Living with the Enemy

Just imagine two people who hate each other to death, being forced to live in the same house and continue inflicting pain on each other in every possible way. Do you get the picture?  That is what is happening between Oracle and SAP. To Larry Ellison, there is no other enemy more worse than SAP, and for SAP (even though they downplay it)  the number one in their enemy list is Oracle.

When SAP hates Oracle this much, SAP can not stop being major sales channel for Oracle’s database. Oracle  is still the number one database in the SAP customer base. It’s also no secret that many SAP customers would love to stop paying a premium price for a database that is functionally underused by the SAP product line.

But now there is a hope to SAP,  a new reason that SAP would like to get rid of the traditional relationship between its software and database leader Oracle. If SAP can develop its application to be less dependent on disk database, that  would be the first  step to reduce the dependency.

Speed is Money

That was what was proclaimed  by Mr. Plattner in the Sapphire conference in his key note address. He said the new world of in-memory computing is the next in-thing in the enterprise software.  In-memory database system (IMDS) is designed explicitly for real-time applications and for embedded systems such as set-top boxes, telecom equipment, consumer electronics and other connected gear. The in-memory database minimizes RAM and CPU demands and offers unmatched performance, reliability and development flexibility.

Enterprise software companies could learn from the techniques used by gaming software developing where the in-memory database  usage is already making big impact to get the maximum output from the multi-core CPUs. Mr. Plattner did not promise that SAP is developing in-memory concept into SAP product but he made it very clear that it is the way forward.

Oracle Killer

The desire to kill Oracle is not new found for SAP. As early as 2005, Shai Agassi, the then president of product technology group and member of SAP executive board, elaborated about the company’s programs to improve the in-memory capability of the software. In-memory capability is a new way to manage the data. Largest databases in the world are data warehouses, and these databases get the most complicated queries that they need to process as fast as possible. This requires enormous amount of CPU power. The testing ground for SAP’s new database strategy can be found in a product the company released few years back – the BI Accelerator or BIA. Among its many attributes, BIA is a hardware appliance that runs SAP Analytics incredibly quickly. The potential “Oracle killer” part of BIA comes from its in-memory database functionality, which processes database queries in RAM with no need to access disk-based storage — or even have a relational database at all — which means no costly database license, no massive data-storage farm, no expensive DBAs, and so on.

The idea of in-memory query management at SAP is hardly new. Back in the late 1990s, SAP unveiled LiveCache, an in-memory processor for what was then called the Business Warehouse. LiveCache was a little ahead of its time for lots of reasons, starting with the fact that CPU and memory costs were still relatively high for what SAP had in mind. In the end, LiveCache failed to live up to expectations. But it still survived as the in-memory query engine for SAP’s Advanced Planner and Optimizer (APO) supply-chain product.

LiveCache made history in SAP benchmarking, giving an indication of the response times that are possible using an in-memory database engine. Based on SAP’s own benchmarking standard — the SAP Standard Applications Benchmark — SAP’s hardware partners have had a glorious time leapfrogging each other in recent years to see which could achieve the best response times with LiveCache.

So, It is more of the question of when the killer will arrive. Someday soon, we will have a choice to choose between the status quo and new radical database approach. What will you choose if the newer approach is cheaper and faster and effective?

Read More about  IMDS

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Delivering – Probe SAP

I acted as a midwife assisting to bring ‘Innovation’ mother’s baby – ‘Probe SAP’ to the world. I was the delivery coach and saw every step of the gestation period and how much the mother takes care to bring the baby to the world. It was an uphill task but as with all of our mothers, ‘Innovation’ pulled it through. Kudos to mother Innovation.

Now the midwife’s view. I had the privilege to introduce the baby to the world… What a big expectation it was from different corners for this baby! Fortunately in this case, it was possible to tailor make the baby as per the world’s demand. Even with that flexibility, it was very difficult to meet the expectations. With the privilege also comes the responsibility to take the criticism… ‘I thought the baby would look like Shahrukh Khan, I thought the baby can fly like Superman, I thought the baby would run like Carl Lewis on the first day’ etc. these were the kind of expectations thrown at me during the baby introduction but I am happy the way, we as delivery team worked with expectations and explained to the public what the baby can do.

What the baby can do anyway …

It can analyze any SAP environment and list down all the customizations and come up with the impact of upgrade. The customizations could be anything, any type of objects – Probe recognizes 54 types of objects. The baby has two type of personalities. Inventizer – the uncommitted guy who does not look into the details but interested in getting an overall idea about the person he deals with. Inventizer will give a complete picture of an environment to give anyone an idea on what it takes to maintain or upgrade the environment. The other split personality is Analyzer – the finicky girl who wants to go into every detail and find fault in every little thing. Analyzer goes into the level of identifying the line number where the incompatible element exist to carry out the upgrade. With these, the baby has for sure taken the big leap into the world. Now it requires constant nurturing to turn it into a grown up person to tackle anything in the real world of SAP upgrade and maintenance.

Head mother of Hexaware’s Innovation team, Innovation lead Immanuel has done a great work in directing the team in this delivery. But for his passion and focus in the demanding environment with limited resources, it would be even more difficult child bearing. I do not want to mention any names fearing I will definitely miss out someone. Job well done to the whole innovation team of mothers involved in this.

The baby has taken the first step to run as Carl Lewis!

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Don’t Let the Economic Slowdown Stall Your IT Projects

Right now, the primary issue on everyone’s mind is the slowdown of the global economy. Corporations of all sizes are estimating its short-term and long-term effects on the health of businesses, and organizational spending — especially IT spending — is coming under heightened scrutiny.

However, because IT is a critical enabler of business, Companies cannot simply eliminate IT spending. Instead, they are re-evaluating and redefining their strategies and IT investments, looking to demonstrate improvement in efficiency and to achieve tangible results. CIOs are now asking, “How can IT deliver more with less? And what will put us on a fast track during this slowdown?”

Accomplishing these goals rests on the basics of outsourcing — that is, creating a long-term IT Optimization strategy and picking the right partner to help execute this strategy. For example, one international bank was able to enhance the quality of its customer interactions while increasing operational efficiency and lowering costs. And it was the bank’s partnership with Hexaware that helped it reach its optimization goals.

A Beneficial Partnership in Action

The bank in our example wanted to accomplish seamless integration and communication with the accounts payable system of both its corporate and retail customers. To do so, the bank selected SAP NetWeaver Exchange Infrastructure (SAP NetWeaver XI) as the platform of choice to address business challenges and create a robust application roadmap. The key features of SAP NetWeaver XI include:

• Synchronous, real-time transmission of data with immediate message delivery notices
• The ability to “push” messages at delivery time or at a scheduled interval, from customer to bank or vice versa

And with SAP’s solid partner ecosystem, the bank had many options for finding a partner that would be able to implement this solution for it. In this case, what the bank sought specifically was an SAP-certified outsourcing partner to:

• Provide a holistic virtual integration between the bank and its customers
• Provide a seamless link from customers’ ERP systems to its own
• Enforce strong security at the communication, transport, and data levels, in accordance with accepted industry standards
• Ease the implementation, while minimizing disruption
• Integrate message channels and formats to further secure communication channels

The bank chose Hexaware for its implementation expertise and its ability to create optimization strategies. Hexaware is also a premier SAP gold partner that has helped with more than 500 implementation, upgrade, and support engagements.

Following Hexaware’s nearshore-offshore model, the bank was able to achieve 30% cost savings. Hexaware’s implementation of SAP NetWeaver XI was seamless and efficient, and it demonstrated tangible business results, including an improved customer approval rating. In addition, the implementation was successful on both the IT and business levels, reaping continuous solution benefits for the bank.

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Hexaware provides global rollout, implementation, upgrade, testing, and support services to industries worldwide. Our SAP-specialized teams ensure service delivery excellence and deliver innovative strategies for clients. Hexaware also generates value through a range of solution accelerators and tools.

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SAP EcoHub – Connecting for Success

SAP Ecosystem is an example for how SAP position itself as complete solution provider. Not very long ago SAP wanted to be everything for everyone. SAP wanted to put forth a solution which would solve all the problems. To say, ‘SAP achieved this objective 100%’ is not a fair statement. Now, SAP comes up with the approach ‘We can do this together’. SAP wants to make use of the knowledge and skill available out side of the SAP world. SAP wants to provide collaborative solution. The company absolutely realizes that it can not possibly meets all the customer demands by being the lone warrior. Now SAP is building an army to take care of its objective.

SAP Ecosystem is a novel approach for SAP, customers, partners and individuals to come together with single objective to innovate collaborative solution for market need. Customers find qualified expertise, insights, answers, and connections that are right for their business. Working within the SAP Ecosystem is fast and effective – whether engaging a new partner or co-innovating using complementary technology, customers can access broader knowledge quickly to make more informed decisions.

SAP created a portal to give a face to the Ecosystem, It is called SAP EcoHub. EcoHub fosters an ideal environment for ongoing innovation and value creation, It represents the unique convergence of easy access to knowledge about SAP partner offerings as well as rich community powered context. It provides the intelligence that the customers find value in their investment decisions. SAP EcoHub is the community powered online portal created by SAP which provides information on various partner solutions. This is a trusted source from SAP to provide information to customers who are looking to easily discover and evaluate SAP partner solutions relevant to their industry and their own unique IT environment. SAP EcoHub offers the opportunity for the customers to learn about SAP certified solutions and leverage the wisdom of the communities – peers, partners, business process experts and consultants – to procure the solution that best fits their requirements.

Eventually, all groups of SAP Ecosystem will be represented in SAP EcoHub – relevant, trusted solution partners, services partners, technology partners, hosting partners, and content partner services and offerings will all have a place on SAP EcoHub. Currently solution partners are the only one showcasing their products. There are about 230 solutions have been showcased. For example, there are about 14 HR specific solutions 36 Aerospace and defense solutions listed in EcoHub. EcoHub also works as a marketplace, you can discover, evaluate and buy any of the trusted products from the portal. If you want to earn your name as SAP company you need to have presence in EcoHub.

As a guest you can access most of the features You can use your SDN id to login to this portal also to get full access. While you are there you can watch videos from people like Narayana Murthy Infosys and Anand Mahindra among others talking about EcoHub and the significance of it.

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