On July 10th, SAP hosted a media roundtable at their London headquarters to reveal the ways in which they are loosening their collective neckties and implementing SAP Big Data solutions outside of the workplace. The initiatives announced included an effort to understand the planet’s diversity and enhance food safety, solve crime, provide relief in disaster situations and track athletic statistics.
Demonstrated in the SAP London headquarters, experts displayed the work they have undertaken with the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario. The partnership has used SAP solutions to show that food contamination and mislabelling is prevalent across the herb and spice, as well as the fish and seafood industries. The SAP Experience Centre also hosted experts that demonstrated the ways in which SAP can help track criminals, as well as assist in disaster prevention, alert and relief.
In addition to improving the lives of the globe’s citizens via environmentalism and food safety, SAP also displayed the ways in which it is fast becoming involved in recreation and in everyday life. For example, it has long been leveraging SAP HANA to analyse sports statistics.
Currently parked outside its headquarters, the mobile Big Data truck features a number of demonstrations on how Big Data can be leveraged for recreation.
SAP HANA collects data during training sessions and matches from football and women’s tennis among numerous other sports. With this data they are able to analyse player statistics and give a deeper understanding of sport to both professionals and fans. With SAP HANA coaches and athletes are able to analyse weaknesses and strengths, and fans are able to pinpoint information about their favourite players.
SAP is also changing the way that people consume products. In the Big Data truck, SAP experts demonstrated the future of snacking using SAP products. A “smart” vending machine in the truck can track what snacks are consumed by an individual and predicts what sort of goodies they may want in the future. With the swipe of a smart card, a hungry snacker can not only pay for their own nosh, but also “friend” other users and even gift snacks to friends.
SAP hasn’t left the office entirely; their products still make up the backbone of countless IT infrastructures worldwide. However, it is clear that the company is stretching its solutions to reach users in their everyday lives. From sport to snacking, SAP is showing how Big Data can personalise experiences by extrapolating from existing data.
