 Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering Sapphire Now, headline sponsored by SAP HANA Cloud, the leader in platform as a service, with support from Console Inc, the cloud internet company. Now, here are your hosts, John Furrier and Peter Burris. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are live in Orlando, Florida, with Sapphire Now, the SiliconANGLE media's flagship program theCUBE, where we go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, my co-host Peter Burris. Give a shout out to our sponsors, SAP HANA Cloud, Console Inc, thanks for sponsoring us. Our next guest is Jim Brett, who's the Vice President of Global Strategic Partners at SAP, and we have Michael Yadgar, who's the Principal Advisor at EY, formerly Ernst & Young, but you go by EY now, so it's EY. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. So guys, talk about the relationship, because we've been seeing, obviously it's been a phenomenal highlight here, because services, per se, like professional services, system integration has been a big discussion point, because the ecosystem battle has been laid out. Peter and I talked about it on our wrap up yesterday, that we believe that the ecosystem will be the winning formula for whoever takes a big part of this next generation IT cloud, whatever market you want to call it, consumerization of IT, because of the entrepreneurial nature of it, and also for the rapid development. So what's, Jim, what's the play for you guys, as you guys go forward, and where does EY fit into this? Well, obviously our ecosystem at SAP is critical to our company's overall strategy. I would say I'm responsible personally for our relationship with EY globally. I've been in that role since the inception of our alliance five years ago, five, six years ago. It's been extremely exciting to watch this channel, if you will, this relationship grow from predominantly being one region to one of our largest global partners, global strategic partners worldwide. So I think the future is very bright for our two organizations together. There's a lot of innovation happening. There's a lot of energy being exchanged and captured at this event, and we're going to springboard even further. Michael, I got to ask you, EY or poorly Ernst and Young, was really part of that original big six accounting mindset during the 25 years ago when SAP broke into the business. Everyone was automating our processes, but a lot's changed. The deployment cycle times have changed, but you guys have always been kind of within the brains for us behind implementing and making it work, and obviously wrapping more services around it. It's been a good economic model, but as we move on from this point forward with cloud, things are much different. It's very entrepreneurial. You guys do the entrepreneur year award every year and as Ernst and Young now EY, which is a huge company, all the big companies are in there. We're just talking about that. This is a new mindset organizationally, this entrepreneurial execution. Can you share some color into things that you're seeing around, one, the mindset of the customer, your customers, an SAP's customer, or a customer's customer, and some of the challenges that they have, is it a technology challenge, is it a process challenge, both, what, just get some color on that. Yeah, thank you. So what we see a lot of our customers having is they need speed. They need to move fast. They really need to make sure that they deploy quickly because the cycle time in business cycles is not, it's really short now. They have to make moves today. What we see companies doing is trying to figure out how to accelerate the adoption of SAP and technology and process change in their organization. So what that means is that they can't customize SAP. They can't customize software. We have to take standard SAP, deploy it quickly, work on the adoption in the organization and get the benefits quickly thereafter. So it's really about speed and it's about accepting SAP as it is for the organization because it's based on 25 plus years of industry best practices. It works. They get to adopt it and go. And what's the focus this year at SAP Fire for you guys? For the folks watching who are on here at the event, what are some of the things you guys are either announcing, working on, showing off here at the show? So right now, if you go to our booth right now and spend some time with us, we're highlighting our four areas of focus. We have four pods that are set to talk about what we're innovating on. One is around cybersecurity. What you find out, we look at cybersecurity, over 60% of the threats that come via cybersecurity are internal and 50% of those are malicious. So how do you internally or externally protect your organization? We're working a lot with SAP to figure out how do we innovate together to make SAP a secure platform in company we're looking at finance, the future of finance and how we work together using S4 Finance and how we're helping clients, not just adopt software but change their business model. Supply chain and digital supply chain and digital consumer is an area of focus for us as well. We're co-innovating with SAP using something called HANA Cloud Platform to actually innovate and bring capability to the market. And lastly, it's all about our capabilities in human capital, success factors to cloud, how to help companies transform themselves via success factors. Sheen, talk about the SAP relationship because now HANA Cloud Platform, who brought that up, was interesting because it's kind of new, it's kind of like sneaking up on the market, it's not getting, I don't think it's getting the fanfare it should be getting, in my opinion, based upon looking at all the hype in other areas. But there's a lot of meat and potatoes in there and from an enablement standpoint. It seems to integrate well. How is that going to fit into this growth? Because if it plays out the way we're seeing it here is it's going to be a goldmine of enablement because it's got so much power to it, yet it's got more customization to see entrepreneurship, startups using it. How does it get put into practice? Yeah, I think when you think about SAP and our legacy of having core transactional process oriented software and then the evolution into analytics, this is really the next progression, if you will, the extension of that core enterprise platform, the extension of our cloud solutions, whether they be human capital, supply chain, even areas of like cyber. So the way I look at the HANA Cloud Platform, which has matured dramatically in the last year or two, tremendous amount of investment we put into it, is it's somewhat of a blank canvas, right? So when we look to the ecosystem, many of which are here today, we're looking, you're seeing a lot of ISV, smaller partners building apps available on our SAP store. But when we look at our global strategic partnerships, what we're really looking to do is take the best of their intellectual capital and embed that into the HANA Cloud Platform to really bring it to life, right? So as to how we take that to market, that could be various models between our organizations which we're still working through in some cases. But when we look to a partner like Ian Wine, you think about their incredible capabilities in areas like cyber, in areas like risk, in areas like tax. You talk about extending our core platform. We believe that no other vendor out there is offering something like that in the market and we're very excited about the investments that Ian Wine's made. So we've had other, maybe I'm going to anticipate what you're going to say Mike, but we've had some other big enterprise partners on theCUBE in the last couple of days. And we've talked a lot about how the ecosystem and the platform increasingly is becoming the focus of competition. In a marketplace, how are, every customer looks at a different channel choice or different partner choice as a unique way of getting something a little bit different out of SAP. What is it that the SAP E&Y partnership is bringing that's unique relative to others? Clearly, cybersecurity. EY's got a great legacy in the cybersecurity world. But what is it that you guys are putting forward that makes you unique to that core group of customers who want that a little bit more out of SAP? I'll start if that's okay. Please, please. So I'll talk about what it means for us at EY. Specifically our relationship with SAP as we grow. Right now, our biggest technology platform by far, by none is SAP for us to grow and achieve our results, which is encapsulated in something called Vision 2020. So for us to grow, we're focused on SAP, which means the attention, the focus, the investment is on SAP, which helps us have successful results with our customers with SAP. This year, we're extremely proud. We won the Pinnacle Award for quality, quality services. That's the brand that we want. So what we say to SAP and to the customers, we're the safest choice. We're the safe choice because of how we work with SAP. To the customer. Got it. We're the safest choice to the customer because of the quality work that we do. And because of that relationship and the success that we've had, we're able to get the investment. And when we put investment in, we put it in SAP technology. So back in January, we announced the launch of our HANA Cloud Platform Center in Alpharetta, Georgia, dedicated to building applications on HANA Cloud Platform. And Jim mentioned it, and I'd even prompt him to say this, but within our entire organization, we're going to sweep the floor, take all our IP, whether it's tasks, tax, risk, cyber, and we're going to replatform all that on HANA Cloud Platform. That's something that I would say, how much are other partners that made that commitment to do with SAP? So you're saying, look, we're putting money where our mouth is. Yes. Jim, are you seeing that also as customers come to you and are you getting a common set of stories or a common set of objectives from your customers? Well, one of the things that we've talked a lot about with EY is this kind of evolution of the consulting space, right? So services are being delivered in different ways, right? The billable hour model, you talked about shrinking project timelines. This is really a way of digitizing the services and digitizing the partnership. So you're taking the world-class technology of SAP and matching it with the smarts, if you will, of EY, and we know where those smarts lie. They lie in a lot of different areas, line of business, service line, industry. I think you're going to see a lot coming out of the EY Experience Center in which they've launched and I think there's going to be other investments coming in the near future. Digital businesses or the process of digitization, we've been doing it for a long time, in operation, so we've been digitizing our operating models. Now we're trying to digitize more of the business model, how we engage our customers, how we generate, deliver value, and how we capture value back. When we were digitizing the operating model, everybody has accounting, everybody has finance, we found ways to do it a little bit differently, but it's a lot more common. When we started talking about digitizing engagement, now we're talking about the crown jewels, the uniqueness of the corporation. It's EY, SAP, and the customer. How are you ensuring that the customer is intellectual property? The thing that makes the customer unique as they engage with the customer is reflected in the solutions you're building, but doesn't walk to their competitors. I'll start, that's okay. So you ask kind of two questions. How do we preserve it with the customer and make sure it doesn't go somewhere else? What we do a lot of, and actually it's being represented here, we're actually having one of our leaders speak about our digital program and one of our clients here at SAFR, we do it and we try to do it in a more collaborative fashion with SAP and our customer in a unique engagement model, because it has to be their skin in a game too, it's their brand. So what we try to do is we try to approach the project different. Back to Jim's point, it's not necessarily rate times hour equals billable dollars. We try to engage more. That's what we can't do it. If that's going to be the way it is, we're going to lose. So what we're trying to do is have a different engagement model with our customer, so we're really driving to their outcome what they're trying to achieve around their brand, around their customer experience. And honestly, that's more risk for us, but that's where the market's going and we're working with our partner with SAP to make sure that the technology works. We provide the right services in the customer's skin in the game too to make sure that all three elements are going to be in place. But is it important for you to put safeguards or to demonstrate to the customer that you can put some safeguards on their IP, on their know-how, on their knowledge of customers and how they engage their customers? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one thing that is their crown jewels in, just like our IP and our organization is extremely important. We know theirs is as well. So what we do do is we set it up ahead of time exactly what is and is not allowed or provisioned for us to be able to share with anybody else. That's why at these events, we have to go through a lot of checks to make sure do you want to come and tell your story. Sometimes we don't, and that's okay. But that kind of safeguarding, whether it's the project to make sure it's successful and afterwards to make sure you protect their IP is first and foremost on how we work with our clients, especially in that area. Let me make one more quick comment. We had some other people on theCUBE that said, ah, the IP question's a little bit overrated, didn't we? Yeah, yeah. So it's important, we agree. That is one thing that distinguishes you already. Thank you. Yeah, and that's great. So I want to shift gears back on that because Jim had mentioned something about the, how you guys are changing your model and with the line of business. And then you said, I'm sitting on the floor with the IP. So I got to ask this question because this is interesting. And the cloud enables a lot of integration opportunities. Certainly we see it with HANA Cloud. But yet the applications the workloads themselves are very domain specific. So for E&Y, you guys have customers and they trust you, you know your business. So there's a lot of vertical integration on the app side. Yet the data models with cloud allows a lot of other stuff to work across different apps, which requires kind of both a horizontally scalable data model, data traversal, if you will. But yet having the uniqueness of prepackaged applications with analytics and other goodness. Yeah. What are you seeing, Michael, on this? Because this is the challenge that I see on the top leaders around how to architect this. Because right around the corner is IoT. That's going to even make this even more compelling of a conversation. How do you talk to customers about this? Because this is an architectural shift, but yet the workloads at the edge have to behave in a very unique way. Yeah, it's a good question. Because if you look at what we're about to embark on with S4HANA as an example in the cloud and what it enables, if you look at it in the same lens of how you looked at the work for the last 20 years, where's the value? It's really looking at the opportunity of the organization, different ways of working. That's what S4HANA enables. And you have to take a different way of looking at it. It can't be taking the new technology into the old way of working. So the data model in the S4HANA capability allows work to happen differently. And that's where we come in and say, how's the operating model going to be different? That's the question we want to talk about with the clients, because that enables different ways of working. And that's what- Technology selection will also drive the decision of, that question will drive the technology decision. And here's an example. I have a mobile app and I'm doing a financial app or tax app or something. And all of a sudden, I'm out on the streets and I bump and I engage something physically out in the real world. But the data about me is in another database. Now real time, I need to get better personalization and insight pushed to me from another database. So the data alchemy, if you will, becomes the real opportunity, which is a technical challenge because the databases are tied to the apps. That's what we're going to. So how do, are customers there yet? Are they like talking about those kinds of problems? Or is it yet? Are they leveraging that real time data movement around? Oh, that's John. And he's in that database. He did some things over here, but he's in a different app. But if I had that data, I could actually give him better insights and predictive goodness. The concept, I'll start, Jim, maybe weigh in as well too. That's okay. You know, a lot of our clients are architecting to enable that is a data lake. The concept of a data lake, which is actually fed from multiple sources, to enable just that, whether it's going to be, you're going to subscribe from it in terms of information they push to you. You're going to publish to it in terms of information and report off of it. So we heard today a lot about analytics in the keynote earlier today about the new capabilities that are out there. That is something that, if you look at architecture of data lakes, what you see SAP doing is, it's the source of where data comes from is interesting, but they have the analytics across all the data sources. This is more interesting for SAP. And that's what we see our customers wanting as well too, is SAP capabilities to reside over many data sources that reside in a data lake. And that's a real trend. You see that. You bet. Clearly. You bet. But it's also, it's not just, I mean, absolutely right. Right answer. But it's also, I mean, Hannah, having a common old in-memory database, you see kind of the unwritten, the unwritten, just to geek out for a second, the unwritten rule is that you didn't run a transaction required more than 50 to 100 to 150 disk IOs. Yeah. You put a database in memory. You're not talking about 10,000 potential IOs. So the level of complexity that you could support at scale is astronomically higher. It just completely opens up what's possible to think about what the software can do for the business. Just dramatic, it's a game changer. And I think in many respects, it creates the potential for a customer to be able to think really big in terms of the insights that they have that they'd like to see digitized and E&Y finding those things and helping them translate that into software and then a platform that has relative to what we've been used to, unlimited potential to actually run that capability. This guy's the limit, right? It's a remarkable combination. All right guys, final question. What are you guys seeing on the event? Summarizing your mind's eye for the folks watching who aren't, who couldn't make it down. What's the notable highlights for you guys here at this year? I'll see 25 years, 25,000 people, what's in the big numbers. Thoughts, observations, anecdotes, all-way conversations. And obviously my main focus is our great partner EY. So I would say my focus, our focus together has been quality delivery. We're celebrating the growth that our partnership has. E&Y's been recognized for two pinnacle awards. We're celebrating later tonight on that topic. But I think, and you touched on this, the innovation that is starting to emerge out of this partnership is really exciting because there's a paradigm shift here. There's a lot that's possible with the technology. It's here already. It's changing the way we deliver work together and it's opening up a tremendous, tremendous potential for us to deliver value together. Absolutely. Thoughts? Yeah, I tell you, I've been coming to Sapphire for a number of years. I've been coming for almost 20 years. And one thing I've never seen before until I saw this Sapphire was actually standing room only for all the keynotes, even outside the main theater where people are standing around almost every TV to kind of listen. That says to me one thing people want to learn and it's the potential, the potential that's out there. So for us, the future's never been brighter for SAP in our relationship. We're really honored with the pinnacle awards we won this year and the growth that we've had and we see only opportunity in front of us and we see a lot of interest in helping change the way people work and really change their business, which is really exciting for both of us. Well congratulations on the relationship. You guys are great. Great to have you on theCUBE. Good to get the insights. Thanks for sharing the data with the audience and here on theCUBE, appreciate that. This is SiliconANGLES theCUBE, live in Orlando, Florida for Sapphire now. You're watching theCUBE, we'll be right back. There'll be millions of people in the near future that want to be involved in their own personal well-being and wellness. Nobody wants to age in a way that we're...