Eighteen years after the world’s first modern cellular phone network went on air in Finland and twenty-two years after the Internet was opened to commercial use, the global explosion of the Internet, of wireless networks, and the rise in broadband capacity has transformed how we connect to the world. New and innovative services can be delivered anytime, anywhere – everything from applications emailing you scans from the copier, to location-based services on your in-car navigation system, to Internet-based services that we use every day. New SAP software enables providers to charge and bill for all these new services.

We have long moved on from using mobile phones just to make calls. We write e-mails, check the headlines, watch videos on YouTube, upload photos to our Facebook profiles, buy the latest apps, pay for bus tickets, or donate money to charity using our mobile phone.

We expect all of these services to be available wherever we are in the world, be it at home using our usual mobile network or on vacation in Venice, in the Bahamas, or the Himalayas. And of course, our mobile phone provider may also be our Voice over IP (VoIP), IPTV, and home Internet provider and we have high expectations for all these services too.

We can upload hundreds of photos to Flickr while downloading a video on demand movie to our television and if we suddenly have a medical emergency, we expect the call to go through. Digital communications has become our gateway to countless new services.

As consumers, we demand a great deal from the providers of these services: We use services, often simultaneously, from myriad providers, but we expect to receive one consolidated bill with a clear breakdown of all pre- and postpaid charges and, of course, with all information available in real time.

We don’t expect to have to deal with complicated billing and settlements. We do expect to be able to set price caps and receive warnings when our and our family’s spending nears those caps. We do not care how this is done. Let the provider figure it out and that is where IT comes into play.

Highdeal, which was acquired in 2009 by SAP, specializes in pricing, rating, and charging solutions. In other words, it untangles the webs of services, providers, and charges that we weave every day with our communications activities. The French company was spun off from France Telecom as a startup in 2000 and received many awards and customer references due to it’s leading functionality. SAP acquired Highdeal in the spring of 2009. Highdeal’s software product under the SAP banner is the application SAP Convergent Charging. The software helps communication providers to offer the packages and bundles we often take for granted and ensure that each cent on our bill finds its way to the right service provider or partner without us having to think about this complex value chain.

Jim Hagemann Snabe meets Christina Marule, owner of a Spaza Shop (Foto: SAP AG)

Control room of the future

In a research project, SAP showed how networked software can assist the command center in future cases of civil protection. In the scenario presented at CeBIT – involving a powerful storm front – all the information is gathered in a fictitious control room. There, the emergency services have access to weather data and people’s movements, among other things, so that they can identify the regions likely to be most affected and take preventive action.

In the test scenario, the storm caused several serious accidents. Thanks to the software connection with the hospitals in Berlin, the control center can decide which emergency services should transport what number of patients to which clinics. The software also displays the shortest route to the nearest hospital with free beds, taking the current traffic conditions into account. The SAP Investigative Case Management for Public Sector package forms the cornerstone of the solution, which is usually deployed at police stations and is based on the SAP Customer Relationship Management application. In around two years, it is conceivable that the software will be used in real-life control rooms.

Next Page: Pirates under Fire

SAP World Tour 2010 at CeBIT in Hannover (photo: Frank Völkel)

For the first time, the SAP World Tour stopped off at CeBIT, the world’s foremost tradeshow for the digital industry, in Hanover. Some 80 German customers and 30 partners attended. In more than 70 presentations, current and would-be SAP users learned about enterprise management, IT excellence, SAP Business Suite, and SAP solutions for small businesses and midsize companies. The event focused on the question of how SAP products can help organizations secure future growth and optimize existing processes.

The World Tour offers a platform for users to exchange project reports and news about SAP, as well as enabling discussions among customers and partners. The tour is scheduled to visit over 70 cities in more than 50 countries on four continents: Asia, Europe, South America, and North America.

At CeBIT, SAP took over two entire halls (numbers 19 and 20) to stage the tour.

The first day was devoted to business intelligence (BI), with a focus on the solutions from the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio. A dozen or so companies recounted their experiences with SAP solutions for BI. For example, paper manufacturer Papierfabrik August Koehler performs ad-hoc reporting with the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer software. The MAN Nutzfahrzeuge Group, one of the leading providers in the international vehicle industry, relies on the SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse component and solutions from the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio. Furthermore, the German supermarket chain EDEKA opted for SAP BusinessObjects business intelligence solutions and told of its first encounters with the software.

On March 3, the presentations concentrated on IT excellence and optimizing operations and business processes. Key topics were SOA, the SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management component, and the SAP NetWeaver Business Rules Management component. Other themes included server consolidation and virtualization.

On March 4, attention switched to SAP Business Suite 7, including SAP ERP 6.0, which forms the cornerstone of the SAP Business Suite software, enhancement package 4, and individual modules such as SAP CRM 7.0 and SAP PLM 7.0. Numerous companies spoke of their experiences, among them the Würth Group, specialists in fixing and assembly materials, and Volkswagen Financial Services.

On the last day of the SAP World Tour – March 5 – small businesses and midsize companies were in the spotlight. Many SAP products were presented that are specially designed for the midmarket, such as the SAP Business ByDesign solution and the SAP Business One application. Experts demonstrated, for example, how to use the SAP NetWeaver Business Client software and how the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio can be deployed in small businesses.

One of the most important topics: Business Suite 7 (photo: Benjamin Blaume)

How will a new product strategy and road map benefit SAP’s customers?

Jim Hagemann Snabe: Basically, through our new product strategy we’re transforming SAP to be much faster. Our mantra is to create solutions that generate instant value for people everywhere – in other words, solutions that are easy to install, easy to use, and have business relevance for our customers.

Technology is changing rapidly. How does SAP’s new product strategy fit in?

First of all, we want to use the new technologies as much as possible. At the same time, we want to create stability for our customers. While it seems counterintuitive to do these things simultaneously, we can achieve this by an architecture we call timeless software. This is an architectural principle that allows three layers of applications to evolve at different speeds.

You will find the whole interview in the current SAP SPECTRUM.

Free download: The current issue of SAP SPECTRUM Issue 1 | 2010.

It’s an uncomfortable truth: People with disabilities are often thought of as less reliable under pressure – a grave misconception, considering the successes of disabled athletes in the Paralympics or other projects. Take the blind mountain climber Andy Holzer, for example, whose goal is to conquer the Seven Summits. The Austrian has already crossed five of the highest peaks in the world off his list. The disabled are showing what they can do in a wide range of fields, including the business world.

And more and more companies are realizing that by not giving them the chance to develop their potential, they are leaving untold talent and motivation untapped. Deutsche Post DHL, one of the world’s leading mail and logistics groups, has initiated a project to support colleagues with disabilities. It is doing this together with the BIK (“breaking down barriers in information and communication”) project of the German Federal Ministry for Labor and Social Affairs and the expert support of the Münster Integration Office.

You will find the whole article in the current SAP SPECTRUM.

Free download: The current issue of SAP SPECTRUM Issue 1 | 2010.

Consensus and Trust: Jim Hagemann Snabe and Bill McDermott (photo: SAP)

Dear SAP Customers,
We are writing to you today in the spirit of openness. You have no doubt taken note of the changes SAP has made in its executive leadership team.  We feel it’s important to write to you directly and express how honored and excited we are to be appointed Co-CEOs.  We do this with the firm belief that SAP’s success was and will always be linked to the success of our customers.  Our mission remains to make your business a best-run business. Customers are the very center of our strategy.

Over the last three weeks, we have been highly energized and working hard to set SAP on a better course.  The excitement we feel and the passion we have for this company is very much about who we are and what we are all about.  And we know that the changes at SAP have led to some questions, and we have answers for them:

Does new management mean a change in our strategy?

No.  While we are making some changes at SAP, some things won’t change, including our product road map and our commitment to making your company a best-run business.  We realize that SAP software touches 60 percent of the world’s transactions, and we take this responsibility seriously.  We also recognize that you have made a substantial investment in SAP and built at least part of your business on us, which is why we want you to know that the investment you have made in SAP is protected and valid.

What will we change?

What we will change is to accelerate the pace of the innovation we deliver to you.  We will do that by energizing our entire company to become even more open to and informed by the needs of your company.  This is not a new task, as innovation has long but quietly flourished in many groups within SAP.  Our goal now is to bring these groups together and unleash the creativity at SAP by fostering a new motivated employee culture, increasing customer involvement, and by increasing the clock speed of development efforts.

How will we operate the business as Co-CEOs?

With our appointment as Co-CEOs, SAP has put customers and product leadership at the center of our management model and given us a template to forge a new generation of leadership. Over the past year and a half, we have been working together on bringing the field and product teams closer together.  With our different focus areas and skill sets we are a very complimentary CEO team.   Moving forward, we will retain our responsibilities leading Global Field Operations and Product Development, and you will also see an even closer alignment between solutions and services.

What else are we planning?

Over the coming days and weeks, we will share more updates on our key priorities—for example, delivering new innovation On Demand, On Premise, On Device, and in the Orchestration across your IT environment.  Like you, we also highly anticipate the delivery of SAP Business ByDesign in the middle of this year.   We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but we have a strong foundation as the leading business software company, with solutions that have a level of integrity and reliability trusted by thousands of organizations such as yours – our global customer base is among our greatest assets.

What is at the top of our agenda?

There’s one more thing that will change: we will listen more for your feedback and look for more opportunities to share our strategy with you. It will be very evident, as we reach out frequently to you and all of our stakeholders—customers, partners, employees and shareholders – to continue SAP’s transformation as a market leader focused on your success.  We will use many opportunities to spark an active and open dialogue with you, to hear back from you, and welcome your ideas.  In the coming days we will launch a blog platform to foster open dialog… for now, we welcome your comments at co-ceo@sap.com. We look forward to sharing our passion for software and its potential to transform business to help our customers be best-run businesses.

Best regards,

Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe

Last year was no cakewalk for SAP customers in Japan. Hit hard by the financial crisis, many CIOs struggled to make do with restricted IT budgets. The onus was increasingly on them to make the right decisions, because no company could afford a poor investment.

An innovative initiative, set up by SAP Japan president Garret Ilg, came at just the right time: SAP Japan established the first ever Customer Satisfaction Improvement Office and launched a crossorganizational Customer Satisfaction task force of SAP experts from various lines of businesses. The team now meets with representatives of the Japan SAP Users’ Group (JSUG) each month.

“The increased level of communication has really reaped benefits for us,” says Yutaka Yasunaga, president of JSUG. “SAP and JSUG share the goal of achieving as much value as possible. We work as one team. We discuss any issues and find solutions together.”

You will find the whole article in the current SAP SPECTRUM.

Free download: The current issue of SAP SPECTRUM Issue 1 | 2010.

Water cooling in Data Center. (photo: Frank Völkel)

If nowhere else, CeBIT’s significance can be seen in the impressive number of visitors that filed into Halls 2 to 5 on its first two days. Hanover, Germany’s IT trade show remains the leader in the field of business, particularly in addressing the global IT industry and highlighting key developments. This year, for example, there are many more companies focusing on smartphones – especially Apple’s popular iPhone – as well as on apps that can access data records on company networks and provide mobile graphical analyses at the push of a button. Meanwhile, data center operators are seeing new opportunities in connection with cloud computing, as well as and new energy-efficiency requirements for entire facilities.

With software modeling no longer able to cover the increasing complexity of companies’ processes, plastic functional models similar to model railroads are also providing greater insights and revealing schematic deficiencies that used to remain hidden.

Here’s an overview of our topics:

• Water in data centers?
• Plastic simulation of business processes
• SAP Business One on iPhone
• 3D Web sites ready for browsing

SaaS, SAP software, notebooks and 3D displays are the topics (photo: Frank Völkel)

The world’s largest IT conference in Hannover is still the international meeting place for software and hardware manufacturers. CeBIT is also the gauge of how the IT industry is generally faring. In contrast to the situation last year, many manufacturers appeared optimistic when talking with SAP.info. In addition to the officially communicated themes of “Networking” and “Increased Efficiency” the word on everyone’s lips was 3D – and everything that goes along with it: glasses, videos, displays, and storage media – not to mention the future of the internet based on XML3D.

An increasing number of software releases are available as web services and as apps for smartphones in addition to the traditional desktop installation. The only requirement for such services is a network connection for interaction with backend servers. Web servers and the much-celebrated internet cloud are gaining importance in everyday corporate applications. Service providers now offer the capacity of their data centers for many tasks. Thus business data ends up in the cloud. And, when the volume of data throughput increases, an application is granted more hardware resources as needed – or at least in theory. But let’s take one thing at a time. In the first part of our CeBIT coverage we focus on current business hardware – where the 3D trend is as visible as that in the consumer sphere – and on the newest versions of SAP software.

Next Page: Processor and smart Notebook technology