 From Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering SAP Sapphire Now 2018, brought to you by NetApp. Hi, welcome to theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend. We are in Orlando at SAP Sapphire Now 2018. We're in the NetApp booth talking to all sorts of guests, and we're welcoming to theCUBE for the first time, Anand Chalam, the KPIT, the global leader for SAP at KPIT, welcome to theCUBE Anand. Thank you, thank you so much for having me here. So you have been working with SAP in some capacity for 20 years or so. You've no doubt seen a lot of transformation that SAP has undergone since then. You're now with KPIT, who was just named yesterday, a Hybris America Service Delivery Partner of the Year, congratulations. Talk to us about, one, the evolution that you've seen at SAP and two, how that excites you being on the KPIT partner side? Absolutely, absolutely. It's been interesting, this is my 20th Sapphire. So, you know, it's been a long journey. And while today in the keynote, while watching some of the demos, it goes back to, we saw a demo by Hustle Platinum when they launched MySAP.com in Philadelphia. There was a big storm and there was a lot of notion that is SAP going back because internet was new and SAP was not in the bandwagon and SAP was trying to prove themselves that no, they are and they are an internet friendly software and there's a lot of debate whether that's going to be transformed or not. But looking at today, they've done a phenomenal job. I really think the last 10 years, the $50 billion investment which SAP is done through acquisitions, I feel it's been very rewarding to a lot of our customers, our partners and it's really truly the next generation software which all of us can look forward to get the most value. So, I'm personally very excited to see how SAP has really looked ahead and done these acquisitions and, more importantly, integrating them. I think one of the keys, at least in the ecosystem I've seen companies, they acquire a lot of software but the biggest challenge is integrating them and making them seamless to the customers and I think a lot of credit goes to SAP for being able to have a plan and integrate that so it's very seamless. So, NetNet, I'm very excited about what's ahead of us. Tell us about KPIT, what do you guys do and then what do you do specifically with SAP? You know, so, we are in Sapphire and KPIT's theme this year is elevate it. Elevate IT or elevate it and it's basically elevating to the next level at every level. Whether it's from front office to back office, whether it's integrating the connected devices, whether it's building some intelligent automation in the ERP, whether it is adopting and rolling out a personalized cloud model. All of it we are in and we're very fortunate to being able to, you know, one is obviously we plan this, we had a plan strategy on which are the focus areas, we're very focused. S4, we are one of the leaders in the S4, we have over 120 HANA implementations which is pretty sizable. If you see there is going to be some press releases coming out, there has been some by ADC where we are the leaders in S4 and we're excited to see how much of that automation is going to come into the picture. So, S4 is a big area of growth for us. Connected devices is because we are a very strong engineering firm so it comes very naturally how those two engineering and IT come together and that comes along very well. In hybrid, as you said, thank you again. We are very excited to get the delivery partner of the year for Americas which is a pretty amazing accomplishment given, you know, the last four years our focus has been. But I think what's more exciting for us is the co-innovation we're doing with our customers. As an example, you know, we're co-innovating, building the dealership or portals for a lot of their dealers for their customers and see how that's integrating well. The other aspect is CPQ. Big in configuring products and how they can one, bring it to market and two, position that so that their customers are able to configure their products. So, we're able to doing a lot of that. We are uberizing service to see on an on-demand model how is it that they can provide. So, lots of activity around that area as well. So, talk to us 20 years, it's a long time to have observed and participated in the SAP ecosystem. I think it'll be fair to say that 20 years ago the conversation in typical enterprise would be, you know, we're waiting on SAP, whether it's some innovation, practically some batch file process to end. To now we're in a market that SAP is driving business. Can you talk to us about the importance of the relationship of this trifecta of SAP, NetApp, KPIT. How do you guys bring this new business capability? What's the critical components of bringing this new critical capability to customers where you can now say that innovations that KPIT whether it's hybrid or S4, coupled with NetApp, is able to bring innovation to digital transformation. Excellent, good point. I think as, I think we've not, I'm stating the obvious, there has been so much changes happening in the IT world that it's very important, I believe, to coexist with partners. And that's where I see the SAP, NetApp, KPIT partnership is a very critical one, right? Because all of them bring such critical components to bear that we really can use the software, the infrastructure, the disaster recovery, the implementation services, and the IP which bring to the table, bundle it together to see some very fast outcomes. I'll give you an example. We just went live with an S4 implementation. And day one, day one, we had a 40% increase in order entry, which is phenomenal. So the point being 20 years back, that would be unheard of. It would be like, oh, if we go live and we still can enter some orders, we'll work great. So the velocity aspect has increased tremendously. That comes through all these partnerships, the underlying infrastructure, which supports the software and the people and the processes which come into bear. So it's very important that the trifacta effect is seen and outcomes which customers really benefit from. Who are you talking to when you guys are going in together as this partnership that you just articulated? Who are you talking to? I mean, because the C-suite has shifted so much, right? I was reading from the CMO council that 67% of marketing execs rank. Marketing and commerce technology is critical to their overall performance. You've got the chief digital officers who have to drive cultural change, the CIO who needs to be bimodal. When you guys are talking with customers, what are those conversations like? What's driving the innovation that KPIT needs to deliver for these customers? No, very good point. So we started adopting some of the newer areas to see some of the benefits which customers are looking for. As an example, one of our customers who make packaging machines, they wanted to see how they can overall reduce their service costs by 20% and how they can implement an IoT based solution on Leonardo connected goods to help reduce and build a new business model. So what in this new age, it's just not about implementing a software. It's about how does it drive efficiency by reducing cost, but more importantly, how does it spur and build new business models? So it's no longer restricted to an IT solution. I think in this digital era, it's more important, how does it look differently? How are the models which we never thought about before are being brought in? And we were part of the medallion select group of Leonardo partners and we're very proud to see how that grows. What excites you about that? Because I just saw that announcement come out yesterday. Tell us a little bit about KPIT's SAP Leonardo Innovation portfolio and what you're delivering or will be delivering to customers with respect to that. We're focusing in many areas, but the couple which come to mind is connected goods. So this is an example where we talk about how we reduce the overall service cost by 20%, by just implementing something around that lines. We're also doing a lot of work on the predictive maintenance side of things. We're being able to predict failures before it happens to reduce the downtime and increase the overall productivity. We're, KB80 is big in automotive and the vehicle insights are something which we are working with closely to build some of those outcome-based models, which I think will be very much beneficial to a lot of the customers we're seeing. So if we're alive, John Furrier would be DMing us and saying, this is the perfect opportunity to act about blockchain in general. So, not to jump on the blockchain bandwagon, let's talk about other enabling applications, including blockchain. As you look out into the next few years, how important is SAP becoming a true platform company that embraces technology such as blockchain or they're reaching out to internet of things and manufacturing companies and solutions, other supply chain integration points, how important is SAP's participation and the larger ecosystem and technology, how important is that to the overall success of this partnership? You know, I think the concept of intelligent enterprise is truly evolving in SAP. What it's helping, I think a lot of customers do is, it's connecting the dots between their customer experiences, right? The 360 degree view of their customers, it's looking at connected devices where there's so many devices out there, how do we bring that to the table? It's building a lot of intelligent automation. It's building connected factories so that the production efficiencies where I think there's a lot of emphasis in the next few years going to happen and of course supply chain, right? Where there has been the case. I think what it's bringing it all together to really have an intelligent enterprise where using whether it's blockchain, using machine learning, to be able to bring that together because I think in isolation there are benefits but I think the power of all of this is how do we bring it together in a very seamless manner and that's what's very exciting. When they announced that this morning, speaking of integration, C4HANA, they talked about that. I thought they did a good job of showing integrations and talking about that but if I kind of distill that down to one of the things that their CEO has been really vocal about, it's got to modernize legacy CRM and connect, synchronize the supply chain with the demand chain. With what they're doing this momentum that the SAP is carrying through, how do you see that as a differentiator for KPIT's business to be a partner with SAP? Absolutely. You know, fortunately for us, we've been very strong in the three generation CRMs, right? I know we are now talking about the four generation CRM which is the C4HANA and but having lived through the journey of the three generations, I think KPIT is a very unique proposition in the marketplace. We know very importantly what not to do. What are the things which did not work? I think that's a very important aspect which I think SAP themselves have learned and that's probably why they're talking about the four generation CRM and I think we are in a very unique position and that's the example. We have implemented this for a long time and I see that with their integration, what they have done with some of the other softwares like Caledas, this is going to be a complete portfolio of solutions which they can offer which I think KPIT is in a very unique position whether it's cloud for service, cloud for sales, hybrid commerce, the Caledas commissions, we're very well positioned to be able to provide all of this to our customers so the portfolio is a lot more enriched and I think it's going to be very rewarding. What are some of the things in terms of all those announcements that you're looking forward to at Sapphire this year in terms of, I can imagine there's a wealth of, I think there's a thousand SAP sessions alone from an education perspective, is your team here ready to, you said your team is Elevate, Elevate it? Yes. What are some of the things that you're excited to learn how to do for those boots on the ground? I think one of the areas we are excited about is we're seeing the S4 adoption going up. I think that's where we're very excited about that. You guys said 1800 customers? Yes, and there's lots to go. But I think, yeah. You're an opportunity here. Exactly, so I think that's one we want to make sure and then I think the Intelligent Enterprise, I think we're very excited about that along with the Data Hub. I know it's early days, but we'll closely be watching that because data is going to be a critical aspect for all of this to be successful. So I think we're right on, very excited to see those three, four areas and I think we're well positioned to really be able to take this momentum to the next level. So you said this was your 20th Sapphire. I think when I was doing some research on this event, it looked like they had done this for about 25 years. Wow. So do you remember back 20 years ago, like how many people were at Sapphire back then compared to the 27,000 that are just here physically this week? Yeah, I still remember, I think it was 99 Sapphire in Las Vegas. That was the only Sapphire happen in Vegas. It's easier for me. I don't know why they don't do that. Really? Yeah, and so there I was sitting and one of the big areas we were very excited was if we were able to enter sales order in HP Giornato, believe it or not, it was one of the handle devices. I remember that. And we were very excited to see, oh, we are able to enter an order in an HP Giornato. And today we're talking about virtual reality where we are able to look at stuff, change the colors and be able to order just looking at what you like. Transparently. Yeah, it is unbelievable the change. So to your point, it's lots of change all the way around whether it's technology, whether it's expectations, whether it's a number of people, number of sessions. And we ourselves have got about 12 sessions, customer sessions in this Sapphire. We used to have two or three at the most. Wow, there's customer centers here in theaters. Yes, absolutely. So another 20 year perspective in looking towards the future. One of the great things about SAP is also one of the challenges. 46 years of technology and moving customers along. SAP, HANA, no question, it changes business. The stat you gave earlier, 40% more orders in one single day, day one. However, what are some of the major barriers that customers face with legacy infrastructure and moving into taking advantage of S4 HANA? Is it customization of environments that they did? Is it business processes? Like what's the top one or two challenges? A very, very good point, actually. I'm glad you brought this up. We've been at this for four years. In fact, one of the first HANA migrations was done by KPID at Waden Medical, one of the very early days. So from my perspective, the customers are looking to reduce risk because they've been working on SAP for such a long time. They've built it, it's evolved, it's customized. So how do we reduce risk? In fact, KPID has built an monetization tool which automatically records so that it takes away the reduced risk and reduces the time. So that's one aspect is customers are very worried about the risk aspect. Second is, of course, the cost because they don't want to be spending time in just implementing another system. They want to take leverage about the intelligence which can build in the different processes, the advantage. So they do want to make sure that that aspect is that. But I think the biggest aspect is they are looking for the business nuggets. What we talked about, can this propel them into different business models? Can this be relevant for the next 20 years? Because this is a big investment and that's one of the big roadmap discussions we are having with a lot of our customers. Relevance, you know, you really hit the nail on the head. Customers have to be relevant. They have to be able to compete and become intelligent in order to do that. Well Anand, I wish we had more time, but we're out of time. Thank you so much for joining us on theCUBE and again, congratulations on the award, the service delivery partner of the year for Hypers that KPID has won. Thank you, thank you so much. Thanks for getting me here. Our pleasure. We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend. We are at Sapphire now, 2018. Thanks for watching.