It's a Mobile, Social, Cloudy, Collaborative World

SAPs Sapphire Now annual conference took place this week in Orlando. While the conference is of course product specific, it nevertheless always offers an up-to-date snapshot of the state of IT in business and society. This year, the emphasis is on mobility, social media, the cloud and collaboration. Of particular interest, since SAP has its roots in large ERP systems, is the emphasis on big data. Big data is the recognition that data are being made available from a variety of sources, including social media, in vast quantities and there is a real need to be able to analyze it for strategic and management purposes. So the big vendors are moving into this space. SAPs entry is a product called Hanna and that is drawing a lot of interest at this conference. Products like Hanna must be able to work in the cloud and on handhelds, maximizing data mobility and data analytics. It's where we are these days. Here's one article on Sapphire Now.