The most graphic way to describe the change in SAP expressed at Sapphire 2013 is to start from the end: co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe on the stage at the Amway arena introducing the “Celebration Night ” concert (Bonnie Raitt, Martina McBride and Alan Jackson), arm-in-arm, dressed in jeans and clearly feeling no pain. The “bromance ” was evident and their joy merited. SAP is a 40 year-old company in the midst of a new era of innovation, with market approval and sales to match. And there’s no doubt a big part of that innovation rests on three pillars: HANA and her sisters: Mobility and Cloud Computing.

HANA is more than just an idea. Hasso Plattner has made the commitment that HANA means NO batch processing. Ever. Man, that’s a tall order. And HANA is being implemented at more than 1,000 companies, and more of SAP’s world is moving onto HANA every day. Retail planning is already on HANA, and General Availability (GA) for Business Warehouse and the Business Suite were announced at Sapphire.

In fact, the CEOs of McLaren Group, and major executives from the San Francisco 49ers, the NBA and UnderArmour were on hand to talk about the impact HANA has had on their businesses. When was the last time you heard a major executive wax poetic on the value of a database to their business?

• The NBA website stats area is powered by HANA. Visits and ‘dwell time’ have doubled since it was implemented.
• The 49’ers talked about tapping into consumer sentiment to find ways to get more people to their ballparks.
• UnderArmour talked about the importance of SAP in helping it achieve wildly explosive growth rates.
• Ron Dennis, CEO of the McLaren group mentioned their race cars are covered with sensors, generating 13 billion bits of data per car per race. He said this data is analyzed in a tenth of a millisecond and revealed and reported in simple to read charts and graphs. The data is used to analyze, simulate and predict events mid-race and for races to come.

Having said that, perhaps more important is the company’s continued commitment to improving the user experience. And so we’ll move on to the main sisters and some other, lesser known, but equally important siblings.

Reinvigorating and Reinventing the User Experience

The first room I bumped into when entering the convention center was the Usability Testing room. Nice. In truth, everyone from Bill McDermott, Jim Hagemann Snabe on down expressed the priority of creating “Consumer Grade Usability. ” We reported on the notion of “Design Thinking ” after attending Sapphire Madrid last November. The idea is powerful: applications must be feasible, functional and desirable. Desirability is all about the UI. I know the SAP mentors (a geek group that I am a proud member of) are very focused on the notion. As Jim Hagemann Snabe noted, “Design Thinking ” helps SAP become part of the business conversation.

Creating Applications for Consumers

Retail principal Andrea France took me on a stroll through myRunway, which was developed for SAP in China (by engineers almost young enough to be my children’s children) and has been under wraps for a year. It is meant to be a Pinterest-like social network. The app can be found free at the iTunes store. Shoppers can pick their favorite brands, create wish lists, gain loyalty points and share information with their friends. It’s an early version, but I liked what I saw. It’s on my phone, and I’ll be watching future updates closely.

Finally, Hasso Plattner introduced “Fiori, ” SAP’s next generation user interface framework. As RSR has pointed out, in an omni-channel world, where new applications, product information and selling channels spring up almost daily, architecture becomes extremely important. Fiori is meant to be the architecture that supports continued advancements and extensions of consumer-based technology with minimal disruption to underlying infrastructure.

The Cloud

Frequent RSR readers will know that I find cloud definitions….cloudy. So when hearing descriptions of “HANA in the Cloud ” I could have had an internal debate about whether this was “true ” cloud or not. (Sidebar: This is one great value of RSR partner Brian Kilcourse, who translates deep-geek for me. He was unable to attend because his father passed. Please join me in wishing him and his family most profound and heartfelt condolences.) But the bottom line is that HANA is available as a hosted solution. And that makes it far more affordable, especially for mid-market retailers.

SAP also is providing cloud-based mobile security. This enables SAP customers to eliminate hardware and platforms from the cost equation. Afaria is an end-to-end solution provided on-demand.

Finally, recent acquisition Success Factors provides HR via the cloud. Executives from Pepsico, Timkin and Nespresso were all on stage with Jim Hagemann Snabe talking about the value of the application in helping them grow their talent pools. Retailers take note! We are a talent hungry industry.

Collaboration

Ariba is already in the cloud, but it is being enhanced to support direct procurement and collaboration between retailers and suppliers. Anything that supports collaboration is going to be a help to the entire ecosystem.

I moderated a panel on the implications of omni-channel on the supply chain. Two retailers (from OfficeMax and Sports Basement) were on the panel along with an executive from Kraft foods. All agreed that collaboration is key to supporting customer satisfaction and delight in an omni-channel world, and the supply chain must be incredibly responsive and also profitable.

Openness

While SAP has been taking steps to open up its platform to partners for some years, HANA appears to be the most open platform yet. Mr. Plattner displayed a formidable list of companies, from large established tech providers to start-ups developing or already using Hana as a database.

And that brings us back to the beginning: HANA and Her Sisters. Honestly, I never thought I’d see the day when database technology would be sexy again. But it has happened. I also never thought I’d see the day when exuberant co-CEOs of SAP would be leading the cheers at a C&W concert. But it has happened. As my mother always says, “If you live long enough, you see everything. ” True, dat.