Hasso Plattner Keynote, Sapphire 2009

This year Gartner, (Feb 2009), SAPPHIRE and ASUG (May 1-14) have been about just about 1 thing- BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Hasso is the original Icon of SAP. In talking to various C level managers at the conferences opinions swung like a pendulum.
On one side of the swing were managers that basically wanted to hear how SAP could assist them during this time of crisis and felt that ‘Hasso just promised a pie in the sky for the future..’

On the other side of the swing were managers who realized that they needed ‘self-serive’ information to sustain the current financial crisis. A number of them are implementing the dream of Hasso – Polestar.

BO Explorer is nothing by Polestar and Polestar is dependent on BW and BW Accelerator.

Within Business Intelligence there are two critical areas Hasso focused on:-
1. Business Objects and
2. BW Accelerator

Some of the key issues Hasso focused on, and some I would like to add my commets

1. Business Intelligence is extremely important ( Right information driven companies will be the market leaders of tomorrow.)
2. Business Needs need to drive analytics (My comments Business Must take Ownership, Accountability and Audit all BW Deliverables)
3. Optimize Self Service under 1 second: Hasso took self service to a new level. Answer any question you may think of. The managers can once again sit in a cockpit environment and get any answer to their operation. I love the concept (my comment: I remember seeing something similar from Hasso and SEM back in 2008-9 so am once again skeptical to this idea. challenge the operational aspects of it. In fact Hasso had shown his hand and promised answers on your fingertips from BW – a move he repeated and confessed to repeating, in the 2009 conference. From my point of view self service analytics, and even Polestar is all about modeling. Using automated modeling we can deliver Hasso’s dream today. The issue with todays speed is not the technology it is the application, or lack of it thereof, that is the real issue. Without a accelerator or automated modeling I have personally reduced a SAP R/3 query runtime from 10 hours to under 9 minutes. Just with modeling I have reduced a query response time from 722 seconds to under 23 seconds in 4 hours flat. So we need to review business needs and modeling a little more seriously before we put all our budgets into the technology basket once again)
4. Collect all operational data into BW Accelerator: We must take all operational data into the BI environment so we can ask any question and the BO Explorer will answer it under a second. (Here is where Hasso and I have a deep devide. This is a technology data modeling answer with data as the center of the universe and very little business alignment. From a technology side hasso confessed this is experimental and if SAP invests and then it will work. From my business practical side I see three fundamental issues with this approach (1) Management does not need simple answers which have existing attributes (hasso used Head – the system did not have Knees and could not have answered that if required); (2) BW Accelerator has sponsored by business for Intuitive analytics (Something is not right with a number and I need to slice down, across and sideways to find answers); (3) The issue from the beginning has been architecture and modeling and we have proven that if these are done right most of what Hasso displayed could be answered with current technology.)
5. My comment: The issue has never been technology but building a BVA (Business Value Attainment BW ). 90% of questions that can be answered by today’s technology remain unanswered due to bad design and modeling. How then do we assure that bad design is not going to mothball this dream. WE NEED TO START WITH THE BASICS AND IMPROVE THAT. Then everything on top aligns automatically.
6. Eliminate redundancy: Hasso clearly pointed out that we need to eliminate duplication of data and mainly master data. (My comment: From a BW point of view we also need to eliminate non reporting elements from the BW. There are tolls that can do this automatically now)
7. Eliminate the need for a data warehouse as we know it: Hasso did elude, if I heard correct, the possibility to take all operational data directly into the the Accelerator. (My Comments: I am not a supporter for Data collection and even if we did that then that would currently possibly need 70 to a 100 BW Accelerator Blades. I am more for of a modeling person that likes to select the the elements in my data warehouse and convert them into information objects rather than calculate them at the time of query. Unless Hasso and his team have found a new algorithm them I stand corrected. )

I think Hasso has a wonderful dream in fact it is a necessary dream that is supported by 1,500 CEO’s across the planet who independently to Gartner in 2009 and placed BI as their #1 priority and Self Service Queries as their #1 priority in BW. (For more details read my whitepaper BI forecast for 2009-12)

In fact if you look at 2009 there is one company that Leo, and Hasso talked about without actually stating them and this company focuses only on BI. They have automated BI Modeling, They have a BW Accelerator Workbench, they are releasing a Polestar modeler so the they are clearly positioned to take Hasso’s dreams into reality.

Dreams yesterday, reality today and Routine Tomorrow