By Freya Purnell
SAP has revealed its new roadmap for in-memory applications, design to enable enterprises to simulate outcomes, plan faster and view business processes more holistically than ever before.
Announcing the roadmap at the SAP Run Better Tour in Boston, SAP said it will deliver a “new reality for enterprise software”, consisting of three key dimensions – providing breakthrough analytics to help SAP customers analyse massive amounts of data in real time; developing new and renewed applications based on in-memory computing technology; and dramatically simplifying customers’ IT landscapes by reducing redundant layers and allowing customers to build applications that enable operations, planning and analytics at the same time.
For example, planning previously required data aggregation from various transactional systems, or was done with spreadsheets containing static data. In the future, people will be able to develop and execute business plans in real time, based on dynamic transactional data being constantly updated by the business.
Included in the roadmap for release over the coming year are both completely new applications and revamped existing solutions, such as:
- Sales and Operations Planning: an application to enable sales and marketing departments to collaborate with operations and finance to drive strategic decisions that improve the bottom line, with in-memory computing enabling employees to collectively evaluate the financial impact of their strategy on demand and supply scenarios.
- Intelligent Payment Broker: a financial application that will use in-memory computing to calculate and offer financing option on open invoices. By analysing current and historical data, the application will be able to intelligently propose which discounting terms should be offered on which invoices.
- Smart Meter Analytics: designed for utility companies, to analyse smart meter readings to forecast demand, analyse profitability of customer segments and develop new products. In-memory computing will make it possible to process the huge amounts of data required in real time and react quickly to changes in energy production or consumption.
- SAP Trade Promotion Management application: In-memory computing will be used to improve the planning process, including more accurately developing strategies for particular customers, with numerous products within particular time intervals.
- SAP Cash and Liquidity Management application: a core process within SAP Business Suite software that allows an enterprise to predict inbound and outbound cash flows and drive key activities such as collections, risk management and short-term borrowing. In-memory computing will allow people to explore that data at any level of granularity or hierarchy and act.
SAP said in-memory computing will serve as the foundation of its enterprise software architecture moving forward, and it provides a foundation for the latest releases of SAP BusinessObjects business intelligence and enterprise information management solutions.
“With in-memory computing technology at the core, SAP is on its way to a new foundation for real-time business that brings together its innovations in virtualisation and cloud management, open integration as well as on-demand and mobile platform technologies,” said Dr Vishal Sikka, executive board member, technology and innovation platform, SAP AG. “We predict a future that will change the way people work and think by providing customers with amazing new applications that open new areas of business value without adding complexity to their existing landscapes.”
