SAP announced new capabilities, enhancements, and further unification of the Business Technology Platform portfolio to help companies transform data into business value.
SAP’s Business Technology Platform enables developers and business users to access integrated, end-to-end services and tools to realize value along with three critical areas of IT: data excellence, process integration, and extensions. The announcement was made at the SAPPHIRE NOW Converge conference, being held online June 15–19, 2020.
“Many customers I have spoken with have expressed the need for agility and quick time to value, made even more urgent by the COVID-19 pandemic,” SAP CTO and Executive Board member Juergen Mueller said. “To achieve both, technology becomes even more important, and SAP can help meet those challenges. We’ve added significant enhancements to every major component of our Business Technology Platform to help customers across all industries overcome obstacles stemming from the ubiquity of data, the complexity of IT, and business volatility.”
Organizations such as Parkland Health and Hospital System in Dallas are using SAP’s Business Technology Platform combined with Qualtrics XM Platform for experience management to perform analytics and to plan for sufficient patient capacity, a critical need during the COVID-19 crisis.
“We at Parkland are dedicated to the health and well-being of individuals and communities that we serve by setting the standard of excellence for public and academic healthcare systems,” said Parkland Health and Hospital System’s chief data officer Scott Harrison. “Our clinical staff utilizes electronic dashboards built with SAP’s Business Technology Platform for analytics and planning and Qualtrics XM Platform for sentiment analysis. We understand that a fully integrated technology foundation is critical for the 240,000-plus emergency room patients we care for yearly, and for supporting our future growth and innovation.”
The Henkel business unit Adhesive Technologies, the global market leader for adhesives, sealants, and functional coatings, is building an app for its some 4,500 sales representatives based on SAP’s Business Technology Platform.
“We aim to create a modern and effective digital workplace environment, increasing speed and efficiency for sales activities and thus strengthening the experience of customers globally,” said Sascha Latzberg, corporate director, Sales & Channel Excellence CRM at Henkel Adhesive Technologies. “Our digital CRM platform enables us to be fast and flexible and increases the independence of sales representatives as they travel and work from home. With the help of SAP’s Business Technology Platform and our advanced analytics we can leverage CRM data for insights that help us create additional customer value.”
Whether on-premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid landscape, SAP’s Business Technology Platform allows companies to:
- Manage diverse data stores in real-time with SAP HANA
- Integrate and extend enterprise applications across any IT landscape using SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite and SAP Cloud Platform Extension Suite
- Analyze data for better planning and decision-making with the SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Data Warehouse Cloud solutions
- Continuously innovate their businesses with new intelligent technologies
Data Excellence
This year marks the 10-year anniversary of SAP HANA, which now has more than 32,400 customers. The latest version, SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 05, is planned for delivery at the end of June. It will support hybrid scenarios with the SAP HANA Cloud data platform and provide new capabilities, including the enhanced SAP HANA native storage extension for simplifying data management and lowering the total cost of ownership. According to IDC’s projection, SAP HANA customers will realize a 679 percent average five-year return on investment. SAP HANA Cloud provides a powerful data management and analytics foundation for innovative solutions such as SAP Data Warehouse Cloud. It is now available on Amazon Web Services, in addition to Microsoft Azure, to provide greater flexibility and choice to customers moving to the cloud. SAP plans to have an open trial for SAP HANA Cloud for early July.
SAP Data Warehouse Cloud and SAP Analytics Cloud include an expansive lineup of prebuilt business content packages consisting of end-to-end business scenarios that answer key business and technical questions for companies looking to quickly gain insights from data. The latest update of SAP Data Warehouse Cloud includes business content centered on the retail industry. A rapidly growing ecosystem with hundreds of partners is expected to provide more prebuilt content and data connectors for SAP Data Warehouse Cloud on SAP App Center.
To help business users and analysts more easily create understandable data models using business terms, the new business layer function of SAP Data Warehouse Cloud is planned for release in the early third-quarter 2020. SAP Data Warehouse Cloud also will offer built-in and deeply integrated data flow functionality, allowing customers to select from a broad range of connectors for building highly scalable data integration processes to and from any data source.
To offer customers even more value and benefits, SAP has been integrating more products and functions. SAP Data Warehouse Cloud is more tightly integrated with SAP Analytics Cloud for a more unified data and analytics environment. This allows for a clear, accurate picture of all data for turning analytics into real business insight. The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.3 platform was just released on June 12, 2020, and is more tightly integrated with SAP Analytics Cloud for an easier transition to the cloud. Planning and predictive functionalities are further integrated in the latest update of SAP Analytics Cloud for faster, more powerful planning, and is currently available for a free trial.
Read how today’s intelligent enterprises, such as Geberit AG, Porsche AG, and Idorsia Pharmaceuticals Ltd., plan to use the power of SAP HANA Cloud, SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, SAP Analytics Cloud, and SAP Cloud Platform.
Integration
With new, simplified pricing of SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite, customers can benefit from value-based packaging and attractive pricing as well as simplified purchase and consumption of integration services. Customers can now sign up once to use all capabilities instead of going through licensing multiple services. This offers them the flexibility to consume a service within the suite on-demand at any point in time with streamlined, message-based metering. Further, SAP is delivering prebuilt integration packs between SAP applications with standard messages at no additional charge.
Extension
Workflow enhancements with SAP Cloud Platform Extension Suite and new live process content packages will help customers adapt and extend their business processes on the fly and in real-time to meet changing demands and increase efficiency. Business process experts can now manage workflows on live running processes such as for capital expenditure approvals by using dedicated tooling to discover, configure, and run application extensions, all without help from an IT department. This results in a faster time to value and lower implementation costs.
Honeywell and SAP recently announced that they have teamed up to create a joint cloud-based solution for the real estate industry. The solution is planned to be based on Honeywell Forge and SAP Cloud Platform and aims to streamline operational and business data to drive greater efficiencies, improve company performance by gaining valuable business insights, and improve employee experience management through powerful sentiment data analysis. Read more details here.
