A look back at 2016

This last year has been exceptionally busy for SAP users, and as 2016 draws to a close, we’re looking back at some of the main SAP stories of the year. At the beginning of the year, SAP’s cloud revenue and its S/4 HANA customer base had almost doubled, and it became clear that cloud would continue to be a major focus for users in 2016.

At the London SAP Innovation Forum in March, the McLaren F1 team explained how it’s using the HANA Cloud Platform to analyse big data and predict scenarios for its drivers, showing how companies can use SAP to leverage big data across a range of industries.

Later in the Spring, our own survey on SAP cloud adoption found that over half (58%) of members are currently using or planning to use SAP’s cloud offerings, but 52% cited a lack of clarity surrounding SAP’s product roadmap as a major barrier to adoption. In fact, at May’s Sapphire conference, SAP CEO Bill McDermott acknowledged that SAP needed to listen closely to customers, and make its plans and roadmaps clearer.

We saw a Summer of innovation as details on new SAP partnerships were released. With customers from the German national football team to the US National Center for Tumor Diseases, SAP showed how it was working to bring organisations to the cutting edge.

The Autumn weather kicked in and cloud was again high on the agenda in September with the launch of SAP BW/4HANA; a key component of which is that it is available on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, helping users migrate more easily.

And of course, UKISUG Connect stole the spotlight in November, with over 1,000 attendees converging in Birmingham for our annual event. A big focus for the conference this year was on working with SAP to help customers navigate licensing and pricing models in the wake of the IoT boom.

As a busy 2017 begins to take shape, with many more User Group events scheduled, we wish all of our members a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.