Monday, March 18, 2019

The Intelligent Enterprise powered by SAP HANA

The SAP HANA business data platform is unrivaled, combining a robust database with services for creating innovative applications. It enables real-time business by converging transactions and analytics on one in-memory platform. Running on premise or in the cloud, SAP HANA untangles IT complexity, bringing huge savings in data management and empowering decision-makers everywhere with new insight and predictive power.

Accelerate with Simplicity
An intelligent enterprise requires a business-ready data platform that helps you find the signal in the noise and unleash your data’s potential for better business outcomes. The SAP HANA business data platform provides the next-generation data management foundation for all of the industry-leading SAP® solutions. It also enables development of cutting-edge applications to deliver intelligent solutions for the enterprise quickly.

SAP HANA is one of the first data management platforms to handle both transactions and analytics in-memory on a single data set. It converges a future-proof database with advanced analytical processing and capabilities for application development, data integration, and data quality. Embedded in a robust, state-of-the-art security framework, it supports compliance with the latest security standards and data protection regulations. You gain a single secure environment for all your mission-critical data assets. You can manage large volumes of structured and unstructured data efficiently, leveraging the value of your business data while improving total cost of ownership (TCO).

Reimagine the Database
SAP HANA is built on an in-memory columnar store that is optimized for both transactional and analytical workloads, enabling the benefits of multicore processing, modern storage technology, and the single-instruction, multiple-data instruction set. It’s fully compliant with requirements for the atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability (ACID) standards.

Intuitive modeling tools and preconfigured function libraries let you run complex business logic directly inside the database. That means you avoid latencies from moving data between the database and application server tiers.

Multitenant databases can be managed as one while maintaining their isolation from one another. The data tiering capabilities of SAP HANA, such as extension nodes, allow you to maximize your value by balancing performance and cost of data storage. This enables administrators to control which data is kept in-memory and which is kept in alternative persistent data storage. At the same time, the multistore tables in SAP HANA mean that where and how data is stored is completely transparent to consuming applications.

Act with Live Intelligence
SAP HANA provides next-generation hybrid transactional and analytical processing (HTAP) with the broadest advanced analytics capabilities to help business leaders understand information in context and achieve situational awareness to act in the moment. This includes native high-performance predictive and machine learning algorithms and integration with TensorFlow and R to reveal meaningful patterns in data and build applications that can learn and automate manual business processes. Text analysis and search capabilities help extract real insights from unstructured textual data in many different languages. Administrative boundary content, advanced services such as geocoding, and spatial services available in the cloud help accelerate development of location-aware business applications.

SAP HANA can store and query streaming data from sensors, plant equipment, and Internet of Things devices; time-series data such as price fluctuations and information on machine efficiency; and highly interconnected graph data. It also provides a JSON document store. These powerful capabilities can be leveraged with standard SQL, enabling data to be combined from standard relational databases, spatial and graph data, and data stored in a JSON document. A wealth of new possibilities helps you reimagine business models.


Innovate with Confidence
To achieve business insight in real time, SAP HANA helps you innovate with confidence. You can analyze sensitive data while effectively aligning with compliance requirements with real-time data anonymization. State-of-the-art techniques such as k-anonymity and differential privacy render personal data disconnected from an individual. This empowers business users and data scientists to “know without seeing” and explore new business opportunities for data as a service.

SAP HANA connects with existing applications using open standards and offers a choice of ways to build applications that are Web based or based on microservices. SAP Web IDE for SAP HANA offers a comprehensive lightweight tool set for data modeling and application development. Complex security authorizations can be easily shared between native applications and extensions running on SAP HANA and SAP business applications.

Read the full blog post on www.approyo.com 

Friday, March 15, 2019

Mirror Review Recognizes Approyo as one of The 10 Most Agile SAP Solution Providers To Keep An Eye On In 2019

Mirror Review has listed Approyo among the top SAP solution providers in its latest magazine, “The 10 Most Agile SAP Solution Providers To Keep An Eye On In 2019

The magazine has recently published its special issue, in which it has featured the most prominent companies that empower their clients with the most advanced SAP solutions and tools for enterprise operations.

Today, SAP is leading the world with industry expertise in providing high grade enterprise solutions. It is the unique characteristic of SAP that enable a strong digital core and an easy-to-use system that supports innovations planned by companies. Tools provided by SAP are helping businesses transform themselves and take themselves towards success, without jeopardizing the daily business operations.

In its published story, Chris Carter, the CEO and Founder of Approyo shares his journey from starting Approyo to leading it to a successful SAP solutions provider company. Currently, in the leadership of Chris, SAP solutions by Approyo help businesses to unlock the full potential of SAP technologies. Mayur Shewale, Assistant Editor of Mirror Review shares, “SAP HANA and SAP Cloud Platform are useful to build intelligent applications and analytics solutions across various industries which greatly assist in streamlining business processes. However, the emergence of challenges like technological differences, integration difficulties is an essential part of their implementation. Such challenges are the prime motive behind the need for quality SAP solutions providers who can integrate SAP with leading systems like CRMs, Supplier, or third-party purchase order systems. Chris and his team at Approyo have recognized these challenges and are helping customers to develop a fully operational SAP HANA solution in the cloud to gratify the needs of their customers.”

“We are excited to be part of this great list of companies" said Christopher Carter, CEO of Approyo. "This achievement continues to validate our success in the SAP and Cloud marketplace.”

View the full profile: https://www.mirrorreview.com/approyo-moving-sap-applications-to-the-cloud/

The 10 Best Performing SAP Solution Providers list: https://www.mirrorreview.com/the-10-most-agile-sap-solution-providers-to-keep-an-eye-on-in-2019/

About Mirror Review
Mirror Review is a magazine company that unwinds the untold stories of Enterprises and their Founders, VPs, CEOs, CXOs, etc., while focusing on the unique services offered by them. As this is a platform for technologists and business people, the company keeps its audience informed with all current affairs in the market. The magazine company focuses on technology sectors such as Big Data, Cloud, IoT, Mobility, Networking, Security, Software, and Virtualization, and has issued numerous successful projects.

Monday, March 11, 2019

Unlocking the Benefits of the Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things is a network of physical objects – vehicles, machines, home appliances, and more – that use sensors and APIs to connect and exchange data over the Internet.

IoT platforms and architecture

  • Cloud-based IoT platforms and architecture connect the real and virtual worlds. They help companies manage IoT device connectivity and security – as well as collect device data, link devices to backend systems, ensure IoT interoperability, and build and run IoT applications. 
  • Harnessing the IoT data explosion - Smart devices generate a massive amount of IoT data that needs to be analyzed and leveraged in real time. This is where predictive and Big Data analytics come into play. Machine learning is also used to add context to data – and trigger actions without human intervention.
  • The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) & M2M - In manufacturing, the IoT becomes the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) – also known as the Industrial Internet or Industry 4.0. The IIoT uses machine to machine (M2M) technology to support everything from remote monitoring and telemetry to predictive maintenance.

Major Benefits of deploying an IoT Strategy

  • New business models and revenue - Automatic product replenishment? Subscription services? Apps? The IoT is disrupting traditional business models and creating massive opportunities for companies to create new services based on real-time sensor data and information.
  • Operational efficiency - One of the biggest benefits of the IoT is the efficiency it can offer. Many companies are using it to automate business and manufacturing processes, remotely monitor and control operations, optimize supply chains, and conserve resources.
  • Workforce productivity - Wearables and other IoT-enabled devices are boosting workforce productivity and job satisfaction in many verticals. The technology is helping employees improve decision making, automate routine tasks, fast-track communication, and more.
  • Enhanced customer experiences - From integrating customer care with actual product performance and usage to delivering highly personalized products and services, the IoT offers many ways to create more compelling customer experiences across digital and physical worlds.

Friday, March 8, 2019

Understand your path to SAP S/4HANA (updated)

By 2025, SAP will no longer support SAP ECC 6, the core component of SAP ERP. This means you will need to upgrade your SAP systems. But what are your best upgrade options?

There are three basic SAP cloud migration paths. Companies that want to start off slowly can undergo a traditional SAP cloud migration, moving their assets into the cloud without moving to SAP HANA at all. This allows you to show ROI quickly from running in the cloud while minimizing initial disruption and lets you wait for the major SAP HANA and S/4HANA upgrade for a later date.

Another option is migrating to Suite on HANA — with SAP ECC 6.0 Enhancement Pack 7 running on a HANA database. This gives you all the incremental benefits of HANA, such as faster performance and compatibility with newer applications and will get you close to a full S/4HANA landscape.

However, most companies will benefit from moving directly to S/4HANA. In most cases, a complete upgrade and migration will be less disruptive and less costly than several smaller upgrades and the new functionality will provide a major competitive advantage right away.

Deployment options for SAP S/4HANA

  • Cloud - Public Cloud - SAP offers a pure Public Cloud option—Software-as-as-Service (SaaS)—such as SAP Cloud, Google Cloud Platform, AWS, or Azure, to name a few, which hosts and manages the entire HANA infrastructure, including the quarterly upgrades. This option can also be managed through the public cloud provider, internally or by an SAP partner like Approyo. 
  • Cloud - Private Cloud - Under a private cloud setup, the HANA infrastructure operates on a private cloud exclusive for the use of an organization. This scenario can be managed internally or by a third-party and can be hosted internally or externally. It works best for companies looking for on-demand scalability, complete management control, and security prioritization for their IT assets while combining both on-premise and cloud solutions. 
  • Hybrid Cloud - The Hybrid Cloud option involves using a cloud provider as either IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) or PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service).  With either option, the organization must manage a portion of their on-premise assets and associated services while the rest of the portions are managed by the Cloud service provider.
  • On-premise - On-premise deployment is hosting SAP S/4HANA in your own data center, which isn’t mandated by SAP’s upgrade cycle. Under this scenario, the HANA appliances are hosted on partners/customers’ existing data centers. 

Monday, March 4, 2019

SAP Announces new SAP Leonardo Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities

SAP unveiled SAP Leonardo Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities, the all-encompassing technology that generates and drives digital transformation for Industrial IoT and Industry 4.0.

In addition, SAP announced the cloud-to-cloud interoperability of SAP Leonardo IoT with Microsoft Azure IoT Hub, providing customers a choice of connectivity and device management. SAP is committed to a strong ecosystem for IoT and understands the value its partners can bring to joint customers. This announcement was made at MWC being held February 25–28 in Barcelona. Below are some of the highlights from the announcement:

SAP is uniquely positioned to bring IoT data together with business processes. SAP Leonardo IoT will help customers increase productivity, redefine their customer experience and grow their revenue streams. It will enable customers to embed IoT into line-of-business (LoB) solutions, enhance business applications with IoT technology and develop new business models based on the new data the IoT solutions generate.

“SAP delivers valuable insight and drives business results by embedding IoT data into business processes,” said Elvira Wallis, senior vice president and global head of IoT at SAP. “With the launch of SAP Leonardo IoT, SAP solidifies its commitment to the IoT, and in particular Industrial IoT. The combination of IoT and our depth and breadth of high-value industry and application expertise helps customers gain greater business value and a stronger competitive advantage.”

SAP Leonardo IoT will allow customers to innovate and enhance business processes using data-driven intelligence and operational context from machines, products, supply chains, consumers and partners. SAP Leonardo IoT will offer three paths to innovation for customers based on their specific business needs, including:

  • Combining IoT data with business process data to enable IoT-embedded business applications and accelerate adoption to give customers the ability to innovate quickly from within business applications – including SAP S/4HANA, the SAP C/4HANA suite, SAP SuccessFactors solutions, SAP Ariba solutions and the SAP Digital Supply Chain portfolio.
  • Extending existing SAP IoT applications for better business value
  • Building new intelligent IoT solutions using SAP Leonardo IoT to create unique and differentiated offerings

Interoperability of SAP Leonardo IoT and Microsoft Azure IoT Hub
The new collaboration plans to offer customers the possibility of using Microsoft Azure IoT Hub as the connectivity and device management layer for IoT telemetry data, which is seamlessly relayed to SAP Leonardo IoT.

In addition, SAP Leonardo IoT Edge aims to give customers the option to extend support for their business processes locally on top of Microsoft Azure IoT Edge runtime. Essential business function (EBF) modules based on SAP Leonardo IoT Edge are also planned to run in containers on Microsoft Azure IoT Edge, reducing customers dependency on latency, bandwidth and connectivity.

Read the full announcement on www.sap.comhttps://news.sap.com/2019/02/mwc-sap-leonardo-iot-shape-intelligent-enterprise/

Friday, March 1, 2019

Approyo CEO Chris Carter featured in Authority Magazine

Approyo CEO Chris Carter was featured as part of an ongoing series with Authority Magazine on February 27. In this interview with Dr. Ely Weinschneider, Chris shares how he manages to be there for his daughters while running a successful company.

Here is an excerpt from the interview:

"With almost three decades of extraordinary working experience in the SAP industry, Christopher Carter, CEO at Approyo founded the company with the goal of making it easy for customers to embrace SAP HANA. Chris works with businesses around the globe and is known to assist them in their journey to the usage of Big Data in the forms of Hadoop (Cloudera and Hortonwork’s) and SAP HANA. His experience has earned him national recognition by the American SAP Users Group, SAP, Hadoop World, Cloud Expo and more.

Under Chris’s leadership, Approyo has been named to the Inc. 5000 three years in a row (2016–2018) and named one the SAP Solution Provider of the Year in 2018 by ACQ5. In 2018, Chris was awarded the Gamechanger of the year by ACQ5, one of the 10 Most Inspiring Business Leaders by Mirror Review and one of the Rising Entrepreneurs of the Year by The Technology Headlines.

Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us your “childhood backstory”?
Absolutely I grew up as the oldest son of 4 boys. I was the first to leave for college. My parents were divorced, and I grew up between my mother and my father’s homes. When I left for college, I wanted to go somewhere warm and as far away from my parents as possible. I joke about that now, but at the time it really seemed fitting because I wanted to leave to become a technologist or baseball player.

Can you share the story about what brought you to this specific point in your career?
What brought me to this point in my life was a lot of life experiences. A ton of trial and error. And many times, not trusting others and doing it myself. It took a long time for me to be able to understand the fact that I could trust others which would help grow myself and my business."

Can you tell us a bit more about what your day to day schedule looks like?
Typically, my day starts at 5 a.m. The first thing I do is listen to the news while I’m getting ready. I try to be out the door by 5:30 a.m. because my local radio station plays The Star-Spangled Banner at that time. I can continue to listen to the local news and any national activities going on once I get to the office. I usually have some good time to myself to get ready for my day, go through my notes that I left for myself from the evening prior, and answer any emails that have come in overnight. From that point, I continue my day with a lot of activities with customers and prospects. I meet with my team in the office and staff across the globe with phone call meetings.

Read the full interview at https://medium.com/authority-magazine/to-be-a-great-parent-you-must-be-able-to-enjoy-life-to-the-fullest-with-those-around-you-and-the-45cb5cbc1b96

About Authority Magazine
Leadership Lessons from Authorities in Business, Film, Sports, and Tech. Authority Mag is devoted primarily to sharing interesting feature interviews of people who are authorities in their industry. We use interviews to draw out stories that are both empowering and actionable.

Monday, February 25, 2019

Top benefits of implementing Machine Learning right now

Machine learning is a type of AI that allows computer programs to adjust when exposed to new data, in effect, “learning” without being explicitly programmed. Machine learning is similar to data mining in which databases are examined by humans to produce new information and insight. However, machine learning provides an unbiased analysis of the data. Today, companies all over the world are implementing machine learning in every level of business. Don't wait for your competition to pass you, get a jump start at implementing machine learning for your business right now with SAP powered by Approyo.

  • Faster decisions - Machine learning algorithms can prioritize and automate decision making. They can also flag opportunities and smart actions that should be taken immediately – so you can achieve the best results.
  • Adaptability - Artificial intelligence doesn’t just look at historical data. It can process real-time inputs – so you can adjust on the fly. Think of cars that can automatically stop before rear-ending another vehicle.
  • Algorithmic business - An “algorithmic business” uses advanced machine learning algorithms to achieve a high level of automation. Making the shift can pave the way for innovative new business models, products, and services.
  • Deeper insights - Machine learning can analyze big, complex, and streaming data, and find insights – including predictive insights – that are beyond human capabilities. It can then trigger actions based on those insights.
  • Efficiency - With smart, machine learning-supported business processes, you can dramatically improve efficiency. Plan and forecast accurately, automate tasks, reduce costs, and even eliminate human error.
  • Better outcomes - From triggering smart actions based on new opportunities and risks, to accurately predicting the results of a decision before it is made – machine learning can help you drive better business outcomes.

Industry Benefits for implementing Machine Learning

  • Manufacturing  -Manufacturers collect a huge amount of data from plant sensors and the Internet of Things – which is perfect for machine learning. Computer vision and anomaly detection algorithms are used for quality control – and others are used
  • for everything from predictive maintenance and demand forecasting to powering new services. 
  • Finance - Few industries are better suited for machine learning than finance – given its high data volumes and historical records. Algorithms are used for trading stocks, approving loans, detecting fraud, assessing risks, and underwriting insurance. They’re even used for “robo advising” customers and aligning portfolios to user goals. 
  • Healthcare - Machine learning algorithms can process more data and spot more patterns than any team of researchers or doctors, no matter how many hours they put in. From medical image analysis and early cancer detection, to drug development and robot-assisted surgery – the machine learning possibilities in healthcare are endless.