SAP Extreme Sailing Series, not recommended for most commercial fishermen, whatever the clouds look... [+]
SAP used its appearance at Mobile World Congress this year to attempt to explain and validate what the firm calls a more intelligent cloud platform. This is clearly a theme; the Germany-headquartered US-centric software company has also recently applied the ‘intelligent’ label to its ERP function.
But what does ‘intelligence’ mean really, honestly, actually mean in cloud computing terms when big vendors sprinkle the term around as liberally as steak seasoning on everything they serve up?
What is computing intelligence?
In contemporary cloud computing terms, this overused over-marketed term actually might mean something. Intelligence in the context of modern big data environments means data enrichment i.e. working with your core business data and then applying extra contextual knowledge to it through accessing external (and some related internal) sources of data.
If you run a small fishing company, then you don’t just want information on how many boats you have and when they need servicing and how much fuel they need to run. You also need data on fish prices, weather, tide times, consumer trends, your supply chain demands and when the next health report on human fish consumption is coming out. If we start adding in Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios and sticking sensors on our boats in order to tell us when predictive maintenance might be needed… then we can do even better. If we start using Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) software applications to tell us a) where the best fishing grounds are b) what moves in the global fish trade market will impact us and c) how are competitors are faring… then we can get really smart.
The above (completely fabricated) example is intended to illustrate what firms like SAP are doing with their technology platforms. This fishy example is simple enough, but it’s way too much to just slap into a PC and hope for the best. There is no ‘Total Fish App’ to help us here, this is a job for either Batman or cloud computing.
Clever cloud: people, things & businesses
SAP is aiming to respond to the breadth and depth of where we go next with technology with its eponymously named SAP Cloud Platform. The firm says it is engineering its Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) technology to expedite the extension and integration of SAP apps for exactly the kind of data tasks illustrated above i.e. the need to connect people, things, businesses and the world. Products & innovation chief at SAP Bernd Leukert has called this ‘digital differentiation’ as cloud now connects a rapidly growing number of smart devices and machines with people and processes.
But this is a platform and that means there’s a big product set to navigate through here. SAP provides various ‘portfolios’ (basically, collections of software functions and tools) to form what is supposed to represent a total cloud toolbox. SAP Leonardo is the firms set of IoT applications, SAP Clea looks after Machine Learning applications and services as well as the SAP BusinessObjects Cloud portfolio -- and then there’s the SAP Digital Boardroom to provide the reporting overview of all that data crunching and analytics.
New functions in SAP Cloud Platform
So, as initially suggested, SAP has been working to pump more intelligence into its cloud platform. A new Software Development Kit for Apple’s mobile operating system iOS will debut in March this year. This will allow developers to build enterprise grade fishing industry apps (or healthcare, or soccer team management, or financial services and so on) for iPhone and iPad, based on SAP Cloud Platform and built in Swift, Apple’s modern programming language.
Other new functions of note include a ‘project companion’ app for consultants and project managers; the SAP API Business Hub to provides a catalog of APIs of SAP applications, so developers can ‘connect in’ to them. The firm will also now offer a workflow tool in the form of a graphical interface for business analysts to create new ‘composite’ workflows for business processes. Plus there’s SAP Cloud Platform IoT service, extra big data services for Hadoop and new data centers in Japan and China.
“As an early adopter of SAP Cloud Platform, Accenture has developed several innovative applications to maximize the value of our clients’ SAP SuccessFactors investment,” said Christophe Mouille, senior managing director and Global SAP practice lead at Accenture. “We are also developing on the SAP Cloud Platform through the Accenture Liquid Studio for SAP Solutions, which rapidly prototypes and delivers applications for our clients, using new breakthrough technologies such as Machine Learning, Internet of Things and Advanced Analytics to accelerate their digital transformation.”
SAP, still somewhat BMW-ish?
Love them or hate them, the SAP crew are an exacting lot with a clinical approach to doing everything well in that very German 'if we can improve the engineering here, then we will, even if it makes for quite a complex engine' kind of way.
It's almost a little bit BMW dare we say it?
For that reason SAP isn't the cheapest option on the market... and for that reason most small fishing business have yet to 'run smarter' on SAP.
But this is still early days for the cloud computing model of service-based IT delivery, so we may see smaller componetized pieces of this kind of functionality offered to smaller businesses in the future. That's what price differentiation and market diversification is all about, right?
In the meantime, check your local Marine Fisheries Authority for catch and release rules and check the cloud forecast before you head out please.
