Kathy Gibson at Saphila 2014 – Although SAP’s roots are firmly in ERP, through acquisitions and in-house development the software giant has, over the last four years, expanded its portfolio to enable customer innovation across applications, analytics, database, mobile and cloud.
Darren Roos, chief operating officer of SAP EMEA, points out that SAP has more cloud users today than any other cloud company in the world.
“Before I joined SAP, my perception was that it was for large enterprises; that it was complex; and that it was difficult to implement.”
Having found that the opposite is true in many cases, Roos says that what consumers want their IT to deliver are systems that are simple and easy to use. They want their systems to deliver more than ever – and at the same or lower budgets as last year.
Complexity is the enemy of this scenario. The IT landscape of yore, with many layers of complexity glued together with middleware is no longer what customers want, Roos says.
“Removing real IT layers does simplify things and reduce costs – and the business demands simplification.”
A key enabler of this simplification is the cloud. “Customers today demand a simpler user interface, little or no hardware, low consulting costs, simpler pricing and significant faster time to value. However, they can’t just rip out what you’ve already got.
“The cloud is the answer to dramatically simplifying the IT environment.”
SAP is moving all of its solutions to the SAP cloud, powered by HANA. “We will be easier to deal with,” says Roos. “Our mantra is to simplify everything so we can do anything.”
SAP has promised to deliver all of its applications in the cloud. “The cloud will no longer something on the side or on top – it will be at the core of the business. Customers can have the cloud their way and simplify business.”
Africa is critical to SAP’s strategy, Roos adds, and is a key part of the company’s global strategy.
Part of its commitment to the region is to develop interfaces that customers and consumers can use without training.
A prototype mobile application has been developed to address one of the continent’s social ills – that of children’s births not being registered.
This app allows an official in a remote area to capture all of the relevant information on a mobile phone at the place where the child is born, and send it to the government office.
“In sub-Saharan Africa, two out of three children under the age of five are not registered, which denies them the right to an identity – and other human rights like education, health care and social security,” Roos says.