that reaches beyond PLM to manufacturing execution systems, enterprise asset management and the rest of its ERP applications so that engineers, manufacturers, customer service representatives, trainers, and salespeople can collaborate on the basis of visual data.

Besides integration with more areas of SAP, integration of the Visual Enterprise Applications with mobile technologies should also be forthcoming. The ability to access visual product information from anywhere will surely make SAP’s Visual Enterprise Applications more valuable to workers on the shop floor, field service technicians, salespeople, and anyone else who uses visual information and is not tied to a desk.

The Android mobile operating system has been an immense success in the consumer world, but has not caught on as well in the enterprise world. Although Android smartphones captured a majority of the smartphone market share worldwide in late 2011, iOS is by far the most common mobile operating system used in enterprises, even when tablets are discounted. Security and fragmentation have been major concerns for businesses in deploying Android devices, but Google, Android device manufacturers and carriers, and third parties, including SAP, are working to make Android more compatible with enterprise use.

Is it Safe?

IT managers have rightly worried about the security risks of letting Android devices into the corporate network. The Android OS did not have support for the secure IPsec VPN protocol, lacked mobile device management ability to track device or disable or wipe them in case of loss or theft, lacked hardware-level encryption, and had uneven software encryption. In addition, information-stealing malware that exploits Android’s light security has become quite common and is easily downloadable not only from third party websites, but even from Google’s Android Market.

In the face of slow Android adoption in the enterprise, Google has been making efforts to increase the security of its mobile platform.

The latest version of the Android OS, 4.0 a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich, Google introduced several important security features which can make the OS more compatible with enterprise usage. Ice Cream Sandwich supports mobile data encryption and a VPN application programming interface. Hardware-level security is improved through address space layout randomization, a crucial step in making Android secure enough for enterprises. Android 4.0 also allows developers to regulate access of the system key store by applications through the KeyChain feature, enabling more control by mobile device management software.

Google has also taken steps to remove malware from the Android Market (recently renamed Google Play). According to McAfee, all new malware for mobile devices is written to infect Android. The openness of the Android Market makes it easy for developers to register and post malicious apps for download. Google recently announced that they have implemented a tool named Bouncer that automatically scans apps in the Android Market for malware, and have since seen a significant decline in downloads of malicious software.

Device manufacturers are also working to make the Android fit for the enterprise. Motorola has built important security features, such as the IPsec VPN, remote wipe, password control, and mobile device management tool compatibility, into several of its smartphone models.

Samsung has forged a partnership with SAP to develop enterprise-grade security features in Samsung’s Android smartphones and tablets. Oliver Bussmann, SAP’s CIO, in pursuing a device agnostic mobile strategy, will test any device, even the Kindle Fire, for use at SAP. Although he found the security features of the Android-based Fire wanting, Bussmann believes that Samsung’s Android devices have robust enough security and sufficient capability for remote management to be used in the enterprise without fear.

Samsung has optimized its Galaxy S and Galaxy S2 devices to work with Sybase Afaria, SAP’s mobile device management software. Now even more security features are available with the Samsung-Afaria combination than are available when managing Apple’s mobile devices.  Sybase’s fact sheet lists 85 features ranging from full device encryption to Bluetooth controls.

VMware has also been working with device manufacturers to develop virtualization tools to separate personal data from business data on a mobile device. This is an important step in securing business data on Android devices, especially ones used in Europe, where data privacy laws are quite strict.

Security on the Android platform is certainly improving, but fragmentation will continue to be an issue for enterprises with a Bring-Your-Own-Device policy. While Apple and RIM integrate their software and devices tightly together and deliver updates on a regular basis,  Android runs on a multitude of different devices from Motorola’s Droid RAZR to the Barnes & Noble NOOK. Every device manufacturer modifies the Android OS to support the particular features of the device, and when Google publishes a new update for Android, users are at the mercy of their device manufacturers to adapt and deliver that update.

The Ice Cream Sandwich update with its improved security features was released in October 2011, and now in March 2012, only 1.6% of Android devices are on that current release. Device makers continue to sell Android devices running older versions, most manufacturers have not yet finished adapting the new version to their specific hardware, and some devices will never receive the update.

Where are the Apps?

Android started from behind in the enterprise world due to the security issues outlined above and business apps for Android are still catching up with the variety of business apps on other mobile platforms, especially iOS. At this time, there are about twice as many apps in the Business category in the iTunes store (over 27,000) as there are in the Business category in the Android Market (fewer than 15,000). Most “Top Business Apps for Android” lists have so far been filled largely by general productivity apps rather than apps to assist workers with specific business processes. It simply had not been worthwhile for developers to make applications for Android that interfaced with other entities within the corporate IT infrastructure as long as such an interface would have posed a serious security risk.

Now that security on Android can support corporate IT requirements for security, SAP has developed its very first mobile app specifically for Android. The SAP Transport Notification and Status App, helps truck drivers to check on freight orders and routes. Although it remains the only Android app available among the 57 apps in SAP’s Store for Mobile Apps, more business apps with support for Android should be available from SAP in the future.

SAP’s Partners have been doing more to develop Android apps that interface with SAP.  Of the 170+ applications in the SAP Partner Mobility App Catalog, about 50 have Android support. These Android apps cover a wide range of business areas, processes, and industries.

One business area where Android devices can be useful without specialized apps is in viewing Flash-based BusinessObjects dashboards. While iOS devices, which do not support Adobe Flash, require specific apps to display these dashboards, an Android user can view BusinessObjects dashboards in a portal using the device’s internet browser.

Can Android Succeed in the Enterprise?

The experience of many companies shows that if employees can bring their mobile devices to work, they will, and the stats tell us that Android is the most popular mobile OS. Since its security issues are being worked out, Android is poised to surge in popularity in the business world, but several other factors must align to secure enterprise success for Android. Device makers must incorporate security features into their devices in order to get a critical mass of enterprise-ready Android phones and tablets into the hands of consumers. Developers must take Android seriously as a platform that can do business and make applications that are useful to executives, field agents, and knowledge workers. If secure Android devices become plentiful in the market, and enough business applications are developed to make Android widely useful in the enterprise, the force of Consumerization of IT will likely propel Android to become the rival of iOS in business.

The much-anticipated SAP BPC on HANA solution has arrived sooner than expected. Originally targeted for the second quarter of 2012, BPC on HANA was officially launched by SAP at the Financials 2012 conference in Las Vegas this past Tuesday, March 13.

Many have looked forward to the release of BPC on HANA as it will provide a compelling use-case for HANA, the in-memory database, while the greater speed from running on HANA will make BPC, SAP’s integrated business planning and consolidations application, more usable. Dave Williams, Senior Director of Enterprise Performance Management Solutions Marketing at SAP, said that companies can see performance improve 20x on HANA as compared to BPC run on traditional databases.

Solution Prerequisites

Support Pack 6 for SAP BPC 10 will enable existing BPC NetWeaver systems to run on top of HANA and should be generally available by the end of March. Of the two versions of SAP BPC 10, the Microsoft version (also known as the .NET version), and the NetWeaver version, only the NetWeaver version will be supported as it integrates with SAP BW, while the Microsoft version integrates with MS SQL. In the BPC HANA solution, the BPC application uses BW as its data source with HANA as the database.

On the front end, SAP’s BPC HANA solution is an innovation which can be delivered with little disruption. Converting SAP BPC 10 NetWeaver from running on a traditional database to HANA will not involve any changes to the BPC application aside from the installation of Support Pack 6.

Most of the work required to enable the BPC on HANA solution is on the back end, even more so if a customer does not already have any other HANA solutions in place. Implementing BW on HANA is an essential prerequisite to running BPC on HANA. Daniel Rutschmann, Director of BW on HANA at SAP, gives a detailed account of what is required to implement BW on HANA at the Experience SAP HANA blog. Simply moving BPC on top of BW/HANA significantly lowers the time BPC takes to generate results compared to running it on a traditional database, but according to Jens Koerner, Senior Director leading the SAP Enterprise Performance Management Customer Solution Adoption team, the twentyfold increase in performance only comes when the infocubes are optimized for in-memory use and the reports are executed directly by the HANA TREX engine.

Business Benefits

Three chief business benefits have been predicted to proceed from the BPC on HANA solution: real-time planning, more detailed analysis, and better user adoption.

There have been problems in getting data quickly enough in BPC integrated with SAP BW on a traditional database, leading to long planning cycles and plans made based data that is not current. If a business is able to realize the speed improvements from BPC on HANA, it can shorten planning cycles and act on plans and data that are up-to-date. As John Appleby points out, real-time planning will allow organizations to react quickly to natural disasters or other unforeseen events.

The increased performance from migrating BPC to HANA should allow not only for up-to-date analysis, but also more detailed analysis of business data. With BPC on HANA it will be possible to analyze business trends on a very granular level, even down to the SKU, Appleby says. Increased performance should also allow for more time to do ad-hoc analysis or to test multiple hypothetical scenarios, which, as Jeff Kelly points out, is something which many organizations simply do not have time to do when it takes an extended period to close the books and run consolidation reports.

A common problem that businesses face in getting value from their business planning software is generating user adoption. Slow performance can lead users to become frustrated and use their own spreadsheets for planning purposes. The greater speeds afforded by the BPC on HANA solution should make the software easier to use, and thus more useful to the business.

SAP also demonstrated HANA-based BPC on the iPad at the Financials conference. This app should make it easier to get business planning information into the hands of busy executives and is planned to available for download by May.

A Killer App?

SAP HANA is certainly a powerful force, but it needs clear use cases and applications to be adopted by and become useful to businesses. Some have predicted that the business benefits proceeding from a BPC application would make it a killer app for HANA. Will BPC on HANA drive adoption of SAP’s in-memory database?

See a demonstration of BPC’s speed on HANA in the video below.

SAP's goal is 1 billion users by 2015.

SAP.info recently published an article about SAP supporting startup companies, but did you know that SAP has launched a venture in the style of a startup within itself? While you may not have heard of the SAP AppHaus, you are more likely to be familiar with its recently released mobile app, Recalls Plus, which some have hailed as SAP’s first consumer app. (They are a little late in their recognition. More on that below.)

The AppHaus is one component of SAP’s strategy to reach 1 billion users by 2015. With the AppHaus initiative, SAP is reaching beyond direct users of enterprise software to the much larger pool of consumer users by creating cloud and mobile applications suitable for mass adoption.

SAP’s Startup

The originators of the AppHaus wanted it to provide a different way of developing applications within SAP. Indeed, developing a mobile or cloud app for consumers is a very different proposition from developing complex, integrated business solutions designed to appeal to executives, which is SAP’s modus operandi. Although SAP claims it “still has the heart and passion of a startup,” it hardly resembles one in any other way as it will turn 40 this year, has offices in over 75 countries, employs over 50,000 persons, and announced revenues of €14.2 billion for 2011.

In contrast, many publishers of consumer mobile applications are quite small operations. At this time, the Apple iTunes store offers over 580,000 mobile apps for download, and those apps come from over 140,000 active publishers, and Google’s Android Market has around 100,000 publishers and over 400,000 apps. Some of those publishers are large shops developing thousands of apps, but the average is a small team producing only a few apps.

In order to provide that different way of developing applications which would be suitable for creating consumer apps, the founders of the AppHaus decided it needed a lean and creative startup culture. To foster this type of culture, SAP sent the AppHaus outside the walls of the SAP Labs campus in Palo Alto to rented quarters in nearby Los Altos. SAP has also added an AppHaus team in India and is assembling a third in China.

The AppHaus teams bring apps from concept to release in very short cycles. Ben Boeser is proud of the original AppHaus team for rushing their very first application, Recall Genie, from idea to downloadable app in just 90 days.

Tracking Recalls from an iPhone

Recall Genie, released in June 2011 and the predecessor to Recalls Plus, was truly SAP’s first consumer application. The target demographic for this application is not field agents, busy executives, or salespeople, but parents of small children in the USA. Recall Genie aggregates recall notices for children’s products as well as food and drug recalls. The application allows users to select specific products that they would like to track so that parents can be alerted to recalls relevant to them rather than searching multiple sources for updated safety information.

Recall Genie was SAP’s test to determine if the AppHaus initiative could deliver an application that would become widely adopted in the target market. Recall Genie proved to be successful enough for the AppHaus to develop version 2.0 of the application.

Recalls Plus, built and maintained by a small team of about 10 people, was released February 15 and has already gained much greater visibility than its predecessor. The new version contains features that make it easier to set up a personalized watch-list of products as well as the capability to track recalls based on food allergens. Recalls Plus is built on the SAP HANA Cloud platform, allowing for maximum speed in receiving recall information, and making it the first consumer app built on HANA. While Recall Genie is only available as an iOS app, Recalls Plus is available at the SAP Store, and as a Facebook app, as well as an iOS app.

Project ChariTra

Project ChariTra is another application built on the SAP HANA Cloud platform. It was developed by the SAP AppHaus team in India and like Recalls Plus, was designed to reach a large number of users. This time the target is not parents in the US, but volunteers and charitable organizations that need the aid of volunteers all over the world. ChariTra (short for Charity Transformation) is a cloud, or web-based application that allows anyone in the world with a valid email address to post a need for volunteers, or to pledge their time as volunteer in one of the posted charitable causes.

Business to Consumer

The SAP AppHaus is focused on developing applications that connect businesses with customers, filling unmet needs, and delivering a great user experience. In delivering apps to consumers, the SAP AppHaus serves SAP’s customers’ customers. According to Xiaquon Clever, SVP of HANA Applications, the aim is to give value to these customers’ customers and thereby generate indirect value for SAP’s customers. The vision is to eventually create applications that  connect businesses and consumers more directly while giving value to both groups.

Look for more innovations coming from the AppHaus, as they are certainly doing something different within SAP.

SAP is rolling out a new process to handle small development requests. Under the old process, known as DRQ, authorized users submitted a requests through the SAP Services Portal.  Customers can participate in the new process, named Customer Connection, by collaborating in a special area of the SAP Idea Place for their regional SAP User Group.

The DRQ process had needed improvement in order to prove effective both for users and for SAP.  Users have compared the DRQ to a black hole in which requests disappear.  There have been reports of development requests submitted through the DRQ process taking three years to run through the system, only to be returned as invalid.  From SAP’s perspective, the process needed to be improved so that they could focus on the most important requests first.

The old DRQ process was replaced by the Customer Connection process in 2011, and the German-speaking SAP User Group (DSAG), the Dutch SAP User Group (VNSG), and the UK and Ireland SAP User Group were the first SAP User Groups to participate in the new process.  Americas’ SAP User Group (ASUG) was beta-testing Customer Connection last year is kicking off the new program this year.

ASUG anticipates that the new program for development requests will run more smoothly:

The key difference between this process and the old DRQ is that ASUG is working closely in partnership with SAP to deliver ideas when SAP is ready to invest in developing them.

The response time  to deliver requested developments in the new system should be six to seven months.  Already, SAP has been able to provide a solution to a development request through the DSAG Customer Connection in six months.

Although the exact process for determining which development requests ASUG will submit as priorities to SAP is still being defined, an idea for a small change or enhancement must have at least five interested users in order for ASUG to pass it to SAP for development.  SAP expects customers who submit development requests to commit to implementing the enhancements should SAP deliver them.

What about the requests that are not approved for development by SAP?  June Keszeg, Director of Influence Programs at ASUG says there is still hope.  “Even though an idea might not be taken as a Customer Connect project, it doesn’t mean it gets lost… No good idea that has member support gets left behind.”  Craig Dale, CEO of the UK and Ireland SAP Group, offers more substantial recourse, pointing out that due to the collaborative nature of Customer Connect, even if a request is not suitable for development by SAP, a group of companies who need the same enhancement can split the costs to have a partner do the development instead.

Customer Connect is part of SAP’s overall Customer Influence Program and is the proper channel to request changes or enhancements that can be delivered through Notes and Support Packs.  SAP is working with customers and User Groups through its Customer Engagement Initiative to develop large-scale functional enhancements which will be delivered as part of SAP’s new Enhancement Pack Strategy.