Last week, on April 21 – 22, 2015, Salzburg, the fourth biggest city in Austria, birthplace of the famous composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and known for the Salzburg Festival, was host to the SAP IT Summit Austria.
The SAP IT Summit combined two events in one – the SAP Business Forum and the SAP CCoE Forum. With more than 110 sessions, 8 showcases, a partner exhibition area and different keynotes, roundtables and theatre sessions the forum was the perfect place to build a bridge between IT know-how and the relevant business context. The overarching theme of the conference was SAP’s “Run Simple” strategy.
Selected students, professors and teachers from the SAP University Alliances community had the chance to attend the summit to learn more about SAP products, get up to date about co-innovation projects and extend their business network. 13 students from 7 different universities in Austria and Germany supported the event team on the show floor but also had the opportunity to listen to product presentations, experience SAP products at the various showcases, participate in Design Thinking and IoT workshops and meet influencers from the SAP ecosystem. Furthermore the University Alliances team was present in the exhibition area to inform interested customer and partner about possible collaboration projects and events.
The first day kicked-off with the opening keynote by Klaus Sickinger, MD of SAP Austria, and Peter Mittemeyer, Head of Business Innovation & Transformation at SAP SE. The keynote focused on the challenges but also opportunities velocity and fast pace brings to the IT market. With the amount of data that is being produced in today’s society and the closer interactions and linkage in a networked economy, new business models arise. This was illustrated by examples from the smart city concept that combines the city, suppliers and travelers with each other, connected driving where services are added to the automotive industry, and agriculture where tractors become more intelligent by collecting, connecting and analyzing data.
After the keynote the attendees had the choice to attend presentations, roundtable discussions or demo shows at 8 different tracks. The open space concept allowed everyone to plan their agenda according to their needs.
Amongst the speakers were also our colleagues from Academy Cube who provided insights and best practices for using Success Factors for Talent Management, Prof. Dr. Axel Polleres from WU Vienna who participated in a roundtable discussion on Big Data Scientists and Prof. Biedermann from Montanuniversität who led a roundtable on Predictive Maintenance.
Hands-on IoT workshop
On Tuesday, participants had the chance to attend a workshop for developer. During the one day workshop the attendees had to develop an IoT solution with the SAP HANA Cloud Platform and RaspberryPI to secure an end-to-end distribution cold chain during the delivery process of a frozen fish. 1 professor and 4 students from the University Alliances community took up the challenge and participated in the workshop to demonstrate their development skills.
Witnessing ”Run Simple“ on the show floor
What better way is there to get to know a product than to experience it live? This takes away complexity and makes it easier to understand abstract scenarios. Therefore the show floor was transformed into a huge IT and sports playground. This included showcases such as the Smart Vending Machine (an end-to-end/M2M scenario for an improved and demand-orientated maintenance of a vending machine), 3D Printers (demonstrating automated customer batch production), Hamburger Hafen (improving the arrangements with Smart Port Logistics), and the DFB showcase (illustrating the power of SAP Match Insights). In addition to that, further showcases were available in the SAP Run Simple Truck that currently tours all across Europe to the customers doorstep to demonstrate SAP solutions live.
In order to also include a fun part into the event, the sport and fun area with table soccer, photo booth, and an interactive reaction wall invited the 500 attendees of the summit to interact and show off their competitiveness and interact with each other in an informal way.
First SAP Student MeetUp in Austria
The Run Simple Truck was also the venue for the first SAP Student MeetUp in Austria. This event format brings together students and subject matter experts to experience SAP products, technology and design, foster exchange, and drive innovation.
In the truck, the students met the Run Simple Truck team and COO Gerhard Zeiner and experienced Smart Glasses and learned more about predictive maintenance with examples from sports (Formula 1) and IoT (pump scenario). With the help of predictive maintenance companies already know well in advance when a problem will occur and can therefore prevent possible faults in advance.
More visual impressions about the event are available on Facebook.
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