SAP Teched Bangalore has already kicked off with the innojam on mobility theme. I am not there in person, but several friends are, and I am getting near real time updates 🙂 . I was seriously thrilled to see that SAP expects more than 10000 people to show up for the event. I am guessing that one day soon, we will see SAPPHIRE in India too.
First off – SAP could not have chosen a better focus than mobility for this event. Brilliant ! Every time I go to India, I am amazed by the proliferation of mobile devices there. Almost every one I know there has 2 mobile phones – and most now have a smart phone. When I visited my parents last month, the vegetable vendor from whom they buy regularly showed me his new iPhone. Without a doubt – India now has the largest pool of SAP developers. Some of the smartest SAP mentors live and work in India. And it has a growing economy. It is an ecosystem ripe for SAP to influence big time – and mobility is the path of least resistance.
I know HANA is where SAP has the most focus these days – but in my opinion, it will be a lost opportunity if SAP lets HANA overshadow mobility messaging at Bangalore. However, just talking about mobility alone is obviously not what SAP needs to do – SAP needs to show how this vast ecosystem can participate in getting this strategy from philosophical levels to execution levels.
India might be a great HANA market too with the boom in retail, banking etc – all high volume, real time data sensitive sectors. I expect to see Vishal’s key note showing how Indian businesses can make use of HANA . But what is also required is for SAP education to step up their game and get access for developers in India to get smart on HANA very quickly.
Today morning on twitter, I had a brief interchange with Vishal Sikka . I tried to get Vishal to consider delivering part of his keynote at least in Hindi. Vishal said he will consider it. And it was great to find out that his mom taught Hindi. Given that the intricacies of India’s future was discussed in Hindi before millions of people by the leaders of Independence movement 60 years ago, I am confident the intricate message of SAP’s future can be expressed in Hindi before ten thousand people with sufficient impact. Now of course I know regional languages trump Hindi in most parts of India. However, I feel that Vishal delivering a part of his keynote message in Hindi – may be with English translations in video as Dennis Howlett suggested – will be pretty powerful, and well appreciated by the audience.
I feel terrible that I have never been to a Teched in India, and will make every effort to attend it next year.
Good luck, SAP – I wish you the best in getting India all excited about your solutions.
And Vijay Says... 