Approyo CEO Chris Carter appears on DM Radio, Google and Amazon: The Future of Data Centers?

Approyo CEO Chris Carter was a guest on the latest episode of DM radio, "Google and Amazon: The Future of Data Centers?" with host Erik Kavanagh.

About this episode:
Time was, every major corporation built their own data centers! You found an appropriate site with enough power and cooling, bought all the hardware, set up the operating systems, loaded your applications, and then, sooner or later, had yourself a data center. These days, one visionary summed it up like this: “Friends don’t let friends build data centers.” The future is clearly in the Cloud, with Amazon, Microsoft, Google and others vying for those dollars. What does that mean for your organization?

Listen now: http://dmradio.dataversity.net/google-and-amazon-the-future-of-data-centers/ 

Guests:

• Keno Fischer, Julia Computing
• Chris Carter, Approyo
• Patrick Mcfaddin, Datastax

About DM Radio:
DM Radio is a weekly, one-hour live radio show broadcast Thursdays at 3 PM Eastern / 12 PM Pacific. It is owned and produced by The Bloor Group in partnership with DATAVERSITY. It is currently syndicated across three networks and broadcast live on WFOY and GAB Radio Network (please note: These are live radio stations which broadcast 24 hours per day. DM Radio and its affiliates have no control over any other show outside DM Radio.) Each show includes host Eric Kavanagh, a guest Analyst, and several industry experts brought together to discuss hot topics in Data Management. Every show is recorded and converted to a podcast within two US business days of the show. Some shows will keep the conversation going in a Webinar format at a later date or be followed by an article to dive deeper into the topics.

About Eric Kavanagh:
Eric Kavanagh CEO, The Bloor Group  Eric has more than 20 years of experience as a career journalist with a keen focus on enterprise technologies. He designs and moderates a variety of New Media programs, including The Briefing Room, DM Radio, as well as GARP’s Leadership and Research Webinars. His mission is to help people leverage the power of software, methodologies, and politics to get things done.

SAP Positioned as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Management Solutions for Analytics for Seventh Consecutive Year

SAP announced that it has been positioned by Gartner Inc., the leading provider of research and analysis on the global information technology industry, as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Data Management Solutions for Analytics report — where SAP has been positioned as a Leader since 2013.

The evaluation is based on completeness of vision and ability to execute. According to the report, “Gartner defines a data management solution for analytics (DMSA) as a complete software system that supports and manages data in one or many file management systems, most commonly a database or multiple databases.”

“We are convinced that our improvement on the ‘ability to execute’ axis in the Leaders quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Data Management Solutions for Analytics report — as compared to the previous year — reflects the success of our customers and the value they create with SAP HANA. It’s the only data management platform with a multimodel database, advanced analytics, machine learning and AI capabilities,” said Gerrit Kazmaier, senior vice president, SAP Database and Data Management and SAP Analytics.

“Looking ahead over the next year, we are very focused on making enterprises more intelligent through our proven solutions for analytics and our data management portfolios available on premise and in the cloud.”

To qualify for inclusion in this Magic Quadrant, DMSA vendors must have had to support one or more of the following four use cases Gartner identifies that support analytics: traditional data warehouse, real-time data warehouse, context-independent data warehouse and logical data warehouse.

Read the full announcement on SAP.com 

What's new in SAP Data Hub 2.4?

Introduced in 2017, SAP Data Hub is the all-in-one data orchestration solution discovers, refines, enriches, and governs any type, variety, and volume of data across your entire distributed data landscape. It supports your intelligent enterprise by rapidly delivering trustworthy data to the right users with the right context at the right time.

SAP Data Hub 2.4 was released in Janaury 2019. While this is an incremental release, following the Introduction of SAP Data Hub 2.3 major release, it is more than just corrections and bug fixes. There are several new features and key enhancements which provide greater flexibility and more protection for customers.

What's new in SAP Data Hub 2.4:

Extending native connectivity to support more databases and applications
Today, SAP Data Hub already provides a broad spectrum of connectivity to big data and enterprise sources. As integration remains a building block for the digital transformation, one of the priorities is to continuously grow the native connectivity with more enterprise applications.

In this release, SAP added direct integration with several structured data sources including MS SQL Server, MySQL, IBM DB2, and Google BigQuery. Once a connection is established, SAP Data Hub will automatically crawl the metadata for these connected sources. You can then browse, view, profile, catalog, and share the data directly within the Metadata Explorer. In addition, there are more than 350 predefined operators and data pipelines that already exist ready to be used for supporting broader scenarios.

Enabling Data Lineage for disparate & distributed data sources
SAP introduced the SAP Data Hub Metadata Explorer in the previous release. The goal is to provide a centralized location for all data professionals to gain insights on diverse datasets in today’s modern distributed landscape.

This release SAP is increasing our investment in metadata governance by offering end-to-end support for data lineage at the schema level. You can use the new lineage analysis feature to view a graphical representation of the source, transformations, and dependencies of a dataset. Lineage information can be extracted from computed datasets such as SQL View, and other types of computations including stored procedures, BW transformations, datastores, and the Data Hub pipeline modeler.

The Data Lineage feature will further help you to gain visibility about your data assets and greatly simplify root cause analysis. You will have a clear understanding of the data’s origins, how the data may have changed, and which areas might be consuming the data.

The initial support is focused on SAP connections including Business Warehouse, HANA, Vora and data pipelines. Our plan is to extend this functionality towards all supported sources as well as allow a complete audit trails for business security and compliance in future release
.
Providing a new Anonymization operator for individual’s privacy protection
With GDPR being enforced in 2018, SAP knows meeting this regulation is still on everyone’s mind. Previously, you could use the data mask operator to mask out all or a portion of the data that contains sensitive information. Now, you can use the new anonymization operator to further protect the privacy of each individual identity by grouping similar records into a category. Thus, you can discover statistically valid insights from your data without risking re-identification of individuals.

View the full post on www.approyo.com

9.5 reasons to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA today

SAP S/4HANA is the digital core – the nerve center – of your entire business. It consolidates internal and external elements into a single, living structure that goes beyond traditional ERP software. In other words, it connects all your processes, provides you with live information and insights, and seamlessly integrates your enterprise with the digital world at large.

SAP S/4HANA 1809
SAP S/4HANA 1809, released in late 2018, significantly increases the possibilities for digital transformation across all lines of business. Imagine giving voice commands to your SAP ERP system and obtaining instant analytics. Or automating a large portion of your business processes, freeing employees for value-added activities. The streamlined architecture of the 1809 release is also scalable, enabling you to drive growth and profitability.

Enter the Intelligent Enterprise
Intelligent enterprises effectively use their data assets to achieve their desired outcomes faster – and with less risk. SAP is committed to helping every customer become a smart, best-run  business and make the world run better. SAP S/4HANA 1809 is the core to the intelligent Enterprise.

Intelligent Technologies will help SAP Applications differentiate while at the same time natively comprehending the context of the business application. This includes higher-order intelligence with many scenarios oriented along business outcomes and relevant to lines of business, feedback mechanisms leveraging IoT and business networks as data sources for training feedback, as well as actionable insights in order to derive connecting insights to strategic decisions via a consistent User Experience (UX).

9.5 reasons to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA right now:

1. Improve order fulfillment
2. Increase customer satisfaction
3. Reduce manufacturing error rates
4. Reduce procurement costs
5. Respond to market fluctuations faster than ever
6. Streamline your supply chain
7. Improve your manufacturing cycle time
8. Streamline your supply chain
9. Reduce unplanned downtime
9.5 The Intelligent Enterprise

Download the Whitepaper: 9.5 reasons to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA right now

SAP Releases Q4 and 2018 Results

SAP Announces Preliminary Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2018 Results on www.sap.com. The results continue to show growth for SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA. This growth mirrors Approyo's growth and accolades throughout 2019 and align with our vision as the premier SAP Platform as a service partner.

SAP Hits or Exceeds All Raised Outlook Metrics - Targets More Than 3x Cloud Revenue by 2023

• Cloud Subscription and Support Revenue Up 32% (IFRS) and Up 38% (Non-IFRS at Constant Currencies)  in FY 2018 
• Cloud Backlog Increased 30%, Exceeding €10 Billion at Year-End  
• Cloud and Software Revenue Up 5% (IFRS) and Up 10% (Non-IFRS at Constant Currencies) in FY 2018
• Cloud and Software Order Entry Exceeds €10 Billion, Up 14% at Constant Currencies in FY 2018
• Operating Profit Up 17% (IFRS) and Up 10% (Non-IFRS at Constant Currencies) in FY 2018  
• Guiding for Up to 39% Non-IFRS Cloud Subscription and Support Revenue Growth and Up to 10% Non-IFRS Cloud and Software Revenue Growth in 2019 at Constant Currencies  
• Guiding for Up to 11.5% Non-IFRS Operating Profit Growth in 2019 at Constant Currencies – Faster Than  Total Revenue Growth
• Targeting More Than €35 Billion in Total Revenue by 2023 

Full Year 2018 Highlights:
Even after multiple guidance raises during the year SAP met or exceeded all of its 2018 outlook metrics.

For the full year new cloud bookings were €1.81 billion, up 25% (up 28% at constant currencies). Cloud subscriptions and support backlog increased 30%, reaching €10 billion at year-end. Cloud subscriptions and support revenue was €4.99 billion (IFRS) or €5.21 billion (non-IFRS at constant currencies), achieving the full year outlook (€5.15 to €5.25 billion non-IFRS at constant currencies). Software revenue decreased 5 % year over year to €4.65 billion (IFRS), flat year over year (non-IFRS at constant currencies). New cloud and software license order entry exceeded €10 billion and grew by 14% at constant currencies year over year in the full year. Cloud and software revenue was €20.62 billion (IFRS) or €21.58 billion (non-IFRS at constant currencies), exceeding the full year outlook (€21.15 to €21.35 billion non-IFRS at constant currencies). Total revenue was €24.71 billion (IFRS) or €25.96 billion (non-IFRS at constant currencies), exceeding the full year outlook (€25.20 to €25.50 billion non-IFRS at constant currencies).

SAP’s rapidly expanding cloud business together with solid growth in support revenue continued to drive the share of more predictable revenue. The total of non-IFRS cloud subscriptions & support revenue and non-IFRS software support revenue was 65% of non-IFRS total revenue for the full year 2018, up 2 percentage points.

For the full year, operating profit was €5.71 billion (IFRS) or €7.48 billion (non-IFRS at constant currencies), achieving the full year outlook (€7.425 to €7.525 billion non-IFRS at constant currencies). Earnings per share increased 2% to €3.42 (IFRS) and decreased 2% to €4.35 (non-IFRS).

Operating cash flow for the full year was €4.30 billion, a decrease of 15% year over year. Free cash flow decreased 25% year over year to €2.84 billion. At year end, net liquidity was –€2.49 billion.

Fourth Quarter 2018 highlights
In the fourth quarter, new cloud bookings were €736 million, up 25% (23% at constant currencies). Cloud subscriptions and support revenue grew 41% year over year to €1.41 billion (IFRS), up 40% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Software revenue grew 1% year over year to €2.09 billion (IFRS), up 8% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). New cloud and software license order entry grew 18% at constant currencies year over year. Cloud and software revenue grew 9% year over year to €6.32 billion (IFRS), up 11% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Total revenue grew 9% year over year to €7.43 billion (IFRS), up 13% (non-IFRS at constant currencies).

In the fourth quarter operating profit increased by 22% year over year to €2.40 billion (IFRS), up 8% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Earnings per share decreased 8% to €1.41 (IFRS) and decreased 15% to €1.51 (non-IFRS).

SAP S/4HANA
SAP S/4HANA is at the core of the Intelligent Enterprise. With S/4HANA, customers automate more and more of their business processes enabling employees to focus on higher-value tasks. It detects patterns, predicts outcomes and suggests actions empowering companies across all industries to reinvent their business models for the digital economy.

S/4HANA adoption grew to approximately 10,500 customers, up 33% year over year. In the fourth quarter, more than 40% of the additional S/4HANA customers were net new.

Business Outlook 2019 
Reflecting SAP’s strong cloud and overall business momentum as well as the Qualtrics acquisition with a January 23rd, 2019 closing date, the Company is providing the following 2019 outlook:

• Non-IFRS cloud subscriptions and support revenue is expected to be in a range of €6.7 − €7.0 billion at constant currencies (2018: €5.03 billion), up 33% – 39% at constant currencies.  
• Non-IFRS cloud and software revenue is expected to be in a range of €22.4 – €22.7 billion at constant currencies (2018: €20.66 billion), up 8.5% – 10% at constant currencies.  
• Non-IFRS operating profit is expected to be in a range of €7.7 – €8.0 billion at constant currencies (2018: €7.16 billion), up 7.5% – 11.5% at constant currencies.  
• In addition, SAP expects total revenues to increase strongly, at a rate slightly lower than operating profit.
• The comparative numbers for 2018 do not include Qualtrics. Callidus revenue and profits are included in the comparative numbers from the April 5th, 2018 acquisition close date. 
• While SAP’s full-year 2019 business outlook is at constant currencies, actual currency reported figures are expected to be impacted by currency exchange rate fluctuations as the Company progresses through the year. 

Read the full results: https://www.sap.com/docs/download/investors/2018/sap-2018-q4-statement.pdf

Cloud Computing 101: Digital Twins

Digital Twins is a concept that has been around for decades, but has recently become a hot topic in the technology world. It is most popular in the Healthcare, Automotive and Manufacturing industry and the growth of IoT is one of the reasons that the digital twin concept is becoming a reality for some many businesses. A digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical object or system – but it is much more than a high-tech lookalike. Digital twins use data, machine learning, and the Internet of Things (IoT) to help companies optimize, innovate, and deliver new services.

At its simplest, a digital twin is a virtual replica of a physical product, process, or system. Digital twins act as a bridge between physical and digital worlds by using sensors to collect real-time data about a physical item. This data is then used to create a digital duplicate of the item, allowing it to be understood, analyzed, manipulated, or optimized. Other terms used to describe digital twin technology over the years have included virtual prototyping, hybrid twin technology, virtual twin, and digital asset management.

SAP and Digital Twins

The network of digital twins institutes a real-time single source of truth – everywhere. It creates real-time, secure communications and a collaborative environment within the business while encompassing relevant external networks. The network includes not only the digital representation of the physical product or asset, but also the commercialization aspects represented by the ERP business system of record.

According to SAP, Digital Twins must have the following characteristics:

• Identity – a digital twin represents a single, unique physical asset; though we would prefer a 1-to-1 cardinality between asset and twin, business outcome considerations may imply a 1-to-N cardinality, each describing a different dimension; the digital twin can be instantiated at the creation (e.g. engineering, production, configuration, installation) and lasts until the asset is retired (or beyond if historic data is required)
• Representation – capturing the essential physical manifestation of the real asset in a digital format, typically using formats such as CAD, MES, or engineering models with corresponding metadata and classifications; traceability between digital twin and physical object is ensured through serialization
• State and events – reflecting real asset state (e.g. condition, location, speed, environment) in (near) real time providing information on properties that describe various aspects that the digital twin is built for; the digital twin triggers alerts and events on behalf of the object; historic state is typically recorded
• Context – describing operating context such as physical installation, ownership, reference to financial or asset management information, roles and business partner involved, service level agreements, service work performed on the asset
• Interaction – all properties above must be securely and digitally queried in a software system by other systems (via APIs) or users 

Because it manages and controls extensive variability in product and asset configurations, the digital twin of one becomes the true single source of truth. It bonds the  unique digital design of every product or asset to its  physical representation throughout the lifecycle. Companies can then address product individualization; accelerate time to market; provide a mechanism for the delivery of new business models; and ensure effective, timely performance of asset maintenance and repair. Furthermore, the network of digital twins that monitors distributed assets enables collaboration with partners  when managing assets as a service or engages suppliers  when defining part and assembly requirements and enhancing change management.

The approach combines digital twins with manufacturing solutions from SAP, cloud networks  and SAP Leonardo capabilities, including machine learning, blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT), to optimize the product lifecycle with:

• Digital representation: SAP synchronizes digital twin business data, product information, asset master data and IoT-connected data from both on-premise and cloud solutions enabling companies to represent the world digitally. Solutions including SAP Predictive Engineering Insights, SAP Predictive Maintenance and Service and the SAP 3D Visual Enterprise applications provide access to  rich data processing capabilities and live configuration, state, condition and control information.
• Business process: Rich enterprise-grade data processing capabilities allow customers to create, access and update digital twins to support business processes. SAP solutions provide an integrated data model from design, production and maintenance to service, including packaged integration to existing systems for computer-aided design, ERP, and product lifecycle management. Offerings providing end-to-end process support for manufacturers and operators include SAP S/4HANA, the SAP Engineering Control Center integration tool, SAP Hybris Service Cloud solutions, and  the SAP Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence and  SAP Manufacturing Execution applications.
• Business networks: With leading network offerings such as SAP Ariba solutions, SAP Asset Intelligence Network, and the SAP Distributed Manufacturing application, SAP is uniquely positioned to provide a virtual platform for collaboration on products and assets. The network of digital twins enables secure data access, sharing and governance on a global scale.
• Networks of digital representation: SAP enables  twin-to-twin connections in systems within a specific  asset and on an asset-to-asset level. SAP solutions such  as SAP Asset Intelligence Network provide semantic and industry-standards support in an asset core modeling environment to enable live enrichment during the product or asset lifecycle.

View the blog post on www.approyo.com

Innovations and Intelligence in the new SAP S/4HANA 1809

SAP S/4HANA is an intelligent ERP solution that enables companies to capture every opportunity in today’s digital world, SAP S/4HANA removes common obstacles associated with legacy ERP applications, such as batch latency, complex landscapes, and manually-driven processes. The latest release, SAP S/4HANA 1809 provides new innovations in a number of key industries.

In the area of Procurement, we’re delivering s number of Machine Learning capabilities with SAP S/4HANA 1809, for example:

• Increased invoice automation and efficient invoice monitoring for exception handling
• Reduction of free-text items by automatically proposing the creation of a new catalog item
• Proposal of material group for free-text items in purchase requisitions
• Provision of options for materials without source of supply

Quotation Conversion Rates is an innovation in Sales and Distribution which truly delivers on the promise of an intelligent ERP. As an internal sales representative or a sales manager, you can use Quotation Conversion Rates to track to what extent your quotations are being converted into sales orders before expiring. By leveraging machine learning capabilities, you can gain predictive insights into quotation conversion by comparing actual and predicted results. The Quotation Conversion Probability (also known as Order Probability) is the probability that a quotation item will be converted into a sales order item. The probability, expressed as a percentage, and net value of the quotation is used in order to calculate a total expected order value.

In Manufacturing we’re introducing Demand-driven replenishment. With the demand-driven buffer level management, you can plan and manage supply chains much more efficiently. Providing decoupling points with strategic stock positions, manufacturers can avoid the so-called “Bull-Whip-Effect”, where the variations in demand increases as you move further up the supply chain from customer to supplier.

Moreover, in inventory management, we included intelligence by leveraging predictive analytics and machine learning for decision support.

Finance as well has quite a few intelligent innovations in store for you, for example predictive accounting. When a sales order is confirmed in the system, this is not recorded in accounting until goods have been delivered and the invoice has been sent. With the predictive accounting functionality, based on the sales order, a predictive goods issue and a predictive invoice is registered.

• Group reporting – The need to deliver accurate, up-to-date financial information continuously in a company’s consolidation process is not limited to the level of an individual entity. Therefore, SAP has introduced the SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting solution which provides direct access to the underlying transactions and detail across the entire enterprise so that a company can confidently and efficiently consolidate their financial and managerial results required in their closing cycles. It enables organizations to extend this evolution towards a continuous financial close on group level. It provides unprecedented transparency by delivering a complete flow of collection, processing, analysis and publication of the information.
• Embedded analytics – Most finance professionals will agree that it is often cumbersome to get interesting information out of their ERP system. Additional capabilities have been added to support business users in getting insights more flexibly and efficiently, so they can concentrate on acting on the information, rather than investing time in number crunching.
• Tax service – Global tax regulations get more diverse, complicated and change more often than ever before. Keeping up with the pace of change, typically in multiple systems, is a challenge. SAP’s response is a central tax determination engine with rules and rates maintained by SAP or its partners. With the SAP S/4HANA 1809 release, emphasis has been placed on enabling self-service tax management, facilitating an organizations chosen approach to reduce the risks and costs of inaccurate calculations and liability from non-compliance.

Start your path to the Intelligent Enterprise with Approyo
Approyo provides full SAP service technology with extensive capabilities in consulting, solutions architecture, hosting and managed services, in order to develop the right solution for our customers. Check out our new Whitepaper, What's new in SAP S/4HANA 1809 and get started today...