Feature
“It's great that Salesforce.com has aspirations to be bigger than SAP,” said Steve Lucas, president, SAP Platform Solutions. “But ultimately we don't care what competitors think, we only care about what our customers and partners think and how to make them successful.”
“If we stick to that,” added Lucas, “we will win.”
It’s worth noting that SAP is far, far ahead of its would-be rival.
According to Gartner, SAP is the world’s fourth largest software company with $18.5 billion in revenue. Salesforce sits at number ten with $3.8 billion. Not only that, but Salesforce isn’t even profitable.
But Lucas didn't point any of that out, instead he talked about the robust path SAP offers to its clients, namely its integrated Cloud Business Applications built on SAP HANA.
SAP HANA, for anyone who’s not familiar with it, converges database and application platform capabilities in-memory to transform transactions, analytics, text analysis, predictive and spatial processing so businesses can operate in real time.
In other words, it’s lightning fast and offers the hottest enterprise software out there.
“Our vision is clear and simple -- to be the Cloud Company powered by SAP HANA,” said Lucas. SAP delivers on that vision in three areas: Industry, Integration and Innovation.
Industry Experience Speaks
SAP knows its customers well -- they’ve built industry-oriented cloud solutions to offer exactly what they need based on the requirements of their specific industry.
“There's a reason two-thirds of the world’s commerce runs on SAP systems,” said Lucas. “We know what we're doing when it comes to critical business processes and our customers trust us and our partners.”
He added that they’ve built on that expertise and paid special attention to creating a beautiful user experience.
“The bottom line,” said Lucas. “There isn't an enterprise software company on the planet delivering the broad range of solutions we provide that has more industry-specific expertise than SAP.”
Check Out SAP’s Integrated Cloud
“The cloud today is in the same state as the client server market was in 1995,” said Lucas. “Customers have to piece together disparate solutions from best-in-breed vendors.”
SAP gets rid of that problem by delivering a completely integrated enterprise cloud suite, built on HANA with real time supplier business network capability.
Many key elements of SAP’s cloud and platform strategy are already in the market today, such as SAP Cloud for HR, Sales Cloud for Consumer, the Ariba network and, of course, the HANA Enterprise Cloud to run ERP.
Not only that, but any company that wants to run their entire SAP business applications suite on HANA in the cloud, managed by SAP and paid via monthly subscription, can do so today.
Learning Opportunities
Webinar
May
30
ChatGPT and the Future of Conversational AI
This discussion explores various aspects of AI implementation, ethical considerations, and challenges for your organization.
Webinar
May
31
The Evolution of Employee Listening - 2023 Trends & Best Practices
Learn proven effective methods and solutions to supporting an inspirational future of Employee Voice
Webinar
Jun
1
How organizations can design, build and run Generative AI into the Customer Experience
Discover how to drive enhanced CX through Generative AI
Webinar
Jun
6
The Future of Social Media: Emerging Trends and How to Stay Ahead of the Curve
The impact of emerging technologies like AI on social media
Webinar
Jun
7
The Building Blocks of Personalization
This webinar will explore how personalization can create powerful ecommerce shopping experience.
Webinar
Jun
13
The Future of Contact Centers with AI at the Helm
Learn how to balance human intuition and interaction with the potential uses of AI to create delightful and lasting CX
Webinar
May
30
ChatGPT and the Future of Conversational AI
This discussion explores various aspects of AI implementation, ethical considerations, and challenges for your organization.
Webinar
May
31
The Evolution of Employee Listening - 2023 Trends & Best Practices
Learn proven effective methods and solutions to supporting an inspirational future of Employee Voice
SAP’s On Premises Success Repeated in the Cloud
SAP’s cloud solutions deliver customers an end-to-end solution, from recruiting sales people and optimizing sales to managing supply and suppliers.
SAP invented and launched a best-in-class on premises applications suite years ago.
“We are doing it again in the cloud,” said Lucas.
And no one is as likely to do it as well as SAP. “It takes a company with years of real industry and integration experience to build this kind of end-to-end solution and our competition just doesn't have it,” added Lucas
SAP HANA’s Hotbed of Innovation
Innovation is everywhere at SAP. You can see a spark in the eye of its leaders, its developers and its consultants out in the field. There are no drones there, we’ve witnessed it … from SAP Cofounder Hasso Plattner’s father-like pride when he introduces HANA to the unbridled enthusiasm among its thousand plus member SAP HANA Startup Focus program.
“HANA is the bedrock of our innovation that enables companies to do amazing things with their data, mobile solutions, analytics and business applications via unmatched speed and incredible simplicity no matter what the need or use case,” said Lucas.
Add to that, all of the development and analytics opportunities that the SAP cloud powered by HANA provides -- social, machine to machine, big data and much more.
“HANA is designed to allow any company to do business in real time,” said Lucas. And though he was probably hesitant to say it he added, “HANA gives us an advantage over competitors who are running a single cloud app dependent on an outdated database platform.”
Could it be that Salesforce.com runs on Oracle?
Enough said.
