2016 Year in Review - Top Blog Posts

As we end the year, we like to look back at some of the biggest news from 2016. This year was filled with new product announcements and big acquisitions in the SAP landscape. Our top blog posts from 2016 reflect these major announcements, along with recognition for Approyo from the Inc 5000.

Top Blog Posts of the year:

1. SAP Announces BW/4HANA

SAP unveiled SAP BW/4HANA, a next-generation data warehouse application for running a real-time digital enterprise.

2. SAP Announces HANA 2 in-memory database platform

SAP unveiled SAP HANA 2, the next-generation of the SAP HANA platform. These announcements were made at SAP TechEd Barcelona held on Nov. 8–10.

3. What are the differences between SAP BW/4HANA and a traditional data warehouse?

Traditional data warehouses rely on a extract-transform-load model to centralize data before analysis. This results in expensive data movement and duplication, and introduces latency that means real-time analytics are impossible.

 SAP BW/4HANA enables a more flexible, real-time approach. As SAP HANA has proven, in-memory performance means that operational analytics can move back into the application, SAP S/4HANA is built around this, thus workload is moving from traditional data warehouses to SAP S/4HANA already. In addition, the vast amounts of data in data lakes and the Internet of Things will overwhelm a “centralize and duplicate” approach, so SAP BW/4HANA is designed to leverage smart data streaming (IoT), and smart data integration (to deliver a logical data warehouse approach).

4. SAP to acquire Altiscale

Big news in the SAP Ecosystem! SAP is acquiring Altiscale.Altiscale provides us the ability to take everything into a cloud, take all the data and bring it into real-time with SAP HANA.

Altiscale is a four-year-old startup that specializes in cloud-based Hadoop and Spark services. Altiscale differentiates itself from these low-cost providers by combining high-performance Hadoop and Spark services with integrated ingestion, transformation, and analytical capabilities.

5. Approyo Ranks No. 120 on the 2016 Inc. 5000

Inc. magazine ranked Approyo NO. 120 on its 35th annual Inc. 5000, the most prestigious ranking of the nation's fastest-growing private companies. The list represents a unique look at the most successful companies within the American economy’s most dynamic segment— its independent small businesses. Companies such as Microsoft, Dell, Domino’s Pizza, Pandora, Timberland, LinkedIn, Yelp, Zillow, and many other well-known names gained their first national exposure as honorees of the Inc. 5000.

Are you ready to experience SAP HANA?
Don’t let the new digital world pass you by. Approyo can help your company deal with the changing world. Our SAP HANA and Big Data solutions address these important questions and more. Let us show you today! Set up a free consultation.

Last Minute Christmas Gifts for Techies

Some people are getting coal for Christmas this year.  But for those who have made the “nice” list... it’s a great year for some really cool gifts in technology.

If you’re looking to buy for the good little men and women into technology... I’d start with the basics.

This techie gift might sound unusual, but consider a new router/Wi-Fi device called EERO. Basically this is Mesh based Wi-Fi in the secured format that allows you to set up your Wi-Fi in your central location ….but get this.  You then plug in into a wall socket, and using the electricity in the wiring of your house, individual pods in those pods help you get a much better Wi-Fi signal in a more secure Wi-Fi signal.

Next one I really like is VR.  I'm all about virtual reality and there are number of different virtual reality solutions, from Google, Samsung and others. Now as much as I really like them, it's a new technology, so they're not the perfect virtual reality box or eyewear. But what they do is give you the belief that you are involved inside that game or the solution.

We're talking about Samsung’s VR solution, and Google VR - these are all great tools that you can use for virtual reality.

One of the gifts that every technologist must have is the Amazon echo, this comes in either a Dot, the original version or a wireless version called the Tap.  The Alexa app is fantastic. It has an ability to be able to utilize her for all the activities that you need such as your calendar, fantasy football or your day-to-day schedule. The voice recognition of Alexa is truly fantastic… with incredible third-party apps that are now available in the Amazon store there's freeware as well as paid apps that you can use with your Amazon Echo. It truly gives you the ability to have a voice automated assistant right there in your office, your kitchen, living room or your bedroom that will take care of your heat and cooling temperature settings and all other activities as programmed… truly a must have!

My last pick for this Christmas season is the new Nintendo called the NES Classic Edition.  It brings me back to my youth.  It comes preloaded with 23 of Nintendo’s most popular games including Mario and all the different activities that he had.  It’s definitely one of those fun toys to play on your phone or on a new handheld machine.  Forget Pokemon - we’re going with some major old school fun here.

Well, those are my choices for this year's Christmas gifts for us techies.  If you have one of us in your family, I highly recommend looking at them - I think there's some cool fun toys and remember Christmas is about giving!

God bless and Merry Christmas!

Unlocking New Business Potential: Real-World Business Scenarios for SAP S/4HANA

SAP S/4HANA’s combination of technology and simplicity provides improved performance in orders of magnitude.

Beyond the underlying changes in technologies powering this new wave of ERP with SAP S/4HANA, are new business capabilities that simply weren’t possible before. These are not merely incremental improvements based on processes that have existed before, but transformation change delivered to each department, unlocking new value to the business.

Here are four such real-world business scenarios:

1. Supply Chain
Legacy: In a legacy ERP solution, inventory information is distributed among multiple database tables. That may be fine when counting inventory at night in the warehouse. But a financial task called a Post Goods Issue (PGI) requires locking the tables so that the transactions can post. In a high volume environment, this locking means that everyone must wait in order to proceed. That can mean that truck drivers at a logistics center may be asked to wait several hours for the legacy database to complete a batch update.

S/4HANA: In SAP S/4HANA, the underlying data model is simplified and accelerated so that inventory data is processed in real-time – and truck drivers can get back on the road. The S/4HANA solution also has the intelligence
to propose solutions to supply chain problems – and then implement them automatically.

2. Sales & Marketing
Legacy: With legacy ERP, there is no way to monitor social media feeds without add-on solutions that wend their way through the system. As a result, sales and marketing professionals can’t follow their customers in real-time.

S/4HANA: With SAP S/4HANA, your sales and marketing professionals can pull data directly from social media channels and analyze it in real-time. So they can identify trends, respond immediately to customers, and create targeted promotions. And they can market to an audience of one.

3. Forecasting
Legacy: With legacy ERP, forecasts can take days to produce – by which time they are stale.

S/4HANA: With SAP S/4HANA, you can run infinite what-if simulations that combine internal and external data in real-time – and evaluate the impact of each scenario. As a result, you can be better positioned to capitalize on opportunities – and mitigate risk.

4. Finance
Legacy: With legacy ERP, closing the books on the quarter or the year can be a weeks-long process with dozens of tables required to manage financial data from business units, headquarters, and regions. The process can be prone to errors and delays.

S/4HANA: With SAP S/4HANA, all business units and regions are consolidated into a single table that can be viewed in real-time – any time. That presents the opportunity to generate an anytime, “soft close” that issues financial statements immediately so that the accounting department can focus more on business outcomes, then reporting.

Download our Case Study: Saving the Trucking Industry with SAP HANA

Are you ready to experience SAP HANA?
Don’t let the new digital world pass you by. Approyo can help your company deal with the changing world. Our SAP HANA and Big Data solutions address these important questions and more. Let us show you today! Set up a free consultation.

Ask Approyo - What makes SAP BW/4HANA Different?

Leveraging the native power of SAP HANA, SAP BW/4HANA delivers agile data warehousing solutions to support real-time analysis and decisionmaking.

Simple, open, and agile, SAP BW/4HANA offers high-performance, flexible development and a modern user experience (UX.) BW/4HANA is for all your data:, SAP Application data, third party data, unstructured data, geo-spatial data and more....

SAP BW/4HANA is the only data warehousing solution designed for realtime transactional and analytical processing environments. It's data at your fingertips with future-proof landscape management.

SAP BW/4HANA is more than a database…

• BW/4HANA solves analytics problems in seconds that take other systems days
• BW/4HANA saves you time with pre-delivered structure
• BW/4HANA means you have one version of the truth
• BW/4HANA is ready for the internet of things at petabyte scale

Key Product Benefits

Simplicity

• Get up and running sooner and keep running at lower cost
• 50% - 70% reduction in development efforts

Openness

• Manage all kinds of data whether in SAP applications or SQL systems
• Access all models through an open SQL interface

Modern UX

• Simplify access for everyone, not just database experts
• New UX for all users

High Performance

• Leverage huge amounts of data in real time for competitive advantage
• 14x faster query performance, 10x faster data processing

Let Approyo help! 
Approyo can help your company deal with the changing world. Our SAP HANA and Big Data solutions address these trends. Let us show you how! Set up a free consultation today.

Approyo Named Owler ‘HOT in 2016’ Winner in Palo Alto

Approyo is proud to announce today it was named an Owler HOT in 2016 winner in Palo Alto​.

Recipients were chosen based on several different metrics, including number of followers on Owler, insights collected from our community, social media followers, and blog posts over the past year.

“We’ve sorted through database of millions of contributions from our community and landed on the top trending companies from around the world,” said Jim Fowler, CEO at Owler. “Being Hot In 2016 is an accomplishment to be proud of.”

To see Approyo's company profile on Owler, go to our profile​.

About Owler
Owler is the crowdsourced competitive intelligence platform that business professionals use to outsmart their competition, gain competitive insights, and uncover the latest industry news and alerts. Owler is powered by an active community of 800K business professionals that contribute unique business insights such as competitors, private company revenue, and CEO ratings. From startups all the way to large enterprises (including 96% of the Fortune 500), CEOs, salespeople, marketers, product managers, and all types of business professionals use Owler daily.

Approyo Inc 5000 Interview Series - Alison Podworski of Alison May Public Relations

Earlier this year, Approyo had the honor of being ranked #120 in the Inc. Magazine 34th Annual List of America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies.

Approyo CEO Chris Carter recently attended the Inc. 5000 Conference and Gala and was able to speak with a number of CEOs and business influencers to talk about Business Success, tips and what it takes to the the Inc. 5000 list.

Chris sits down with Alison Podworski of Alison May Public Relations at the Inc. 5000 Conference & Gala to talk about the journey to the Inc 5000.

About Alison:
Alison Podworski is the President and CEO of Alison May Public Relations. She is a former news reporter, who has worked throughout the Northeast at television stations in New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Alison uses her expertise in journalism to educate her clients in media training and crisis communications. She has garnered coverage for her clients in media outlets such as Fox News, NBC News, Huffington Post, and Aol.Com.

The entrepreneur is also a moderator and keynote speaker on topics including public relations, reputation management, and social media. She has interviewed public figures such as Steve Wozniak, Marcia Clark, Howard Dean, Karl Rove and Jim Messina, to name a few.

Alison has been seen on Dr. Oz and been quoted in multiple news outlets. Alison is a contributing writer for Women’s Prospects Magazine and Thread M.B. She encourages her clients to think outside the box, be bold, and do what everyone else is not doing. Alison resides in Massachusetts with her husband and three young daughters.

Contact Approyo Today!
Don’t miss this exciting time to take your business to the next level.
Approyo can help your company deal with the changing world. Our SAP HANA and Big Data solutions address these important questions and more. Let us show you today! Set up a free consultation.

Ask Approyo - What’s new in SAP HANA 2?

Since SAP announced SAP HANA 2 at SAP TechEd Barcelona earlier this month, many people have been asking, "What's really new about SAP HANA 2?"SAP has been releasing more information about SAP HANA 2 since the announcement.

Here are some of the highlights of the new features found in SAP HANA 2.

• Database management: SAP HANA 2 helps your IT organization ensure business continuity with high-availability, security, workload management, and administration enhancements. For example, the new active/active read-enabled feature helps IT take advantage of secondary systems – previously used only for system replication – to improve operations by offloading read-intensive workloads.
• Data management: With this release, you can make the most of all data regardless of where it resides, with enhancements to enterprise modeling, data integration, data quality, and dynamic tiering. For example, the Web application SAP® Enterprise Architecture Designer, edition for SAP HANA, helps your IT organization manage complex information architectures and visualize the potential impact of new technologies before they are implemented.
• Analytical intelligence: SAP HANA 2 helps your developers embed rich insight into applications through enhanced analytical-processing engines for text, spatial, graph, and streaming data. For example, we have added new algorithms for classification, association, time series, and regression to the predictive analytics library, enabling data scientists to discover new patterns and incorporate machine learning in custom applications.
• Application development: SAP HANA 2 helps developers build and deploy next-generation applications with enhanced capabilities for the application server and expanded development tool sets and language coverage. For example, a new file-processor application programming interface lets developers embed file filters into applications to extract text or metadata from documents to deliver deeper insights. 

Are you ready to experience the next version of SAP HANA?
Don’t let the new digital world pass you by. Approyo can help your company deal with the changing world. Our SAP HANA and Big Data solutions address these important questions and more. Let us show you today! Set up a free consultation.