A refreshing start to SAP TechEd && d-code 2014
- Summary:
- SAP surprised us with a dazzling display of production ready technologies at SAP TechEd && d-code 2014. And with nary a mention of HANA or BusinessSuite.
I had no idea what to expect at SAP TechEd && d-code 2014 but I did know that Steve Lucas - President SAP Platform Solutions at SAP would be hosting the opening session. At first sight this sounds like a bizarre choice. Lucas is a sales guy who has the uncanny knack of turning lemons into lemonade. But putting that type of person in front of a room full of hard core techies always runs the risk of backfiring. This time it worked.
A heady mix of insider jokes, poking fun at himself but a smorgasbord of live running demos made for a completely different style of SAP TechEd to that which I expected.
Kicking off with a swipe at Salesforce.com's early stage demos, Lucas announced the show might have been titled 'Reality Force.' It got a good giggle though I doubt the whole audience understood the joke given that most SAP people I come across have little clue about what goes on outside their world. He then went on to suggest:
Let's pick something a bit more traditional, something no-one freakin' understands like Innovation Without Disruption Through Transformation' - no-one knows...you can't even buy it, I can't even sell it, I've no idea what this means, none whatsoever.'
That got a good laugh since everyone in the audience knows only too well how SAP has a penchant for insanely long product titles.
Instead, SAP came up with something far more attractive - 'making it real' - where the emphasis is on running code and solutions that the audience can see. continuing with the self deprecating tone, Lucas avoided the 'H' word (HANA) for much of the opening and only referenced it where it made sense.
There then followed a procession of increasingly interesting and entertaining demos and partnership chats, all delivered in the same light style. Along the way we saw some of my favourite people show truly inventive products and demos. Many are either SAP Mentors or alums.
Vijay Vijayasankar, who I've known for years came on in his role as VP Global Channels business development @MongoDB talking about the partnership between MongoDB and SAP. The key message here - no one company has a lock on all data sources and SAP/MongoDB are now working on a connector for those data.
We saw Chris Paine who has built the first production extension to SuccessFactors - Enterprise Jungle - a way of asking complex questions of the SuccessFactors database via HANA and returning meaningful answers. You can look at it as a variation of the LinkedIn social graph as a way of discovering people appropriate to whatever task is at hand. Enterprise Jungle is a lot more than that but you get the idea.
John Appleby of Bluefin Solutions did a take off of Oracle's super fast Wikipedia search using HANA on a monster Silicon Graphics machine. Pointedly, he said:
We don't care about the speed of the database query, we want to get the result into the browser as fast as possible.
Running the same kind of query that Larry Ellison, CEO Oracle demonstrated ran in 450ms. A predictive query ran in less than 2 seconds. It all makes for tremendous theater but more to the point, Appleby pointed out that even with a high spec machine, SAP HANA can out run Oracle at lower cost. But the real punchline comes in the amount of code needed to get this query running. Two lines inside a standard HANA query.
Elsewhere, Lucas brought folk like Brad Peters, chairman of Birst to show dashboards that mashed up SAP and Salesforce data.
In a subtle nod in the direction of Workday, he brought on Erick Volkerink, CTO Flextronics to talk about sensor data and smart devices across a variety of applications. I say subtle since Flextronics was one of the first companies to rip out SAP HR in favour of Workday.
Continuing the theme, SAP talked about EarlySense - an application that monitors patients in healthcare.
But for me, the highlight of the show was seeing Lucas don a yellow vest and hard hat complete with sensors to illustrate how sensor data can be used for industrial safety purposes. As he moved about the stage and got too close to large cranes, alarms went of in the hat, warning him of impending danger.
As an aside, the technology is at a point where even if a person does get too close for safe working, remote controls can kick in to move the machine out of harm's way.
The juxtaposition between Lucas somewhat ungainly appearance - "I do feel silly" - and that of Parker Harris, co-founder Salesforce being pulled on stage in a ludicrous Captain Lightning outfit at Dreamforce could not have been more poignant. At least to this observer.
Towards the end, Lucas brought on heavyweights Intel to talk data center topics and reinforce the long partnership between SAP and Intel. These things matter for the message of stability to sink in.
My take
The opening SAP TechEd && d-code gig could have gone horribly wrong but it didn't.
This kind of theater is meat and drink for those of us on the conference circuit. Shows have become more entertainment than substance and that's a great shame. People turn up to these gigs to learn about technology, not to be shown a three ring circus. This is especially true of a technical crowd.
On this occasion, SAP got the balance just about right. There was no overt selling but a rapid fire and dazzling display of the possible, mixed in with enough insider jokes for people like myself to spot the difference in style and tone between SAP and its competition. It was very clear that SAP was playing as much to the influencer audience as it was to the paying partners and customers.
Some of us have expressed concern that SAP is too inward looking, too timid, often afraid to point out the differences between itself and the competition. Lucas found that very fine line between fun and seriousness of purpose without climbing into the cesspit of derision so often seen elsewhere. For that, the company deserves considerable credit and for finding enough modernity without unduly sacrificing its past principles.
The measure of success of any keynote comes in how long the audience is prepared to pay attention and as the evening went on, I was looking for signs that people had had enough. At the end, the hall was still very well packed with folk still managing to give warm applause for the presentations on offer. All of that was helped by the fact that Lucas managed to get done just nine minutes overtime. A rare feat on the conference circuit these days with some presentations routinely running 30 or more minutes overtime.
You can argue that preaching to the choir of a company that has, by any standards, had a horribly difficult year, was always going to be a winning tactic. The sense I got was that for the first time, we were treated to the promise of what HANA can deliver by partners well beyond the past diet of 'speeds and feeds.' Apart from one reference to SuccessFactors in a specific demonstration, there was nary a mention of the Business Suite. Instead, we saw the 'art of the possible' presented in a believable manner.
If the rest of the week continues in similar fashion, then SAP will have provided welcome relief to many who have been wondering if their careers are safe inside this company's ecosystem.
Bonus points - Vijay and I recorded a preshow review - check out the video:
Disclosure - SAP is a premier partner at time of writing and covered most of my expenses for attending the show. I am an SAP Mentor alumnus.