I am reviewing Dr. Hasso Plattner and Bernd Leukert’s new book. I am doing it more to make sure I get a 360 degree perspective for my SAP Nation sequel.
Not surprisingly, there is not much new on S/4HANA, recent as that is. In fact, that portion reads more like a marketing brochure. They don’t use the word “simple” much but there is plenty of promise of “non-disruption”. There is insufficient focus on migration or destination economics other than it should be lighter in data, ergo TCO should go down.
What is nice, and the reason it qualifies for New Florence is the “Big Data”/HANA use cases profiled – medical research insights, fraud detection, omni-channel retail at Burberrys, margin management at Conagra, hurricane damage prediction for insurers and consumer sentiment analysis among them. I wish they had profiled these 3-4-5 years ago, when they would have stood out much more in the Analytics category of this blog where other products/vendors have been showcasing similar examples. Again, in the use cases, there is little focus on what it cost these customers.
Another nice touch – a spiritual foreword by Clayton Christensen, “Mr. Disruption” which plays to the S/4 message of simplification through removal of aggregates
“I am a religious person, and I regularly think about whether God is pleased with my life. In one of these ponderings recently, I had an important insight: God does not need accountants in Heaven. Because we have finite minds, we need to aggregate data into bigger numbers to have a sense for what is going on around us. For example, I can’t keep track of all of the specific invoices we have sent to our customers, So thank goodness, we have an accountant who can count up all these into a single number which we call “sales.” … I realized, however, that because God has an infinite mind, he doesn’t need to aggregate above the level of individuals in order to have a perfect understanding of what is going on in the world. And this implies that when he measures my life, he will only discuss with me what I have done to help other people — because he doesn’t aggregate above the level of the individual.”
Finally, a production note: Amazon has not had the book available for weeks now. Springer, the publisher, still does not have the eBook version out, and as of last week was not shipping the print version to the US (that may have changed). I had to escalate within Springer to get a copy. Hopefully, readers will have an easier time.
I would certainly recommend reading the use cases. At $79.99 the print version is priced more for a college course, but if it is released on the Amazon Kindle, it would certainly be a good one to borrow from their online library.
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