Category "SAP"

New Year, New Role With SAP Predictive Analytics

Kurt J. Bilafer - February 21, 2014 - SAP

It’s a new year and I have a new role, brand new for SAP and for me. As of Jan. 1, I’m the Global Sales Lead for Predictive Analytics and Business Intelligence. But, you can just call me Kurt.

BI is the third single best selling SKU at SAP, second only to ERP and SAP HANA. It’s a very important piece of the business, representing about +60% of Analytics sales globally.

To be clear, Analytics at SAP includes Business Intelligence, Predictive, and also our solutions for the CFO–Enterprise Performance Management, Governance Risk and Compliance solutions and our finance line of business solutions.

SAP TechEd Bangalore: My incredible India experience

Kurt J. Bilafer - February 11, 2014 - SAP

Bangalore-traffic

I’m a little late in posting this but I finally made it to Bangalore, for SAP TechEd in December. I’ve been to other parts of India, but never Bangalore. Everybody told me it would be unlike anything else I’ve experienced in India, and they were right. It was exciting and exhausting.

India’s national tourism slogan is “Incredible India“. Nowhere is that more applicable than Bangalore. To start with, wherever you land, it’s at least two hours to where you want to go, no matter where it is. It just takes that long because the infrastructure isn’t there. One day, I spent 11hours to go to two one-hour meetings.

The new world of predictive analytics

Kurt J. Bilafer - January 16, 2014 - Predictive Analytics, SAP

Back in September, SAP announced the acquisition of KXEN, an advanced analytics company that focuses on the predictive space. I recently wrapped up a mini-tour of Asia-Pacific Japan with Shekhar Iyer, our Global Vice President for Business Intelligence, Visualizations, and Predictive to talk to analysts, partners and customers in Singapore, India and Japan about the acquisition and what it means for SAP and more importantly, for our customers. Here’s the story.

What the duck . . . ?

Kurt J. Bilafer - November 27, 2013 - Big Data, SAP

At SAP Insider in Singapore last year, we had a little fun with rubber ducks that turned into something of a meme for the conference. My keynote included a rubber duck and the social media lounge featured a flotilla of yellow rubber ducks floating in a glass tank.

Afterwards, I started to see rubber ducks cropping up at various SAP events all over the world, so at this year’s Singapore Insider event, the ducks were back in full force, prompting a few people around the globe to ask me for an explanation.