- SAP University Alliance members will soon have an option to teach ERP using SAP's latest cloud solution - Business By Demand (ByD for short). Pilot Universities are being listed (about 20 in India) and within a year it will be open for all.
- The keynotes, and all through the conference and exhibition, the main theme was Mobility, Cloud Computing and In-Memory analytics. I think each and every professor amongst us must learn about these future directions and if possible start teaching our students. How can you do that? Very simple - a large part of presentations for Sapphire will be available for listening and viewing on-line. I will send you the selected links when it becomes available and I find time to do it.
- We attended the American SAP User's Group's (ASUG) University Connection SIG meeting. Rahul Sachdev (SAP India) has declared that he is going to form an ASUG-like SAP User's Group in India. That would be really a wonderful thing for SAP customers in general and specifically for us SAP UA Professors. I have been a very active participant in ASUG for the past 10 years and let me assure you of the tremendous value that an ASUG-like group will bring to us.
- At ASUG, I discovered that in fact we Professors in India also can become ASUG members right now. The UA members can join ASUG for FREE and as long as you are a UA member (be it anywhere in the world) you can sign up. Further, ASUG is also opening itself up for our students and they plan to create a kind of student chapter or SIG. Let's all help Rahul to bring ASUG to India.
- And then I could meet other SAP UA members who were present at Sapphire. Simha Magal who wrote the GBI course and book is ready to come to India in the next summer to teach in any Indian University. He is developing a new course and book on "SAP Configuration". Perhaps he will be able to teach it in India for the SAP UA faculty and we can plan to teach this course starting next year.
- I also met Prof Darshana of QUT (Queens University of Technology). You are already using QUT's hosting services. Now Darshana is going to come to IIM Calcutta to teach during December/January. He has expressed his willingness to come to any other Universities and teach something approriate to your requirements.
- Then I met Prof Deepak Phatak. He is such a big man and so difficult to meet. But in Florida, I could get his exclusive attention. He was very happy to know about our initiatives and has agreed to allow us to run a Distant Learning Program for Teacher Empowerment - Ekalavya, for the benefit of our IIT alumni in Canada. Eklavya could be a great platform for all of us in SAP UA program for quick and high quality faculty development.
- Teaching Mobile technoloies for our students: Having seen the technology thrust in this area, I was wondering how fast we can bring this to our students. I talked to Dr. Ahmed Adl, VP SAP America. He had some very interesting news for me. SAP is planning to make all the important development tools available on Amazon cloud. Our students will be able to develop mobile applications with this cloud plaform for free and the finished applications will be made available for the global market through the SAP Store. Just imagine, if our students build one such application and it starts getting sold on the SAP Store what will happen? Infosys and TCS will line up to grab these people for the best pay packages.
- What about teaching Cloud Computing? Teaching the ByD course for ERP introduction will be a good start. Add to that some mobile apps and our students will get ready with the latest and greatest for employment interviews.
- Andres from Seneca College, is developing a course on Project Systems for SAP UA. He is very interested in teaching this course for our students in India. The detailed logistics need to be worked out
- I also attended the Higher Education SIG meeting to check out whether SAP has any options for Indian Universities for internal management use. Many intersting things I got and I will share details in a separate blog post.
End of whose world?
After a nice trip to Sapphire, a 4 day extravaganza, a treat in luxurious dream world Orlando; I returned back home and the TV was blasting the same old doomsday story - "21st May 2011, End of the world, return of Christ, the believers are going to heaven and non-believers are going to hell". If you have not as yet heard of the end of world then listen to it here http://www.ebiblefellowship.com/outreach/tracts/may21/.
What a contrast from the opening Keynote theater at Sapphire! At Sapphire, I was getting an extremely optimistic message from all these thought leaders. Emergence of Cloud, cheap Memory, mobility with practically no limits to computing power, scalability, speed, geography. At Sapphire these people are thinking that the world is going to have enormous change for the better - poverty reduction, education, prosperity for all etc. etc. The panelists were asked, "What do you think is the future?" There was a consensus amongst the panelists. The world is leading into the state of abundance of everything. If you have not already listened to the panel discussions that I am referring to then please visit online recording at http://www.sapphirenow.com/sessiondetails.aspx?sId=257
Forget the end of the world in next 5 months, in fact from 2015 and beyond the wonderful state of abundance of everything may be here. Moore's law is still doubling the computing power every 18 months. Cloud computing is growing at 15% compound rate, Cost of producing solar energy is going down by 30% compound.
So what will be the effect of these phenomenal technology innovations? By 2030, 85% of the world's middle class will be in BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries. With such a huge middle class, the markets and business will grow by 350 billion dollars every year. A higher percentage of women will be added to the paid workforce and this will add more than a billion to the productive workforce. By 2015, solar energy will start becoming affordable for all. That will lead the world to the days of unlimited cheap energy without any danger to the climate. Then even if the rivers can not meet the drinking water needs, world will be able to convert sea water for drinking. By 2030, all parts of the world will have abundant Water, Food, Energy, Housing, Health care, Education etc.
For near future, at Sapphire, new meaning was discovered for the famous equation of Einstein. E=m c square = m x c x (imc) and that translates into Enterprise = (equals) m (mobile technologies) x c (Cloud computing) x imc (In Memory Computing). SAP is looking at the immediate future with this direction. The central theme of Sapphire was E-=mcsquare.
Who is right? The Dooms Day or Abundance? I think both are right.
Doomsday may indeed be here for those who are predicting it. For all of us, I think 2015 is a promise of the approaching world of abundance.
You have a choice. Either believe in the Dooms Day or get excited about the wonderful future and start acting and getting ready to teach these revolutionary technologies in your Universities. Please send me your thoughts with this very short survey
