By Nicholas Greene
Analyst firm HfS Research has named 10 companies as members of the Winner’s Circle in the 2014 HfS SAP Services Blueprint Report, for achieving excellence and innovation.
For the report, 31 providers of SAP services were evaluated.
SAP, Accenture, IBM, Infosys, NTT DATA, Fujitsu, EY, Atos, HP and Wipro were the companies named in the Winner’s Circle.
The capabilities of SAP services providers are assessed along the whole value chain, ranging from SAP strategy consulting through planning and implementation of an SAP solution to managing and optimising existing SAP environments, as well as coverage of the SAP solution categories – business apps, analytics and BI, mobile, database and cloud.
Based on all the companies surveyed, SAP clients are highlighting four main points of interest in 2014.
- SAP consolidation and upgrades: Consolidation is a trends gathering speed, with three of the top five investment areas falling into the overall consolidation category.
- Rapid SAP deployment: This is regarded as particularly helpful for firms who are using SAP for the first time.
- SAP in the cloud: Clients generally appreciate the focus that SAP is placing on the cloud, and this trend is expected to accelerate again in 2015.
- HANA is already mainstream: While clients are buying into the HANA story, believing it is the way to go, SAP needs to reduce the price point.
Dr Thomas Mendel, SVP of IT services research, HfS, said among the surprises from this year’s survey were the impressive results of NTT Data, Infosys, Wipro, Fujitsu and EY.
