CIOIN

Candid, flamboyant, and witty, Dr. Vishal Sikka, CTO, SAP, is a respected figure in the community of IT leaders. His popularity is unmistakable, as was evident at the recent SAP TechEd conference held in Bangalore where he was seen extending his vociferous support to SAP’s analytical platform HANA. From his passionate discourse on the power of mobility to his witty retorts to inquisitive journalists, Dr. Sikka is unflinching and unapologetic about his views. In an exclusive interview with CIO.in, Dr. Sikka talks about the data deluge that organizations are battling with and the promise of real-time analytics and mobility solutions that will tip the scale in favor of CIOs.

What do you think is the number one CIO challenge in enterprises today?

Dr. Sikka:  The real CIO challenge today is managing growth. The mandate CIOs are getting from their business is clear: The size of the systems cannot grow linearly along with the growth of the company; IT systems have to be flat, and inherently scalable. Historically, CIOs have struggled to serve the increasing needs of automation for the lines of business and users. But now some of the more definitive technologies like real-time computing and mobility solutions are giving them back the power to empower different lines of businesses.

 The balance of power is shifting, thanks to the increased ability of CIOs. The CIOs who are able to keep up with this, are succeeding. And those who aren’t, their organizations are descending into anarchy with business going outside the enterprise to other vendors. More importantly, there is no process consistency or governance across the board.

 CIO:  One problem with traditional BI systems is that it doesn’t exactly tell you what you need to know. How does HANA address these challenges?

Dr. Sikka:   The ability to ask the right question is still a unique skill.  I think nobody can help businesses with that. We can bring best practices of what your peers are asking in different areas and stitch it into HANA. The moment you give people the ability to run real-time analytics, they are left with a lot of time to focus on key areas. The first thing most people focus on is profitability and how analytics can help improve revenue margins.  

 The first thing we at SAP implemented was sales effectiveness.  However, the fundamental lesson I have learnt is that the world’s most progressive question- answer systems will not work unless you know the right questions to ask. That is the unfortunate reality.

 CIO: Will new product development follow the RDS lead into more quickly deployed apps?

Dr. Sikka:  RDS is a very powerful approach to enable rapid deployment for our customers for more complex application products. Every application requires a complex process of implementation. RDS makes it simpler by bringing in a pre-defined package. However, it is not the only way. The key is non-disruptive implementation, and that’s going to be our focus with HANA.

 CIO: Is the case for private ERP clouds still strong?

Dr. Sikka:  Indeed it is. For us to think everything will move to the public cloud sphere is unrealistic. However, we are seeing a promising potential in the private cloud space. The uptake is especially strong in scenarios where the private cloud is being remotely managed by central providers like us while the infrastructure sits in the premise of the enterprise.

 CIO: But a large number of CIOs are still uncomfortable putting their ERP on a virtualized platform.

Dr. Sikka:  Yes we do hear lot of skepticism about moving ERP to the cloud. However, the lack of adoption of ERP on virtualized environment comes from the fact that most of the ERP systems today still run on platforms from HP and IBM that are already virtualized. These have been there since 1980.  Most of these systems have either not moved to the Intel x86 platforms.

 But in the new world virtualization will be much different. HANA, for example, is not a virtualized platform. We own direct control over the physical resources, and virtualization occurs at a higher level in the stack. The new world will not see virtualization defined in terms of hypervisors.

  CIO: Do you see multi-tenant ERP within a shared services environment for large diversified companies becoming a reality?

Dr. Sikka:  Multi-tenancy is not simply an artifact of database or application. It has to cut across stacks, and we are working on that. We have had it in our software since 1982. But there are times in life when you don’t want to share what you have; you want to have full control over your resources. It’s like the difference between people who have their own cars and others who take the bus or train.

 From the software architecture point of view, multi-tenancy must be provided at every level and then it deepens on where the CIO wants to cut the stack.  In HANA, we will build multi-tenancy into the database itself, next year, such that you’re able to get physical separation of tenants inside the database, not inside applications, like is the case with other providers.