World is changing rapidly, in less than Half decade of time span lot of technologies has emerged i.e. Cloud platform, IoT (popularly known as Internet of Things), Data Analytics (Big Data, Hadoop), Block chain technology (basis of Cryptocurrency). Since from their emergence within a very short span of time they are blooming swiftly.
The best part of these technologies is that they’re designed in such a way so that it can be integrated or extended with existing hardware or software so that it not only enhances itself rather provides enhancement to every software so that majority of the sector can be groped with it and gets benefit out of it. The concept of creating a monopoly is not there now, rather every sector of the various industries can be targeted, so that the size of the market share can be increased for all the IT companies in scope of sales. Every individual can do tasks of business process on their own without any dependency with their team mates directly over mobile phones. We can imagine at micro level they have targeted the users now, its now no more any industry specific with some elite employees can use and enhance their business, its every employee of a company can use it and enhance their work and line of business in which they work.
I would like to enlighten some thoughts regarding how these technologies has made integration with SAP AG. SAP is Global leader in ERP business, nearly all fortune 500 clients runs on SAP, apart from this 65% of ERP market is shared by SAP only. It has a vast base of macro and micro clients. For every industry SAP has something in his Wonder bag to make the business run simply and make profits. Over the years SAP hasn’t shared its software package with anyone and tried to remain in market with distinctly creating its monopoly. But now it has been on verge of saturation so it revamped its product to SAP HANA, SAP S/4 HANA, SAP HANA cloud platform, SAP HANA cloud edition and many others. With all these mentioned products SAP opened doors for nearly every technology to integrate and enhance themselves along with extending the services of SAP.
SAP integrates with Cloud and launches Paas (Platform as a service) & Fiori Mobile Apps:
Lets take a scenario of Cold Storage Logistics, up till now SAP only provides delivery challan along with sales invoice, but now after this what will be the real time location of logistics consignment can be determined by Fiori Apps with API’s linked with Google Maps and can be traced by IoT devices, infact what is the temperature, humidity, pressure maintained in consignment can be monitored and controlled by Sensors which works on IoT and can get alerts to logistics team which sits in office and can react on the data , infact all approvals for documents in SAP can be done through mobile apps, anyone on vacations can do this without needing a laptop with a costly license of SAP.
SAP integrates With Data analytics:
The most powerful step in bringing Artificial Intelligence in any software is through Data Analytics. Similarly we cant overlook an scenario of Plant maintenance in huge machine based industries, where the fault analysis of motors can be done as well as what will be the maintenance downtime of machine or predicting and automatically generating Work Order in SAP for machine maintenance can be done by collecting real time data from sensors attached to huge machines based on which tools like Big data helps in putting algorithm on the data collected can predict the date when the machine can get burned out or require maintenance which itself will trigger in SAP about creation of work order for maintenance of that machine. This all integration takes place with API’s of AWS, Azure or HANA cloud platform with Big data API and SAP S/4 hana integration with some middle-ware.
SAP integrates with Block Chain Technology:
Block chain technology is a game-changer in financial services industries especially Banking sector. It also provides data security which up till now is not been hacked by anyone, infact the codes and data integrity is high degree of precision & security.
SAP Simple finance in S/4 HANA is capable of handling all finance related transactions of company. All the transactions history of vendors, customers and employee salary can be feed in Blocks and follows the concept of this block chain can be implemented with SAP through any cloud service provider and a link can be established for all transference of data. Financial docs are really important for any company, SAP is looking for more avenues regarding this step, they are always trying to provide data integrity and security to their clients in whatever the best way.
Author: Akshay Nigam – Experienced in Core Production & logistics of Manufacturing Industries & working as SAP consultant in IT industry.