Technology Giants Team Up for Olympics

Technology Giants Team Up for Olympics

Faster, Higher, Stronger. It seems, the Olympic motto was on William Lawler´s mind, when he was asked to explain what visitors can expect from the SAP HANA demo at Cisco House in London. “The SmartGrid Analytics demo shows how companies can turn massive volumes of energy data into powerful insights and actions”, SAP´s partner and HANA marketing manager says. “SAP SmartGrid Analytics allows you to make crucial decisions faster…”

With the 2012 Summer Olympics in London as a backdrop, SAP will be on hand at the interactive Cisco House to highlight the SAP-Cisco partnership, and showcase how break-through technology like SAP HANA helps organizations “run better.” The house was created by Cisco as a dynamic stage for telling the company’s story of transformation, for providing a home base for guests during the Olympics, and for supplying business content that aligns with Cisco’s Olympic sponsorships.

Understanding of Big Data

“An estimated 11,000 visitors — including 400 CEOs — will see customer testimonials and smart-grid HANA demonstrations promote exciting transformational opportunities for a wide variety of organizations,” says Michael Craig, Cisco Alliance Director for SAP.  He feels that visitors can get a  high level understanding of Big Data and how SAP HANA is revolutionizing the consumption of large amounts of information in real time.

“Cisco was seeking sponsorship partners and break-through technologies that complemented and helped illustrate the transformational opportunities available for countries, cities and organizations for today and in the future,” says Hernan Marino, head of SAP’s partner marketing organization. “They recognized SAP HANA as an oustanding example of transformational technology — an in-memory database and real-time platform that combines high-volume transactions with analytics to help create solutions that take business performance to the next level.” In addition to SAP, other companies participating in the Cisco House experience include Citrix, EMC, and Intel.

Having opened in April to run for five months, Cisco House will host invited C-level and senior IT executives from customer, prospect and partner organizations. The guest list is a 100% match for SAP’s target market. More than 100 joint Cisco and SAP HANA prospects have already been identified. SAP United Kingdom will use Cisco House as a platform to engage more top customers and partners. These visitors will be able to see first-hand presentations of how new business and service models can reduce costs, increase productivity and deliver a competitive advantage, Michael Craig explains. “Cisco House demonstrates how SAP benefits by offering up yet another tangible proof point to our customers about the power of SAP´s partner ecosystem. It shows that bringing together global technology leaders to collaborate and co-innovate brings forward the types of technology solutions that truly transform how their businesses run.”

Accelerate the HANA pipeline

The Olympics venue provides an unique opportunity to promote the Cisco-SAP HANA partnership. And as Hernan pointed out, “The focus is not on what Cisco House makes, but rather what Cisco and its partners make possible.” Both partners are sure to benefit. “Creating awareness on in memory computing will create and accelerate more HANA pipeline, and Cisco is one of the certified hardware providers for HANA, so this will create awareness and increase their market share of HANA installs on their Unified Computing System (UCS) platform,” says Michael Craig.

And William Lawler adds: “Customers can see the commitment that SAP and Cisco have to together building leading edge technology solutions, and how the sum is greater than the parts when technology giants work in partnership.”

By Michael Zipf

 

Useful link:

• Cisco House homepage with fly-through video