We always like to hear from customers. They provide the essential gut check for any technology and provide invaluable insights into what’s really happening on the ground.

In this conversation Den recorded with Camelot’s Allan Martin, business systems technical manager, we learn how HANA is changing the way the business looks at analysis and the opportunities it affords. For those that don’t know, Camelot is the UK’s National Lottery operator which is chartered with raising money for good causes.

Show notes:

0:33 – What is Camelot?

0:48 – What is Camelot looking for in its data?

1:16 – How difficult is the task?

1:58 – What is Camelot expecting from HANA and how is it being tested?

2:36 – What are the initial performance results?

3:06 – What are the current limitations?

4:10 – HANA takes all limitations away

5:01 – What kinds of new questions can be asked?

5:48 – How can we make business analysts more effective?

7:03 – What else can we do and how does it change the shape of business intelligence?

Disclosure: This is part of a project commissioned by SAP to surface innovation among the developer community

On the day of the HANA InnoJam Online finals, Jon caught up with Keytree’s  Nic Doodson and Will Powell, fresh in from their UK flight to compete in the finals. Nic and Will tell Jon about their “CEO Vision” project: combining HANA’s capabilities with augmented reality for a different kind of  app experience for C-level executives.  As the guys discuss, for C-level folks it’s not about  HANA but about ease of navigation, speed of information, and yes, some sex appeal.

Nic and Will jokingly compare their solution to the newly-announced Google Glass but also head into a realistic discussion about how next-generation UIs are having impact. The commercial possibilities of Keytree’s application are explored.

Editor’s note: Keytree went on to win the HANA Online InnoJam. The CEO Vision team will be demoing their solution at Sapphire Now Orlando.

:40 About the project – HANA with CEO appeal

1:20 A different kind of management dashboard

2:00 The sample scneario: real-time global sales data

2:27 Use case – drilling into real-time data with augmented reality tools

3:15 “HANA Inside” – CEOs don’t care about the tech, they care about  the results and the performance

3:38 The data: 35 gigs – 771 millions rows in a flat table.

4:45 Google Glass and 3D trends

5:35 Examples of extreme UIs

6:15 The technical guts of the project

6:53 Practical commercial applications

Disclosure: This is part of a project commissioned by SAP to surface innovation among the developer community

At the Australia Post, SAP Mentor John Moy has been putting the principles of better SAP UI design into action.  To get a live demo of what John’s team is working on, Den caught up with John at Mastering SAP Tech Australia. John shows Den a “before and after” with the old SAP UI facing off with the new UI John and his team designed.  The goal? Provide Australia Post customers with self-service capabilities with a UI that was appealing and intuitive. The project is set to be rolled out to 80,000 customers in the next month.

John also reveals the technical guts of the project (ABAP, jQuery, REST-based APIs). The guys discuss the pros and cons of custom development and whether there is a role for SAP productizing these kinds of apps.

Show Notes

:40 The project requirement – customer self-service (but not with the old UI)

1:30 The demo – “SAP like you’ve never seen before”

2:37 UI must be “walkup” interface – with no training required

3:34 Real-time data from the system of record

4:44 Skills needed to complete the project

5:30 Custom development pros and cons

6:30 Can the components be reused on other projects?

7:25 Should SAP productize this kind of app?

Disclosure: This is part of a project commissioned by SAP to surface innovation among the developer community

Ben Boeser  is part of an informally named group inside of SAP called (Project)  “AppHaus” which focuses on consumer apps and startup culture inside of SAP.  Jon sat down with Ben in Palo Alto to find out more about how this group is different from SAP as a whole (9o days to market app cycles, different physical spaces). Recalls Plus is one example of an AppHaus app on the market, Project Charitra is another.

Ben also speaks to how younger developers react to meeting his team and why consumerization is impacting SAP’s approach to development. Most of the AppHaus apps, such as Recalls Plus, run on HANA, and the team’s design thinking approach is reflected in their physical spaces, which, as Ben explains, tend to evoke a strong reaction.

Show Notes

:50 Startup culture at SAP?

2:10 The “90 days out the door” development rule

3:05 Live examples: Recalls Plus and Project Charitra

4:40 Taking consumer app lessons into the enterprise

6:00 The impact of consumerization

6:35 Unique physical spaces evoke strong reactions

7:52 Developers have to make a business case

9:10 Good code still matters, but you can’t hide behind it

Disclosure: This is part of a project commissioned by SAP to surface innovation among the developer community

At Mastering SAP Technologies Australia, Dennis talked with Gareth the Farmer who is a cattle farmer as well as Tech Lead for the Australian Department of Customs and Border Protection. Gareth shares his strong views on how lack of user involvement can lead directly to failed projects.  One such project required a complete rethink around UI design. The story contains lessons for all hoping to reap the benefits of the new styles of application that users are demanding.

Show Notes

1:10 How lack of user involvement led to project failure

2:17 The project is turned around via user involvement in application design

2:48 How did the developers react?

3:21 Do developers need to be become more commercially aware?

3:50 The future of app development in a mobile era

Disclosure: This is part of a project commissioned by SAP to surface innovation among the developer community

Filming outdoors at a “secret location”, Dennis caught up with DJ Macro of Bluefin Solutions to talk about his team’s work with NetWeaver Gateway.  DJ’s work with Gateway has included “flattening” Business Suite functions in ECC, CRM and APO, making them easier to consume.  He explains why Gateway has advantages over old school BAPI approaches and how Gateway opens SAP up to a more diverse group of developers.

Show Notes

:55 Using Gateway to simplify Business Suite data consumption

1:55 Gateway as a lightweight consumption model versus BAPIs

2:50 Opening up SAP to front-end HTML developers as well

3:50 Not just OData-powered – Gateway as a code generation tool

4:25 Will Gateway be used more for internal customizations or packaged apps?

Disclosure: This is part of a project commissioned by SAP to surface innovation among the developer community

Recently Dennis Howlett caught up with Owen Pettiford, CEO of CompriseIT, to talk about the development of Whistleblower, their first certfied Gateway App. Whistleblower is an iPhone-based safety and accident reporting app, with relevance to industries such as manufacturing and oil and gas where field employees can make good use of lightweight accident reporting apps. Pettiford explains why they decided to build the app on Gateway versus other alternatives.

Show Notes

:45 How the app works

1:20 Why Gateway was chosen over other programming alternatives

2:40 Advantages to the SAP Store

3:05 How the app has impact – industry examples

Disclosure: This is part of a project commissioned by SAP to surface innovation among the developer community

Mobile is a hot topic and in this discussion, Allan Davies, Asia Pacific CIO, Dematic Pty Ltd duscusses his company’s approach to the topic in an Infor setting.

Show Notes

1:16 – What is the mobile story for Dematic? Security v BYOD

2:06 – How do we get these devices onto the network securely and add a business value?

3:12 – What do you want to know when in the field?

4:14 – Where are you up to now? ION enhances mobile and other applications

6:05 – We can’t hold it back, so we have to accomodate everyone’s needs

7:14 – How ION helps in this context, driving efficiency and process not necessarily transformational right now

9:06 – Extending process out onto a mobile device

9:14 – This will take a year to reach current goals

In this video, we show some of the highlights from the chat with analysts at Inforum 2012. We kick off with Pedrag Jakovljevik (PJ to his friends) of TEC, then talk to Frank Scavo and round out with Yvette Cameron.

Show Notes

0:25 – PJ – ‘New/Old Infor’

0:55 – PJ – What has changed? The new leadership is making progress

1:22 – FS – The challenges that Infor faces in the cloud space

2:06 – FS – The numbers are impressive

2:52 – FS – The Salesforce.com investment

3:08 – YC – Infor’s HCM progress

5:01 – YC – Introducing social to Lawson/Infor

Yvette Cameron, principal analyst at Constellation Research gave us insights into Infor’s progress in social matters as they relate to HCM/Talent Management. This is a highly competitive space with many offerings going direct to the cloud.

Show Notes

0:48 – What are your impressions? [Link: Seven Ways Infor Is Advancing HCM (Hint: Lawson is But One)]

1:54 – Where is the opportunity for customers?

3:06 – What about the social capabilities that sit behind Infor HCM? How is Infor shaping up?

4:44 – Do customers really want social at this stage? Customers need to link to social in recruitment

5:36 – Where will Infor be in a year’s time? More streamlined solutions and contextual intelligence plus leveraging the Motion mobile platform

We don’t normally think of Infor as a cloud company but at this year’s Inforum customer event we were surprised to find that Infor not only has 1,200 customers running cloud solutions but has over 2.4 million cloud solution users. In this conversation, Frank Scavo provides his analysis of Infor’s cloud strategy.

Show Notes

0:40 – Infor needs to compete and is now promoting SyteLine as its go to market offering along with point LOB solutions like expense and asset management

2:15 – They’ve put up some impressive numbers, an untold story

3:03 – Does the hybrid story make sense?

3:58 – The cloud strategy is real, the numbers make sense and they’re looking at AWS

4:54 – To what extent is Infor at ease with the hybrid approach?

6:15 – What about Inforce Everywhere and the Salesforce.com connection? [link: Infor and Salesforce.com: More Than a Barney Relationship]

7:40 – Customer CH Briggs talks cloud

8:46 – We need to pay a lot more attention

9:40 – The sales compensation problem

10:18 – Let’s revisit !!

At the San Jose DKOM, March 2012, SAP announced support for BPC 10 on HANA (BPC on HANA is now in GA).  During the event, Jon caught up with Jens Koerner, Senior Director SAP Solution Adoption, SAP Labs, to find out what it took to get BPC out on HANA and what value it might have for customers.

Koerner also gets into some of the technical guts of BPC and the impact mobile requirements are having on BPC development. When pressed on the timeframe for the release of BPC-on-iPad, Koerner projected a “summertime” target. Koerner also explains what he means by the statement “you can’t kill the spreadsheet,” and how BPC on HANA intends to complement spreadsheets, not replace them.

Show Notes

:40 BPC on HANA – the announcement

1:25 How customers impacted the development of BPC on HANA

2:15 We already have BWA – why do we need BPC on HANA?

3:15 The technical innards of BPC

4:00 BPC on HANA mobile plans

5:10 “You can’t kill the spreadsheet”

7:00 BPC versus IP (Integrated Planning) – integration scenarios?

8:30 Value of BPC on HANA – customer use cases

10:00 The development timeline for the iPad version

Disclosure: This is part of a project commissioned by SAP to surface innovation among the developer community

At the San Jose DKOM, Jon Reed sat down with Thomas Jung to get his take on how to become an SAP HANA developer.  Thomas himself has come full circle. One of the early influential ABAP bloggers on SDN, Thomas is now blogging a HANA developer’s journal where he shares his own HANA learnings.

In his current role in HANA product management, Thomas is responsible for HANA developer tools, so he’s got firsthand knowledge on what’s coming down the pike. Thomas talks about the impact of these tools for SAP developers, and whether or not SAP developers will become irrelevant if they don’t learn them.  Thomas also shares practical steps for the aspiring HANA developer.

Show Notes

:58 Thomas’ current role at SAP

1:42 Why Thomas started a HANA developer’s journal

3:25 The tools HANA developers should be aware of

6:00 SAP developers:  change or become irrelevant?

7:15 How should “old school” ABAP developers approach HANA?

9:05 Don’t wait for your project to adopt new tools – get started

Disclosure: This is part of a project commissioned by SAP to surface innovation among the developer community

While on a jaunt to the Mastering SAP Technologies show in Australia, Dennis Howlett caught up with Graham Robinson of Yelcho Systems Consulting to get the origin story on his SAP workflow approval app 2-Cliks. Graham is a fixture on the SAP scene in Australia and a leading voice for aspiring SAP developers.

In this video, Graham shares how an urgent client workflow problem led to a solution which he eventually productized as 2-Cliks. Though the solution uses old school RFC protocols, there are major advantages, such as compatibility going back to version 4.6C and simple installation on virtually all mobile devices. And yes, it’s a cloud-hosted solution. Graham also demos 2-Cliks for Dennis and explains his pay-per-transaction pricing model.

Show Notes

:45 2-Cliks started with a solution to an urgent client Workflow problem

1:40 The solution transferred easily from desktop to mobile

2:06 Details on the cloud hosting and per-transaction pricing model

3:00 What about governance and security?

4:45 Graham demos 2-Cliks

7:40 Rapid installation and simple HTML customizations

8:35 Low impact RFC connections, backwards compatible to version 4.6C

Disclosure: This is part of a project commissioned by SAP to surface innovation among the developer community

On April 10, 2012, SAP updated its database and mobility strategies with a series of product announcements, already analyzed in a post by Dennis that Jon contributed to. But what the news mean to the aspiring SAP developer who has often found themselves  on the outside looking in?

The day after the announcement, Jon Reed sat down with Sanjay Poonen,  corporate officer at SAP now running go to market for mobility , to discuss what the announcements, including the new mobility partnerships, mean to SAP developers. Poonen also frankly addresses the problems SAP has had engaging SAP developers and what SAP plans to do about it. We have been promised another update at Sapphire Now Orlando to assess the progress, particularly around the notoriously sticky wicket of NetWeaver developer licenses, so stay tuned.

Editor’s note:  Dennis also filmed a video with SAP Mentors Graham Robinson and John Moy at Mastering SAP Technologies Australia that digs into their reactions after meeting with Sanjay Poonen there.

Show Notes

:40 “changes are coming”

2:44 How can SAP make the creation of mobility apps more “frictionless”?

4:12 One million SAP developers?

5:19 SAP’s new mobility development partnerships: opening up the platform

6:15 How can SAP solve the NetWeaver license conundrum?

7:20 Will this topic tie into the cloudy themes of Sapphire Now?

8:17 Mobility development it at a different pace – “we will get this right”