Thank you SAP! A decade in-memory…

A whirlwind trip down memory lane - reliving my (almost) ten years at SAP.

And what a time it was and what a time it was…

It seems like yesterday that I joined SAP in Feb 2006 to run NetWeaver Developer Marketing. It was serendipity that brought me to SAP. Ori Inbar from SAP was at a Gartner event in San Francisco, and an esteemed analyst from Gartner put up a work-in-progress Magic Quadrant. My employer TIBCO, was the only one in the leader quadrant;. Ori asked the analyst who he was working with from TIBCO and was given my name. We met for Turkish coffee at California Street in Palo Alto. After about 6 months of talking regularly I formally interviewed at SAP.

I cut my teeth in Ori’s NetWeaver Solution Marketing organization at SAP, learning many “SAPisms” – the classic 6am calls with Walldorf, what “Alignment” meant, visits to the mother ship in Walldorf and walking miles between meetings when there, spargel in the summer months, SAP Mentors, the summer of reorgs, getting to know the lovely city of Heidelberg – the list goes on.

Within six months, the role turned into an exciting combination of product marketing for the Composition Environment, NetWeaver developer evangelism, and crafting the unified messaging and positioning of the SAP Ecosystem – the common thread across all of these being platform adoption.

It was here that I first met Amit Sinha and Ken Tsai, who later became pillars of my HANA marketing team. While conceptualizing and launching the Business Process Expert (BPX) community I also met the gracious Marilyn Pratt (the face of the SAP community), the inimitable Mark Finnern (the face of the SAP Mentors) and Chip Rodgers (the face of TechEd). I relished my interactions with all of them as well as the SAP Community and I grew very fond of the SAP Mentors. My friends and colleagues in this role (too many to name) formed my first “comfort group” at SAP.

After two years, I moved to a Product Strategy role in the Office of the CEO, before moving on to a bigger M&A strategy role. Our projects had colors or cities for code names – try figuring out what Project “Purple” or “San Mateo” meant! It was the here that I met the most talented set of individuals in any team (Rahul, Kishore, George, Abdul, Ganesh, Scott, Alexa, Tim and too many others to name here). Add to that other folks from the Corporate Strategy and Corp Dev group (including Ralphie, Vuyi, Susanne, Rasha, Monty and others) who I was lucky to be able to call my second comfort group in SAP and who became a close-knit group of colleagues and friends.

Once in every life someone (HANA) comes along … it was almost like a song

Then followed what I think of as my golden years at SAP. It all began in 2010, when Vishal Sikka, then CTO and head of Technology Innovation, pulled me out from a completely inbound M&A Strategy role, to help bring to market this new product known internally as newDB. What unfolded was the creation of the in-memory computing category, the birth and launch of HANA as a product, the SAP HANA marketplace, SAP Startup Focus Program and SAP HANA One on AWS bringing the unrelenting and infectious passion of a few of us to over time energize the entire company.  

I found myself wearing multiple hats including building and running the Technology Marketing and then Solution Marketing team, and then rinse and repeat for both the Platform Strategy and Adoption team and the Startup Focus team (HANA adoption by startups). In fact over the last five years I feel like I’ve been in a scrappy startup myself – borrowing resources and budgets and operating by influence more than by mandate. And I loved it, being able to strike the balance between asking for forgiveness later (rather for asking for permission first) and driving consensus as and when needed. This was my calling - craft a vision or get behind an existing one and execute maniacally on it in short cycles – failing and succeeding in equal proportions – and learning from both.

We ran with a startup mindset knowing we’d find a way to solve problems and issues that came up and just get it done. An anecdote I can share here is how HANA came to get its name. We were five weeks from launch at SAPPHIRE, and I was tasked with naming the new product. I came back with a decent name after collaborating with the person officially in the role of analytics marketing. Everyone gave it their thumbs up; press releases and collaterals were written and the job was done …or so I thought. In a meeting with Vishal, I sensed that he wasn’t too thrilled about the name. When I probed and asked for an alternative name he said “How about HANA?”  I asked naively, “You mean the one in Maui? So its about the journey not the destination?” He responded “I like that too, but I was thinking about Hasso’s Awesome New Architecture.” I had my head in my hands – fearful I would never be able to get that name change agreed, given I had less than three weeks to go to SAPPHIRE. And then came the quintessential Vishal classic “You figure it out.”  

The rest is history – we crafted another name whose acronym could be made into HANA. HANA caught on and the full name was retired later. (On a related note, anyone realize we used 4Rs in the Vishal SAPPHIRE keynote the very first time we talked about HANA? Probably way too subtle… Anyone remember the 4 Rs?)

It wasn’t easy, but it was thoroughly rewarding and humbling to have the opportunity to bring a new product to market with a grassroots effort and achieve the fantastic success that we did. At times I led, at times I followed but at all times it was for the success of HANA and SAP and the results of our great teamwork showed in the market success of HANA. To be able to do this I have to thank Vishal first and foremost for giving us the confidence and space to try new things, fail fast and figure things out and forge on ahead. And of course many thanks to Hasso for his tireless passion and his unwavering support and trust.

We built this city, we built this city ...

Many of my friends and colleagues were part of this journey (Sethu, Abdul, Amit, Sanjay, Sam, Ritika, Shabana, Jake, Ken, Suresh and the Solution Marketing team, Michael R, Rouven, Pradeep, Jason, Tao, Carly, Matthias, Barbara S, Daniel S, Franz, Daniel C, Andy, Gansu, Hakeem, Yusuf, Cafer, Navin, Sven, Asu, Mike E and the Product Management team, Vijay, Barbara B, Sathish, Priyanka, Somya, Jun and too many others to list here). It was also great to have the support and partnership from the field and marketing organizations (Bill McDermott, Rob Enslin, Marty Homlish, Jonathan Becher, Sanjay Poonen, Denise Broady to the biggest platform cheerleader Steve Lucas and his Platform Solutions Group team).  We also had externals who had a huge impact on bringing HANA to market and made the journey fun – bloggers/practitioners (Jon Reed, Dennis Howlett, John Appleby, Vijay Vijayasankar, Harald Reiter, Thorsten Franz, Dick Hirsch etc. - thanks to Mike P, Stacey, Andrea), event support teams (Bill Buxton, Jen Abrahamson, Heather Walker, Aaron Prince, and too many others to be named here) and ASUG (Geoff Scott, Tom, Chris, Paul, Courtney, Danny, Craig and team.)

I do want to spend a moment to thank my Startup Focus / Platform Strategy and Adoption team (David, Saritha, Manju, Michael, Kaustav, Robert, Deepak, Michelle, Luisa, Mayank, Ed, Aslan, Eric, Dharini, Scott, Suneet, Suraj, Nitish, Neeraj, Aleks, Sanjay, Hardik, Gary, James, Frances, Andy, Sophie, Ron, Asu, Erica, Mark, Daniel, Franklin, Emily, Julia, Linda, Ariel, Chloe, Becci and too many interns to name here.) Together we have laid the foundation for the next-generation ecosystem - startups, big ISVs like SAS, open source leaders like Spark & Suse working with our HANA platform. A very fond memory is that of SAP founder Hasso Plattner saying “Chapeau!” to Startup Focus Program at the 2013 SAPPHIRE.

What we have achieved together in three years is nothing short of a miracle: Over 2000 startups recruited, over 175 products built on HANA and net new “double-digit” revenue generated in 2014. You, the startup community, have been the beacon and lifeblood for SAP in how to work in new ways and deliver new value and revenue – all the while focused on the big prize – increased HANA platform adoption! The work we have done together is today the best proof point for HANA as a platform. Congratulations to all of you and thank you for your passion and dedication to the effort. I know SAP will continue to build on this foundation and deliver a fabulous next-generation platform ecosystem.

Lastly, I want to call out the following folks who shaped my career at SAP:

• Vishal Sikka (Member of the Executive Board, Head of Product Development and CTO of SAP until last year), a friend and mentor. If it wasn’t for him I probably would have taken much longer to discover my scrappy side and the power of “jugaad” (frugal and able to hustle). I wouldn’t have the opportunity to help bring HANA to market and grow its adoption.  In his team I learned to focus on the work and people doing the work and question status quo. I could go on...
• Jonathan Becher (our CMO then and now Chief Digital Officer), my guide and mentor. In his marketing leadership team I learned 3 key lessons – Actions speak louder than words, all brains on deck, and from silos to teams.
• Rahul Sood, who headed up Product Strategy at SAP, a friend and mentor from whom I’ve learned empathy for team members and colleagues, and how to break down any problem in smaller solvable parts.

Auf Wiedersehen!

And finally, the time has come to say “Until We Meet Again” to my colleagues and friends at SAP. It has been a great ride and I’m humbled by the opportunities I’ve had to make an impact here and in the industry, while working with stellar teams and individuals. 

SAP has amazing bench strength and a massive potential to deliver the next generation of enterprise software and platforms. It is focused on executing on a vision laid out by Bill and the Board. While I’m still excited about being part of that effort I feel the time has come for me to find my next incubation challenge outside of SAP. I will take all that I’ve learned at SAP to help me with my next endeavors. Stay tuned – watch this space to hear more on what that is!

I wish SAP and all of you I have met during my journey there the very best of luck for the future!

My warmest wishes,

Aiaz