 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 at Peter Burris. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in Orlando, Florida for SAP Sapphire Now, SiliconANGLE Media's flagship program theCUBE. When we go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise, I'm John Furrier, host and my co is Peter Burris, head of research at SiliconANGLE Media, general manager of Wikibon Research. Want to give a shout out to our sponsors, without them we would not be here. SAP HANA Cloud Platform, Console Inc, Capgemini, EMC, thanks for your support. And we've got over 40 videos, go to siliconangle, youtube.com, show us SiliconANGLE for all the videos. Our next guest is Bronwyn Hastings, who's the senior vice president of Global Strategic Service Partners, global channels, all the top integrates. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, thanks for having me here too. So it's great to have the boss come on. We've had a lot of the folks from your group come in. Certainly a lot of your partners. We've had Capgemini, we've had Accenture. We've had a bunch of folks come through, EY. I think Deloitte, anyway, Infosys came on. Deloitte was really the only one, and PWC were the only ones I didn't see here. We'll get to them later, but the message is clear. They have to focus on innovation. Yes. Otherwise, they're going to get put out of business. Because right behind them, warming up, the sidelines in the ecosystem is their replacement, potentially. This is an interesting dynamic you've got going on here. You grow in your future in the ecosystem, putting the system integrators, I don't say on notice, but like, hey, get busy. Great business model being, and they're responding. What's your thoughts on this and some of the feedback you've heard from integrators? Thank you. This is a really interesting question because I think there are two things happening. One is the customers asking for the innovation, and asking us and the partners, what's the way forward? They're hearing all this talk about digital, they want to know how did it become more relevant to their customers in a quicker, more dynamic way, and they're asking both of us that question. So the first thing that we do with our partners in this instance is we look at where are the innovation areas, one that make them different. How did they get chosen to actually add value to their customers, and these partnerships that you've mentioned actually do it in different ways. Some of them represent themselves or talk to the customer through business transformation. So they talk about what are you trying to achieve, where is your future, the normal business conversation to find out how that innovation can happen and what do they need to be relevant to the customer. The other partners have a look at it and say, how do I be part of this world that's changing but then bring quick value to the customer? How do I accelerate that value in quicker chunks? And therefore the customer gets what they need in quicker time frames. And then others say, I'm going to look at this innovation and what's going to really set me apart as a specialist and that's where I'm going to go. So these partners right now are looking at where is their place in this and how do they transform themselves to actually bring value to the customer. And luckily for us, we have a lot of those innovation areas that they can make those choices. So they can choose. They pick their swim lanes. Swim lanes, focus areas, differentiation, all of that to be part of the new conversation as well. But one of the beauties of the platform strategy that you guys are putting forward and the ease with which using things like the Apple partnership that you have of creating new great software is a lot of these partners by competition and by these different alternatives are going to be forced to really focus on the value and their distinction that they provide to customers. So it's going to be very interesting over the next few years to see these companies historically, you know, long-term, lock-in-like relationships have to themselves become real nimble and become really catalyst of thought leaders for innovation in the marketplace because so much of the enabling technology is going to make it easier and more likely of bringing success. Do you agree with that? I find your comments very interesting actually. So where I agree totally is that, but I'd add a piece. We look at it as though people have competition here. Actually a number of these companies already have practices or developments or innovations using some of the technology components. So we announced Apple, there's a Microsoft announcement. All of these areas that you would not normally see all of a sudden we've made these announcements and now these partners, same partners that we've worked with for a long time come to us and say, well, actually we've got an area that develops an iOS for Apple already because our customers needed us to do that. Then we come to another area and they say, but you brought out a new user experience through Fiori. So we've got those development tools and now you bring out something like your HANA Cloud Platform which allows us to build its sensibility and these three things together start to actually build even stronger innovation. So it's actually had a magnifying effect even for us. Because they've already had those practices that we're not being tapped into, so to speak. Not tapped into, not brought in and integrated in the same way, but now because we're doing code development, we're doing co-innovation or integration processes, actually it strengthens their capability to use the innovation and make it something even more. So for me, you can hear my passion in this one, is for me that the excitement in this is that people really now see ways of innovating further and customers see that as valuable because they're getting what they want out of these innovations as well. Well, you mentioned the co-innovation, I want to talk about that. That seems to be an SAP Playbook. Even going back the seven years since we started covering Sapphire, we've been always been geeky developer focused, which is a good thing, we like that, but now simplicity's the theme, which is about results. But code development's been a big part of it. We were talking with EY, for instance, and they have a code development on a lab being put down in the Atlanta area. They have, the center's got a zillion data scientists, so you start to see this, they're ramping up, they're not just about delivery anymore. The old way was delivery, lock in the contracts. Where is the value in your mind for these partners? Is it the co-innovation, is it the data science, all the above, is there one thing that pops out at you that you see rising to the top in terms of trending? I would say that two or three things. So one is we've got a large install base and all of the move that we've got to the newer generation, so the S400 environments. These partners actually have strengths of their own, which they've been known for. EY has their strengths that they know for in the market, with or without us, they've got a strength. What these things are allowing them to do is to take some of our shift into the newer technologies and their strength and then build extensible innovation. And what I mean by that is they can say, okay, I'm strong in finance, so I'm going to choose a finance topic on the Hanukkah platform environment and I'm going to build my differentiation on that. They're domain expertise. They're domain expertise, right into it, squarely into it, really creates a compelling thing for them, creates the value for the customer and it really establishes this innovation. So that would be one point. So you come back to the data scientists, then you take it a step further. You've got your differentiation. Now, where else can you excel in? Where else can you bring the things that would make finance completely different, like the digital boardrooms that you're seeing that have been created? Well, it's through predictable analytics. It's through data scientists type of thing. So they add in these other services now that still play to some of their core strengths. So I'm finding that it's actually creating the next platform for their own differentiation and value and it can incorporate these insights into it. Yeah, it's interesting. It brings it to the swim lanes concept of differentiation. So I've got to follow up on that because Peter brought up a question earlier today about when you brought up the question around partners working together. So this comes back down to a lot of these guys. By the way, for anybody who's wondering, thunder and rain. Life and rain. Opportunity is raining everywhere. It's raining opportunities and thunder. The clouds are moving over us. It's an all cloud cloud native. Okay, so back to this point. Okay, so I'm a differentiated year one service integrator, system integrator, but also on these bigger projects might have to work with the other guy. So how is that playing out? Because they have to share and said obviously data might be shared, but how is that playing out for them? What do you see that trend going? I'll see probably more of that, not less of it. Yeah, so what I'm finding is people are also choosing the type of work they want to do and then leveraging the ecosystem for the other types of work they want to do. So people either say, I choose to do transformational type things, but if I am taking the lead on something, I'm going to be able to partner with other partners in this ecosystem that compliment me. So I actually think it is complimenting or if there is a specialist area they can bring someone else in. So I don't think, I actually think the complimentary nature of things are getting stronger in some areas. Of course this will stand alone business that they do as well. Second thing I'd say is, and I'll add this in because it's not only about the partnerships, it's about how do we work with the partnerships and you would have heard some of our announcements around SAP S4 value assurance programs and what that means is the customers are saying we want skin in the game from SAP too. The partners are saying actually this is valuable to us too, that you've got your stamp of approval on what's going on. So we've created these service offerings that are modularized that partners can include and it's anything from just check my scope is right or the journey that we're going on and our transformation, the mapping is correct through to more custom services and they're also including that in their offering as complimentary so that customers feel comfortable with where they're going as well. So that's all coming together as well. I want to test something on you because this is, we, our research very strongly supports this. We talk about the three C's of digital transformation. Context, what are you going to do? Community, who are you going to do it with? Capabilities, how are you going to get the capabilities so that you do what you're going to do with what you're going to do it better than everybody else every time. Does that resonate? Absolutely, absolutely. For me, so content, context, all of those sorts of things. So the customers are asking and you would have heard it around here. So I want to be here. How do I get there? What's the timeframe and who's capable of doing it actually, the partner community is really well enabled but they also know that this is a journey of new technology areas, shifts in the market. New processes, new processes. So trying to simplify digital processes to really get the true value of digital. So they want people to say, we're in and these are the ways that these things happen and you can solidify it together as well. And the key words that they're enabled. Enabled. That's because the platform has to be enabling. Enabling. Otherwise it doesn't work. And then the tools and the tooling has to kind of got to be there. Is there a process out there? I mean this is what we talked about Peter brought this up yesterday. It was a really great observation in old days. Look backwards. Known processes, unknown technologies and then they evolve and you automate those processes that are known. Now you have unknown processes developing with known technology. What are some of those new unknowns? Is IoT a good example? Or if yes, what other processes that are emerging? It's just unlimited things that we could be doing. Things that are not fully known that's going to happen but you can't say that it's a clear process for every customer, it might be different. I actually think the way that I would answer that and sort of look at that topic is as the transformation to digital is happening, I'm almost seeing that all the customers are testing the processes. It's not like everything's a stable process anymore. They're saying what processes, because if you just replicate what was there before, you're not getting any gain. You could have the most beautiful front end and all these processes remain the same and nothing's actually changed except the user experience. Or you can change all the processes but the user experience doesn't change. So these two things are coming together and the process has to be re-looked at. But the customer is becoming part of that process story. And that's the thing that's most unknown. And so how customers go about catalyzing those processes through those beautiful user experiences is really what we want to do when we think about engaging customers in a secure way. Correct, and that's where really the services piece comes back into play. It's really testing what do you still need or can we make this a much more streamlined, simpler process that gives you all the benefits, the cost benefits, the user experience. Which one of those do we want to do, right? And so this is where the services partners really bring knowledge, experience as well into the same equation. Bronwyn Hastings, SVP of Global Services and the top partners. Final point, I'll give you the final word on our wrap up here, day three of Sapphire. Take a minute to explain to the folks out there what's going on for SAP with respect to all the system integrators. What's your plans? What's the focus? What's the dynamics? So I think the three areas that we focus on with them is digital transformation and the ability for us to bring digital to the customer. And why I take that approach first is this is a transformation time that the market's changing and the customers need that guidance into that process. So one is digital transformation. Underpinning all of that is that we are asking for the innovation that we've spoken a lot about here is innovating to the future. Not creating what's gone by, not replicating, but innovating the new digital world with us. And part of that is simplification for the customers. So our work with the system integrators right now is focus on the customer, bring value and let's innovate together. That's what we do. Well, thanks so much for your time and welcome to being a CUBE alumni here on SiliconANGLE Media's theCUBE. We are live at Orlando for three days of wall-to-wall coverage. Thanks for watching, that you're watching theCUBE.