SAP is bringing the three major areas of its innovation agenda – in-memory Hana, cloud-first developments and mobile - together under one lead. Vishal Sikka, who is well respected inside and outside SAP and is already a member of the executive board heading up technology and innovation for the company, will take the overall role as of June 1st. Until this announcement Lars Dalgaard, the founder of SaaS pure-play Successfactors that SAP acquired last year, led the cloud initiative. He was appointed to the cloud role because SAP was struggling with its cloud strategy and developments.
Uniting the three areas makes sense because they are so closely entwined and the objective is to speed up the rate of innovation and development within SAP. “SAP Hana has become the future innovation platform for our customers and is now radically changing the industry while cloud disruption is redefining the market and business models. By creating one single development organisation under Vishal’s leadership, we will dramatically accelerate the speed of these innovations,” said co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe in a statement announcing the changes.
The company has got a better handle on the cloud, now that it has established Hana as the central platform for the SAP portfolio. It provides a foundation for unified expansion – for example, the company launched SAP Hana Enterprise Cloud recently (see here) – and confirms that the cloud as central to SAP, not just a necessary add-on. It is not so much that the work of Dalgaard’s disruptive mandate is complete but that Sikka is able to move the innovation agenda forward on a united force. Although Dalgaard is leaving the company he will continue as an advisor to the cloud business and strategy development.