Hitachi Data Systems has greatly deepened its strategic relationship with SAP around HANA in the last several years, and its new announcements, which cover from the low end of the market to the high, broaden that portfolio.
CEO Bill McDermott didn’t exactly promise a kinder, gentler SAP, but he did pledge a company that will be more empathetic to customers, have a more complete vision, and be more focused on simplicity. He also offered a forecast of some trends he thinks SAP will be well positioned to leverage.
None of the announcements, which included joint validation for SAP HANA on the Azure platform, were earth-shattering, but they do speak to the significance of the relationship between the two long-time allies and how they see the market moving.
Long-time SAPer Scott Jones returns from a short sojourn at another company to take on the job of running SAP’s North American partner network.
At its partner event preceding the broader SAPPHIRE conference, SAP previewed a major new cloud program, which will be implemented in three stages, the first of which will be in Q3 and the next two, next year. Details at this point were exceedingly scarce.
Beefing up the offerings owned by organizations soon likely to be owned by Dell comes as no surprise, but the vendor also strongly restated its support for its Nutanix-based XC line, while beefing it up as well, and said it’s not going anywhere.
The Montreal-based SAP integrator adds to the largest SAP Business ByDesign ERP practice in Canada by acquiring the Canadian customers of fellow SAP partner Forgestik.
IBM will turn to distributors to help it build custom bundles of its Power-based servers with Linux and top ISV offerings for the channel.
Details are pretty high level at this stage, and a Chinese cloud solutions venture will be China-focused — at least in the short term. There are, however, other elements which Lenovo channel partners will find of interest.
SAP’s new HANA-powered CRM solution for SMBs, which will hit general availability in both the U.S. and Canada in 2016, is drawing lots of interest. ChannelBuzz takes a look at why.
SAP Anywhere is going to market in China through a strategic partner, China Telecom. The go-to-market strategy when it goes into general release in the U.S. and Canada in 2016 will be very different however, and the company filled in the details for ChannelBuzz.
At last year’s SAP SME Summit, SAP emphasized how much it valued its SME customers, including small businesses. This year they added a wrinkle to that, emphasizing that SMEs want and need simplicity, and that those taking their time to decide need to make the move – with SAP solutions.
SAP announces a new infrastructure-as-a-service option for Business One Cloud which has been available in Canada since last Thursday, and in the U.S. for several weeks before that.
London, Ontario-based Tribe Medical Group moved to SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA last year, and have found its simplicity critical in helping them sell, keep staff, and control complexity.
The front-office suite, which was announced in the spring, has just reached general availability in China and was originally going to be limited to China for some time. However increased demand and competitive pressure have led SAP to change its plans.
SAP Canada isn’t exactly telling its Canadian channel to go cloud or go home, but they are strongly emphasizing that the cloud is the future for SAP, and that top partners who don’t see that and adjust their solutions mix accordingly will likely be replaced at the top by other partners who got with the program.
SAP pledges a rethinking of customer engagement with new three SAP hybris offerings, but at this point they are still a futures offering, being announced later this year and early next.
SAP announces a “major revamp” of its partner efforts, simplifying its partner programs down to one common umbrella, and introducing new opportunities for smaller partners.
With a view to both expanding the number of skilled ByDesign people available to partners, and sharpening partners’ ability to use and extend the solution, SAP has launched several ByDesign initiatives, including a partner enablement portal and collaborative tool, and a certification program through Open SAP.
Stevens talked with ChannelBuzz about how both SAP and its partners can work smarter, emphasized the importance of the cloud to SAP going forward, and indicated that they will wait to see if partners are on the same page with SAP before they start recruiting new ones.
