SAP introduces slew of new innovations

SAP AG last week announced a series of new innovations at sapphire Now + SAP TechEd, held as a co-located event in Madrid.

Offering unparalleled insights and networking opportunities to help businesses innovate now and enable long-termprofitable business growth, the event showcased the latest developments in analytics, database and technology mobile, and cloud solutions, with applications that are specific to every industry.

SAP introduced its latest innovations as the convergence of mobile, social, big data and cloud enables businesses to deliver a next-generation customer experience.This convergence, combined with core business applications and analytics, is also leading to the creation of new business networks and new ways to collaborate.

Driven by advances in its flagship in-memory platform, SAP HANA, the innovations are enabling SAP and its partner ecosystem to redefine the real-time enterprise by changing the way we consume technology and information.

Among the news releasedat sapphire Now + SAP TechEd were new SAP 360 Customer Solution to bring organisations closer to their customers and enable personalised customer engagement anywhere, on any device.

The SAP 360 Customer solution harnesses the power of in-memory computing, cloud, enterprise mobility and collaboration to enable organisations to revolutionise the way they engage with their customers beyond traditional customer relationship management (CRM).

Organisations will be able to deliver a differentiated customer experience and provide customers with highly personalised offerings, which will accurately reflect the specific customer’s needs and wants. The real-time and true 360-degree view of the customer will be based on the most accurate front-office interactions, back-office transactions and publicly available information from social networks.

A key component of SAP 360 Customer will be the SAP CRM application powered by SAP HANA. Other products to be included are cloud-based solutions such as the SAP Customer OnDemand solution, the SAP Jam social software platform and several mobile solutions.

“This is a game-changing solution that will help companies market better, sell better, service better and truly create remarkable experiences for their customers,” said Bill McDermott, co-CEO, SAP. “With SAP 360 Customer powered by SAP HANA, companies gain true 360-degree customer insight that is real-time, actionable and available anywhere.”

Since launching its cloud strategy in May 2012, SAP has infused the cloud DNA of SuccessFactors, an SAP company, into its cloud business to create the most comprehensive portfolio of cloud applications in the industry. SAP offers 20 applications and suites in the cloud, designed to optimise a company’s most critical assets — people, finances, customers and suppliers.

SAP also announced SAP Financials OnDemand, a real-time, insight-driven financial management solution designed for the cloud.

With an intuitive, easy-to-consume interface and personalised information, it features embedded, dynamic analytics, enabling companies to achieve superior insight across the business.

Customers can use the solution to drive streamlined, end-to-end compliant financial processes as well as real-time financial performance information for everyone in the business.

Powered by  SAP HANA, SAP Financials OnDemand drastically increases the flexibility in which enterprises manage their data while providing the heavy lifting needed to power financial insights for the mobile workforce

The availability of SAP HANA platform support pack stack 5 (SPS 5) powers mission-critical transactional and analytical applications in one platform.

SAP HANA is further collapsing the architectural layers between application and data processing by converging OLTP, OLAP, planning, predictive, text, rules and event stream processing within one in-memory based architecture.

SAP HANA SPS 5 will also support large-scale data center deployments with expanded support for security, high-availability and disaster recovery.

SAP is aggressively fostering open innovations with more than 150 startups delivering solutions on top of the SAP HANA and introducing co-innovation program supporting best-of-breed third-party business intelligence, Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) and back-up/recovery solutions integrating with SAP HANA.

SAP also announced a new wave of solutions that leverage the power of the SAP HANA platform to help businesses transform their industry and derive new actionable value.

More than 30 solutions powered by SAP HANA have been designed to allow fast, reliable and easy adoption from business users.

These new yet non-disruptive solutions aim to enable real-time planning, reporting and analysis on large-scale volumes of data, new sense-and-respond scenarios and personalised interactions with consumers.

SAP also plans to deliver six new apps for Windows 8, bringing new innovations for SAP customers:

SAP NetWeaver Cloud Applications Partner Program was also unveiled. This new program gives partners full access to the SAP NetWeaver Cloud service, which will support them in the development of cloud-based applications.It offers a comprehensive set of enablement tools, benefits and support that will help them to quickly and efficiently develop, market and sell cloud applications that meet customers’ needs.