Be Updated - IN06: SAP News (1 - 7 February 2015)

[Former Member]

Dear Friends

I thought of sharing weekly SAP news updates which I thought to be relevant for all. The table below contains the major updates for the period February 1 - 7 along with the relevant links. I have also rated the same so that you can properly prioritize it.

Date	Particulars	Rating	Link	Description
01-Feb-15	itelligence, Inc. Launches ready2run.it Solutions for Critical HR Business Processes	4/5	1	1) centralize.it provides a comprehensive HRIS solution that includes integrated employee and manager self service functions, organization, job and pay setup, standard HR processes with pre-configured workflows and globally defined workflows and triggers for employees, managers and HR partners. 2) perform&align.it is a comprehensive performance solution that allows effective employee performance management with comprehensive goal planning, performance form integration, tools to help provide more meaningful employee feedback and organization-wide goal execution alignment. 3) recruit.it provides a comprehensive and simplified talent acquisition solution with proactive hiring tools that incorporates a comprehensive requisition process to measure job compensation and competency data, quick candidate evaluation, talent pipeline management and integrated interview functionality.
02-Feb-15	SAP, HP sign reseller agreement to offer 'SAP Fortify by HP'	3/5	2	Using static application security testing (SAST) analysis and dynamic application security testing (DAST) solutions from HP, SAP Fortify helps provide an immediate, accurate picture of software risk across the enterprise so customers can isolate problem areas within their organization as early as possible.
02-Feb-15	1,000 AstraZeneca employees will run its SAP estate by 2016	3/5	3	As part of this best practice, AstraZeneca has refined its bug-testing processes for upgrades and migrations using a combination of semi-automated testing tool Panaya and SAP solution manager.
02-Feb-15	visualmetrics, SAP BusinessObjects Partner, Awarded Coveted SAP ‘Recognised Expertise in Business Intelligence’	4/5	4	The advanced methodologies visualmetrics Professional Services function has created, namely DRIVE, which scopes and designs BI & Data Warehousing solutions, aligned to the customer’s unique business drivers & requirements, and delivers against those through the creation of greater internal competency within its clients and a collaborative approach to project delivery, demonstrates how visualmetrics Professional Services is able to drive the fullest use and value from the SAP Business Intelligence tools for its customers.
02-Feb-15	iGrafx 2015 Brings Advanced BPM Capabilities with Process Automation, Process Narrative Publishing, Role-Centric Navigation, and SAP Global Template Synchronisation	3/5	5	iGrafx 2015 enables easy deployment of automated processes, creation of detailed process documentation for knowledge sharing, the ability to view and navigate all enterprise information that directly relates to a role within an organisation, and provides businesses that manage global SAP implementations a broader view into how changes affect business operations
03-Feb-15	UXC Oxygen partners Concur for SAP Cloud	3/5	6	The partnership would give UXC Oxygen customers the opportunity to make significant cost savings. Organisations with unmanaged travel programs and manual processes can obtain immediate improvements when they start using Concur solutions. Concur helps organisations to optimise their business travel, expense and invoice management. Using Concur’s integrated Cloud-based solutions, customers can reduce out of policy expenses, improve compliance and have total visibility into their spend.
03-Feb-15	Britehouse, Aveng Trident Steel gold excellence award points the way for SAP implementations	3/5	7	Britehouse, SAP's only African Alliance Partner, won gold in the Business Transformation category at the 2014 SAP Quality Awards for the use of a rapid deployment solution (RDS) for an entirely new SAP implementation. We achieved company-wide transparency and real-time operational control in eight months. Taking the conventional SAP implementation route would have cost us at least 18 months and considerably more money – and been disruptive to the business.
03-Feb-15	Injazat accelerates innovation and supports UAE’s economic growth in partnership with SAP	3/5	8	SAP and Injazat will join forces to provide customers with SAP Business Applications on a fully-managed secure cloud that enables real-time analysis of Big Data, while reducing cost, time to value, and risk.
03-Feb-15	Sitrion Launches the Next Generation in Mobile Productivity with Sitrion ONE	5/5	9	Sitrion’s approach to meet this vision rethinks the concept of mobile applications and gives users a single solution that delivers: 1) Out-of-the-box use cases including task and workflow approvals, CRM, HR and field services 2) All use cases in one native app with the same user experience across all devices 3) Native iOS, Android, and Windows Phone app development up to 90% faster compared to traditional approaches leveraging Microsoft Visual Studio 4) Pre-packaged integrations with SAP, Microsoft SharePoint, Office 365, SQL, Salesforce.com, and open protocols such as REST 5) Cloud hosting, eliminating the need for a separate mobile infrastructure 6) Secure and cost-efficient BYOD including single-sign-on 7) A cost-effective SaaS pay-as-you-go pricing model
03-Feb-15	SAP revamps Business Suite with new UI, HANA analytics	3/5	10	Plattner promised a "soft transition" for customers that move to the HANA-powered Business Suite. Customers that move to HANA will get improved transactional data, but can use their old interfaces and reporting for a time period. At some point, SAP will flip the switch to the new user interface. Plattner said SAP and its customer base will have "a non-disruptive release."
03-Feb-15	SAP Refreshes Flagship Software for Speedier Data Management	4/5	11	Two years ago, SAP shipped a version of its flagship software called Business Suite on Hana that now has about 2,000 customers, said Bernd Leukert, a member of the executive board in charge of products. Those clients have the right to use S4Hana, which is written expressly to take advantage of the Hana database’s capabilities.
04-Feb-15	SAP unveils its biggest thing for 20 YEARS: Core suite with HANA	4/5	12	But of 253,500 SAP customers, HANA is used by just 3,600 at the last count in August 2014. Other new features include a completely new UI that SAP claims works on any device – mobile, desktop and tablet. The UI is built using Fiori, the interface design technology unveiled by SAP in 2013 and described at the time as its predominant user-interface model. It uses HTML5 and CSS and talks to an SAP network gateway to reach the SAP back-end.
04-Feb-15	SAP Unfurls SAP Business Suite 4 Running on HANA in the Cloud	4/5	13	SAP has rewritten more than 400 million lines of code to bring SAP S/4HANA to market in a way that is much simpler to implement and configure. The end result is that the amount of money spent on developing blueprints and configuring applications has been greatly reduced. McDermott says those efforts are in keeping with an SAP commitment to massively reduce the complexity of enterprise software.
04-Feb-15	SAP Helps Saves Lives with Digitized Health Care	4/5	14	Recognizing that many Mexican citizens live far from urban centers, Previta has created a “health train” that offers mobile care clinics across the countryside. In addition, the company has developed a digital healthcare tracking-system that continues monitoring patients; and call centers staffed by medical professionals who provide advice remotely. Another example is in Kenya, where about 1.4 million live births occurred yearly from 2005 to 2010. However, only half of these births were registered because registration offices are few and far apart. According to Professor Jan Eloff, a research expert at the SAP Innovation Center in Pretoria, South Africa, “SAP’s challenge was to develop a simple mobile birth registration application prototype. This app is making it easier for a healthcare provider, with the help of a mobile phone, to register the birth of any child within 90 days.”
04-Feb-15	Presence of IT Receives SAP® APJ Partner Excellence Award 2015 for Cloud HCM Solutions Reseller	3/5	15	Award Highlights Presence of IT’s Outstanding Performance and Commitment to Its Partnership With SAP and Customer Success
04-Feb-15	SAP S4/HANA – the user, analyst and partner views	3/5	16	1) SAP believes it has a 3-5 year window in which to refactor 400 million lines of code or 2) It doesn’t know where to start other than core financials as a moat to protect existing maintenance revenue.
04-Feb-15	SAP S4 HANA marks beginning of the end for the IT stack	3/5	17	With a traditional data footprint of 593gb, the same business on HANA has a data footprint of 118.6. On S4 HANA this would be reduced to 42.3gb, however, if you were to separate historical data, as he advises, then this data footprint would be reduced to 8gb. In theory you could run a whole company on a phone. By separating historical data which cannot be changed, the system will run faster and increase performance by 3x - 5x, with the most of the workload just being read only. One of the key elements of the system will be its real time operating analytics, with the system designed around reducing IT loads by operating on one system. SAP state that the system can simulate the results and performance of companies of SAP size and larger in 3 seconds, the on the fly real time system can also incorporate geospatial data, predict future demand and highlights areas of concern. This builds upon a connected relationship between human and machine where the system can give feedback on the fly and calculate development.
04-Feb-15	SAP S/4Hana: Big Bet On 'Simplified' ERP	4/5	18	SAP wasn't entirely clear in its presentation what applications it will deliver and when, as part of S/4Hana. Wieland Schreiner, executive VP of S/4Hana, told InformationWeek that SAP Simple Finance, a simplified financial-management app introduced last summer, will be available as part of the S/4Hana beta public cloud SaaS service by the end of March. This will be followed by a managed private-cloud service in May and on-premises software by the end of October. SAP will steadily roll out industry-specialized capabilities with S/4Hana, several executives promised, but they didn't offer details on which industries or when. Plattner mentioned that oil and gas, banking, and healthcare would not be on the list for S/4Hana specialization -- any time soon, anyway -- because those business are often averse to running in the cloud.
04-Feb-15	Heinz puts SAP Hana in the cloud to boost global efficiency	3/5	19	Food producer  Heinz has deployed SAP Hana on Virtustream’s xStream platform-as-a-service (PaaS) infrastructure to boost efficiency.
05-Feb-15	Ibhar Tech signs pact with SAP for CPM solution	3/5	20	Ibhar will now integrate and offer the in-memory computing capabilities of the SAP HANA platform with its Corporate Performance Management (CPM) solution. Ibhar CPM 6.4 has been certified by the SAP Integration and Certification Center to run on SAP HANA. The bundled solutions will provide customers with a greater ability to review strategic and operational performance at greater speeds and lower costs.
05-Feb-15	SAP founder Hasso Plattner: 'If this doesn't work, we're dead. Flat-out dead.'	4/5	21	The new products announced on Monday, known as SAP S/4HANA, can still be used with Oracle's database, or other competitive databases. (It would have been suicide for SAP to do otherwise - enterprises do not lightly yank out their databases.) But there are special features customers can only get when using SAP's software with HANA.
05-Feb-15	Heinz Selects Virtustream to Power Its Mission-Critical SAP Cloud Infrastructure	4/5	22	Heinz faced challenges integrating the disparate sources of data running across its high number of on-premises business intelligence platforms. They needed asingle, flexible solution capable of providing granular, real-time visibility into company performance across all of that data to allow Heinz to boost efficiency and sales.  Heinz looked to the cloud for its flexibility and cost-saving potential, and selected Virtustream over several other enterprise cloud services and software vendors for its unique expertise with complex SAP HANA deployments, as well as its consumption-based billing model.
05-Feb-15	S4/HANA: What does SAP’s next generation ERP mean for customers?	3/5	23	Reduced complexity Fast analysis Fiori How to migrate 'simply'?
06-Feb-15	Capgemini Announces Availability of READYUpstream in the Cloud for Upstream Oil & Gas Companies	4/5	24	Earlier this year, Capgemini acquired Strategic Systems & Products Corp.(SSP), a provider of solutions for the upstream oil and gas industry, which included the READYUpstream solution. Since the acquisition, Capgemini has committed to training and adding up to 100 additional READYUpstream consultants to support the solution and to drive the expansion of functionality for the solution. To address the increasing demand for READYUpstream and SAP software-related services, Capgemini established an Upstream Oil & Gas Academy program to train consultants in areas such as production revenue and joint venture accounting, COPAS (Council of Petroleum Accountants Society) rules and unique industry requirements. Capgemini is also expanding the READYUpstream platform to include additional future functionality for upstream analytics, mobile solutions and integration with field data.
06-Feb-15	SAP's S4/HANA master plan: The lingering questions	4/5	25	1) Our database (if you want S4) 2) Two lines of code 3) What's the killer app for HANA? 4) Pricing 5) That lock-in feeling 6) How long?
06-Feb-15	Excel4apps Adds GLSU from Z Option to SAP-Related Product Suite	4/5	26	Excel4apps, a provider of best-in-class Excel-based reporting software for use with SAP and Oracle, has announced that it is now a certified reseller of GLSU for SAP by Z Option, a privately held software developer and SAP software partner. GLSU is the market-leading spreadsheet uploader for SAP Financials, while GL Wand and Reports Wand from Excel4apps facilitate fast downloads of real-time data from SAP Financials and other modules.
06-Feb-15	American Digital Strategically Partners with Symmetry Corporation to Deliver Industry Leading SAP HANA Cloud Solution	3/5	27	Together, American Digital and Symmetry designed a unique enterprise- class cloud solution designed to leverage the high performance of HP technology while offering the most cost effective and efficient cloud infrastructure. The SAP HANA offering in Symmetry’s Cloud was purposely built to meets the growing demand within the SAP marketplace of customers seeking an affordable, high performing, cloud based solution.

Hope this Helps

Regards

Sankalp