The biggest challenge for SAP customers today is how to consume technology and make the fundamental shift decisions relative to their IT infrastructures. This is according to Stephen Spears, senior VP for SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud.
Speaking about pain points for the company's enterprise customers, Spears says customers struggle to deal with the new breed of information and the expectation around how business applications should look and function. "Customers are wondering how to leverage cloud, how to deal with big data and how to leverage mobility. Customers are struggling with that core technology shift."
The biggest curveball in enterprise cloud is that there is an unwritten expectation from customers that the cloud will take away the challenges of implementation and that is not necessarily the case, says Spears. "When you think of cloud, you tend to think it is simple to click and execute. That is part of the challenge. Cloud is really just a deployment methodology, it is not necessary a fix-it, or what has to be done from an implementation perspective. There is an unwritten rule that says if it is cloud, it must be simple. That is not true."
He notes SAP is trying to mitigate some of these challenges through the use of its High-Performance Analytic Appliance (HANA), but says it is not a solution to all of the problems. "HANA can be a great tool for big data discussion, but mobility has an impact on some of the other discussions."
Another challenge that both private and public sector organisations are struggling with is the effective use of big data, says Spears.
"The ability to use [big data] has not caught up with the amount of information available, and the data volumes are getting even more difficult to wrap our hands around. We need to figure out how we can leverage non-structured data in a way that makes business sense, and how to combine it with transactional data. We will get the biggest benefit when we are able to use the macro data and I think those use-cases are probably about 18 to 24 months away."
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