Andrew WhiteSAP always puts on a good show. 2011 is no different. This is the best place for analyst to go to get the annual brain dump on what is SAP’s strategy and how is SAP planning to evolve in the next year. There are always many events each year – SAP Sapphire, TechEd, and so on, but this is the one for analysts.
Given I focus on Master Data Management, and hence the core of an information governance strategy, I take a general interest in virtually everything SAP has to say where information is consumed, copied, used or produced. Given the hype around “big data”, mobile, and in-memory computing, that means much of the agenda is relevant.
There is lots to analyst and lots to discuss, but the one thing that stands out for me (during day 1) is that SAP continues to incorrectly present and sell Enterprise Information Management. I think this is a legacy that remains from the acquisition of Business Objects (yes, that long ago). You see, as soon as Gartner coined officially the term EIM (I don’t think we invented the practice; we just gave it a fresh new perspective along with a formal term), Business Objects (then still independent) renamed their data integration tools as EIM tools. This gave the perception that they were the market leader for what is not, in actuality, a market.
Despite this, SAP remains (in my limited view) out of kilter with strategic information management practices. EIM is not about “serving data, cleaned, ready, for use in BI” (a phrase I heard from an SAP speaker today). EIM is about managing the right information for re-use, for business valuel across ALL applications and all BI and all mobile and so on. Yet SAP’s go to market remains a little confused here. EIM (and perhaps BPM?) needs to broken out from the “Business Analytics” product line and assembled and built to “serve” all systems of record and engagement.
Even the “collaboration” message, presented as part of the glue within the Business Analytics product line, seems disjointed. Some of the examples shared were from the legacy application domain, or system of record systems.
Byron Banks is talking now. Maybe it’s all going to change….
I asked Byron one question: Does SAP NetWeaver move over to HANA? The answer was that SAP is committed to solving its customers’ MDM problems, but SAP has not (yet) committed to moving SAP NetWeaver MDM over to HANA.
Is this the end of the road for NetWeaver MDM?
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