Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: David Parker, Global Vice President, SAP (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What you mentioned is data in general. That’s not data generated by Internet of Things because they’re not rolling out Internet of Things yet.

David Parker: You’re missing the point. What I’m saying is what’s preventing them from rolling out Internet of Things is the data security because they want to take that Internet of Things device data and align that to business data as well as align it to customer data. What they’re saying is if you, as an organization—SAP or any other third-party vendor of our size—can take ownership of all of that data, then I might be interested in doing an Internet of Things type of deployment.

Sramana Mitra: Got it. They’re making that a prerequisite before they would consider rolling out Internet of Things. I see what you’re saying.

David Parker: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s switch gears. What are some open problems that you see from where you sit and of all the customers that you’re talking to. What would you ask new entrepreneurs to look at?

David Parker: Problems are areas of opportunity. That’s just a salesman’s spin on that. Clearly in my mind, the connectivity area is a mine field right now. We’re seeing small vendors popping up left, right, and center under different protocols and standards of connectivity. We’re SAP. We don’t want to build out every single adaptor for every single protocol for these billions of devices. We will work with Flextronics and Rockwell automation. There’s a bunch more.

We have three packaged adapters that would work on the connectivity side. In our minds, at some point whether it’s done directly by these vendors or it’s done as a pre-packaged solution that system integrators build on top of those products, it will become a commodity market. They’ll become almost a plug-and-play. I’m not saying that’s where it is today. Ultimately, that’s where it will get to. The idea then is once I have that connectivity done, what do I do with the data? This is where the new startup organizations whether in the Valley or anywhere else need to look at. How do I come up with a ready made data model, if you will, for the different lines of business across different industry verticals. What I mean by that is if you look at a line of business, you have to look at product management, sales and marketing, operations, development, engineering, etc. Every firm has those lines of business whether it’s manufacturing or retail.

What we do with our application stack is we have predefined data models that we’re already working with third party connectivity protocol vendors as well as the hardware vendors whether it’s Intel or Cisco. We define that predefined data model upon which we can then run the analytics. We don’t have to worry about the Big Data problem at that point in terms of the variety of data and the velocity of the data. If those can be sorted out, either it determines how much you process on the edge compared to how much it needs to send in to my data model. I want that done for me by some third-party component. It’s already made out of the box and ready to go. I just need to have an API that plugs in. As I’ve said before, SAP already has technology that does that today to some extent on the edge. That’s not where we see the real true dollar value of revenue going forward.

Sramana Mitra: Very interesting. Anything else that you want to add to that open problem potential opportunity discussion?

David Parker: The other area is the messaging management and device management. There are a couple of vendors that play in this space but I still think it’s still very loose and there are certain gaps in that area. You have firms like Solo Systems that does the messaging and gateway to gateway messaging. Then you have firms that do device management in the cloud. I think there is enough space in those areas for other firms to come and compete. SAP partners in that space, and there are several things that we’re doing internally to help plug some of the gaps in that space.

When you look at the connectivity side where there are protocols coming up now, this is what our customers are saying to us. How easy is it to get started? Getting back to the question of green field side that hasn’t digitalized or put sensors on their equipment, their biggest fear is that it’s going to cost them way too much money, not in terms of the sensors and the cost of the hardware but just people resources to get these things connected and then writing the various software applications and protocols to take advantage of that data. This is where SAP and other vendors look in to say, “We want to simplify that world for you so that all you need to think about is, once you have the data, how to run the analytics and then come up with the thought leadership on how you’re going to change your business to take advantage of that data.”

Sramana Mitra: Excellent. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: David Parker, Global Vice President, SAP
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