Photo Essay: Analytics at SAPPHIRE NOW Part 2

This is Part 2 of my analytics review of SAPPHIRE NOW (go here for part 1) . Where available, I’ve added links to watch the relevant presentations yourself at SAPPHIRENOW.COM (the presentations are being loaded up over the next couple of weeks, so if there’s no link, do a search on the site in case it has been added since I posted this). Early morning on Tuesday 14th May 2013, Day 1 of SAPPHIRE NOW. Since I was on the wrong time zone, I was up... [Read More...]

Photo Essay Part 1: Analytics at SAPPHIRE NOW Pre-Show

It was a hectic SAPPHIRE NOW event in Orlando last week! In this series of posts, I’d like to give you a flavor of what it’s like to attend the event from an analytics point of view — and I’ve included links to some of the great analytics content that came out of the show. Here’s part one: the run up to the show… I was a “social media ambassador” for analytics for the conference – my job was to keep track of everything about... [Read More...]

SAPPHIRE NOW: The Human Face of Big Data

SAPPHIRE NOW in Orlando was packed with examples of how Big Data affects all our lives. SAP Executive Steve Lucas was the host of an Intel-sponsored Big Data special interest group meeting at the conference. He kicked off the session by explaining that he considers himself to be an example of the human face of new data technologies. As a type 1 Diabetic, he wears a device that measures his blood sugar once a second, and communicates it to a hand-held... [Read More...]

L’Oréal: Turning Data Into A Customer Experience

George-Edouard Dias, head of Digital Business for L’Oréal gave a great example of digital business transformation during his interview at SAPPHIRENOW Madrid at the end of last year. By combining analytics, social, mobile, and the cloud, the company aims to create new customer experiences. Summary L’Oréal’s big transformation is to have moved from marketing planned in advance to real-time marketing. The company wants to simplify the life... [Read More...]

Could Ebenezer Scrooge Be On YOUR Board?

At SAPPHIRE NOW Madrid, Steve Lucas, executive vice president of Database and Technology at SAP, gave a presentation focused on extracting business value from big data. You can watch a replay of the session on the SAP Virtual Event site: Tune Into New Business Signals in the Age of Big Data  (registration required) The basic theme of the presentation was it’s great that you can now store “big data” – but that also you need technology that... [Read More...]

SAP and the ‘Nexus of Forces’

A perfect storm is developing, according to research firm Gartner. Four hugely disruptive technology trends are converging, bringing change and opportunity to the way businesses operate, and restructuring the IT industry as a whole. Gartner calls this the “Nexus of Forces”. It sounds like a old-style superhero, but it actually refers to four distinct yet increasingly intertwined technological trends: social, mobile, cloud computing and information: Social.... [Read More...]

SAP Visual Intelligence

SAP Visual Intelligence 1.0 (internal project name “Hilo”) will generally available tomorrow*. It is the latest innovation in the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer solution family. It is a desktop-based visualization and data manipulation solution that is designed to complement (not replace) the existing Explorer products. After downloading and installing the application (approximately 150 MB), users can connect to SAP HANA sources and start data... [Read More...]

SAP BusinessObjects Mobile BI Directions

Here’s a video from this years SAPPHIRE NOW in Madrid, featuring Mimi Speir, Steve Lucas, and Andrew Murray giving an overview of SAP BusinessObjects mobile directions: Highlights include: New SAP BusinessObjects experience mobile application, based on the Exploration Views functionality from the BusinessObjects innovation center, with demo data from Experience.SAP.com Easily take a mobile analysis and create a StreamWork activity for collaborative... [Read More...]

At-a-Glance Guide to Analytics at SAPPHIRE NOW Madrid

I’ll be an official “social ambassador” for analytics at SAPPHIRE NOW from Madrid next week. This blog attempts to summarize the main analytics-related activities during the two days of SAPPHIRE NOW – but note that this year, SAPPHIRE NOW attendees also have access to all SAP TechEd sessions that are going on at the same time, making it even harder than usual to choose from the dizzying array of possible sessions (the SAP TechEd sessions... [Read More...]