Tag: sap

Elkhorn Mountain Wilderness, CA
Climate Confident

The Future of Business is Socially Responsible: Are You Ready?

In a world that’s grappling with climate change, economic inequality, and social unrest, businesses are no longer just profit-making entities. They’re becoming agents of change. But navigating the muddy waters of social responsibility and human rights in complex global supply chains is no small feat. That’s why I had the pleasure of speaking to Gitte Winther Bruhn, Global Head of Social Responsibility Solutions at SAP, on the Climate Confident podcast.

Gitte pointed out something critical: “It’s not just about having our technology, but we would need knowledgeable people. We would need businesses operating in the space because…we would need expert knowledge here as well.” This reminds us that technology alone cannot solve these issues; it takes a community of informed businesses to drive systemic change.

Partner Up and Solve Together

Gitte highlighted SAP’s strategic approach to tackling these challenges through its Advisory Council for Social Responsibility. Comprising companies with complex value chains, this council aims to “work on this in a very systemic way in partnerships.” Collaborative efforts like these give us hope that together, we can solve business-critical challenges concerning social responsibility and human rights.

Real-Life Success Stories

What makes Gitte’s insights so compelling is the flesh-and-blood examples she provided. Take WEConnect International, for instance, which has built a platform to connect some of the world’s largest buyers with women-owned small businesses. Another example is Ternium, a leading flat steel producer in Latin America that prioritizes workplace safety. These examples underline the point that social responsibility isn’t just a buzzword—it’s good business practice.

Why This Matters

Here’s the kicker: Ignoring social responsibility isn’t just a moral failing; it’s a business risk. With new regulations coming into play, Gitte stated, “Look at it and at least implement the United Guidelines Principle for business and human rights as a first step. Having this, it’s also giving business resilience in the supply chain.”

In the volatile world we live in, resilience is more than a bonus; it’s a necessity. Moreover, Gitte noted that your “license to operate” is at risk. If you don’t act responsibly, your brand can suffer, and your business could be in jeopardy.

Time to Act!

The crux of the matter is simple: “Doing nothing will just be worse,” said Gitte. Don’t wait for regulations to force your hand. Be proactive and see this as an opportunity for competitive advantage, resilience, and brand protection.

To dive deeper into this subject and arm yourself with actionable insights, make sure to listen to the full episode of the Climate Confident podcast with Gitte Winther Bruhn. You don’t want to miss it.

Listen to the full episode here.

Your feedback and ideas are always appreciated, so feel free to drop a comment below. And remember, every small step towards sustainability counts!

Follow the podcast in your podcast app of choice, so you don’t miss any future episodes packed with insightful discussions on climate change, sustainability, and technology. 

Finally, if you value receiving weekly actionable insights on sustainability and climate, you can always sign up to be a Supporter of the podcast for less than the cost of a cup of coffee. 

Until next time, stay Climate Confident!

Photo credit – Bureau of Land Management on Flickr

Full disclosure – SAP sponsored this episode of the podcast

Cans of beer with cardboard holding them together instead of plastic rings
Climate Confident

Closing the Loop: Unveiling the Potential of a Circular Economy with SAP’s Stephen Jamieson

In the continuous quest to spread the word about sustainability and inspire climate confidence, in today’s episode of the Climate Confident podcast I spoke with Stephen Jamieson, the Global Head of Circular Economy Solutions at SAP. We delved into the intriguing world of the circular economy, a concept that’s becoming increasingly crucial in our fight against climate change.

Stephen painted a vivid picture of our current global economy – one that is shockingly only 7.3% circular. To grasp the gravity of this, imagine that a staggering 93 gigatons of materials are extracted each year, most of which are mishandled, resulting in detrimental environmental impacts. From contributing to 90% of the world’s biodiversity loss to 45% of global greenhouse gas emissions, the way we manage materials today is cause for serious concern.

What stood out during our chat was the enormity of the problem, but also the potential solutions at our fingertips. It’s not just about waste reduction; it’s a broader climate change story. One significant revelation was that we’re ingesting a credit card size amount of plastic each week, which is an alarming testament to our current practices.

Stephen brought into focus the substantial role of businesses in promoting circularity, saying, “80% of sustainability impact is baked in at design time.” In essence, companies need to integrate sustainability from the design stage itself, and technologies can aid in streamlining this process. He shared an encouraging story about Henkel, a consumer goods company that swiftly adapted to Spain’s plastic packaging tax requirements, highlighting the power of digital transformation in the circular economy.

A significant part of our conversation centered around Extended Producer Responsibility regulations and the impact they have on shifting the cost of downstream waste management. Jamieson mentioned that the cost, which is currently shouldered by local authorities, would soon be handled by the production system, marking a considerable shift in incentive.

There’s a strong sense of urgency in our chat, but also a ray of hope. The circular economy holds the key to unlocking a sustainable future, and it’s evident that we are on the right track, but the journey has just begun.

Want to hear more about Stephen’s insights and why people often liken his voice to that a certain famous actor? Tune into this episode of the Climate Confident podcast and join the conversation. Let’s drive the change together!

You can listen to the full episode here. Your feedback and ideas are always appreciated, so feel free to drop a comment below. And remember, every small step towards sustainability counts!

Follow the podcast in your podcast app of choice, so you don’t miss any future episodes packed with insightful discussions on climate change, sustainability, and technology.

Finally, if you value receiving weekly actionable insights on sustainability and climate, you can always sign up to be a Supporter of the podcast for less than the cost of a cup of coffee.

And remember to stay #ClimateConfident!

Full disclosure – SAP sponsored this episode of the podcast

Page from a handwritten ledger
Climate Confident

Unlocking the Power of Accurate ESG Data Measurement and Reporting: SAP’s Green Ledger
Page from a handwritten ledger

In the latest episode of the Climate Confident podcast, I had an incredible conversation with Bhushan Nigale, the Lead for SAP’s Sustainability Development Program. We delved deep into the significance of accurate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) data measurement and reporting, and how SAP’s Green Ledger plays a pivotal role in this process.

Ever wondered why accurate ESG data measurement is so crucial? Well, imagine trying to navigate a stormy sea without a reliable compass. In much the same way, corporations without precise ESG metrics can quickly lose their way in the turbulence of today’s rapidly evolving business environment. Precise ESG data provides valuable insights that help organizations in making informed decisions, effectively managing risks, and identifying new opportunities for sustainable growth.

Bhushan, in our enlightening discussion, brilliantly highlighted how SAP’s Green Ledger is transforming the way companies handle ESG data. It is not just a tool; it’s an intelligent solution that provides an unprecedented level of transparency and trustworthiness to ESG data. By harnessing advanced technologies like AI, the Green Ledger ensures the veracity of ESG data, helping companies prove their genuine commitment to sustainability.

Another important aspect we touched on in the episode was the necessity of reliable ESG reporting. While ESG data measurement is a crucial step towards a more sustainable future, it’s the accurate and consistent reporting of this data that allows for global accountability. In the absence of proper reporting, even the most robust ESG strategies can lose their impact. SAP’s Green Ledger excels in this area too, assisting businesses in meeting the highest ESG reporting standards while driving them towards their sustainability goals.

SAP’s Green Ledger demonstrates an inspiring commitment to responsible business practices, providing a blueprint for others to follow. As we collectively strive towards a more sustainable future, platforms like this will continue to play an instrumental role. They aren’t merely tracking ESG metrics; they are powering our journey towards a greener, more resilient world.

I know I’ve just scratched the surface here. There’s so much more to learn about SAP’s Green Ledger and the broader importance of accurate ESG data measurement and reporting. So, why not delve a little deeper?

Listen to the episode here and join us as we navigate these critical conversations on the path to climate confidence. Remember, every step we take, no matter how small, brings us closer to a sustainable future. So let’s embark on this enlightening journey together.

Finally, if you value receiving weekly actionable insights on sustainability and climate, you can always sign up to be a Supporter of the podcast for less than the cost of a cup of coffee.

And remember, stay climate confident!

Photo credit davesandofrd on Flickr

Full disclosure – SAP sponsored this episode of the podcast

Internet of Things (IoT)

Internet of Things, renewables and storage – a perfect storm for utilities’ digital transformation

Without doubt it is a time of great turbulence in the electric utilities space.

In most regions globally, wind and solar are now our cheapest sources of electricity generation, even without subsidies.

As a consequence of this, wind has overtaken nuclear, hydro and coal to become the second largest source of electricity generation in EU in 2016 [PDF]. And at the same time in the US, the solar market is smashing records and grew 95% in 2016 alone.

Then there is storage. Costs here have been tumbling too. So much so that Morgan Stanley predicts the storage market to grow from the roughly $400m in 2016, to a market size of $2-4bn by 2020. This will have big implications for utilities’ ability to add more variable generators (renewables) to their mix without destabilising the grid.

Speaking of grid stabilisation, the refrain up until now has been that for every MW of renewables built, a MW of gas had to also be built as a backstop (for days with no wind, or overcast days, or nights). However, this too has changed. Last August First Solar ran a tests with CAISO (the California grid operator) to test a solar farm’s ability to smooth out grid fluctuations. The results of the test demonstrated that solar farms are able to meet, and sometimes exceed, the frequency regulation response usually provided by natural-gas-fired peaker plants.

Things are changing on the consumption side of the house too.

solarinstall2016

Source: GTM Research / SEIA U.S. Solar Market Insight report

As can be seen from the chart above, installations of residential PV are rising, as is home storage, and another form of potential consumption and storage (v2g), the electric car, saw sales rise by 37% in the US in 2016.

Then there is the whole digitisation of the grid. Now all new equipment is being built with inbuilt ‘smarts’ and connectivity, and even older infrastructure can be retrofitted, so with the advent of the smart grid, we will finally have the possibility of the Electricity 2.0 vision I was talking up back in 2008/09. This is a smart grid where appliances in the commercial or residential worlds can ‘listen’ for pricing signals from the grid, and adjust their behaviour accordingly, taking in electricity when it is plentiful, and switching to alternative sources/lowering consumption when electricity is in high demand.

With the cost of generation dropping, with no end in sight, the cost of storage similarly falling, as I have posited previously, there is a strong possibility that utilities will have to switch to broadband-like ‘all-you-can-eat’ business models with the utilities differentiating, and making their revenue on added services.

Everything is changing for the electric utility industry – and so, against that backdrop, and the fact that I will be presenting on IoT and Utilities at the upcoming International SAP for Utilities Conference in Lisbon, I decided to have a chat with IDC Research Director Marcus Torchia, about the implications for utilities of these huge changes.

We had a great discussion, and many of the themes we touched on, I will be talking about at the Utilities event in Lisbon.

You can check out our chat in the video above, play it in the audio below, or listen to it on the IoT Heroes podcast site.

Internet of Things (IoT)

IoT, and the transition to the digital services economy discussion with Constellation’s Andy Mulholland

Over on the IoT Heroes podcast I recently had a chat with Constellation Research analyst Andy Mulholland. Before coming out of retirement to head up IoT research for Constellation, Andy was Global CTO for Cap Gemini, and so he knows a thing or two about IT!

Andy publishes extremely insightful articles on the Internet of Things regularly over on his blog, so I was keen to have him come on the show.

In the podcast we had a wide-ranging discussion on the implications for (primarily) manufacturing organisations of the Internet of things, the transition to the as-a-service economy, and how people can get up-to-speed on happenings in the IoT space.

If you have any interest at all in the Internet of Things, and how it will effect our society, you should check out this episode of the show – you can subscribe to the RSS feed, subscribe on iTunes, or simply click Play on the player below to hear our discussion

 

Photo credit Toyota UK

Internet of Things (IoT)

Free, open online course about the Internet of Things

SAP have just announced Imagine IoT – a free course on openSAP, SAP’s Enterprise MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) learning platform.

Why is this important?

The Internet of Things is an incredibly nascent area. Today. But it is going to explode. Slowly at first, and then all at once, such that some day soon everything will be smart and connected.

Think back to the state of the Internet in 1994. Almost no-one had a website, or their own domain even. Most companies didn’t even have a company email address, never mind one per employee. That’s where the Internet of Things is today. Most devices, are dumb and not connected, but soon all devices will be connected, the same way everybody has an email address, and when they all start talking to one another, it will transform the world as we know it even more than the Internet has to-date.

Now you see why the Internet of Things is important. It is globally transformative. Now, if you want to learn a little about the technologies underpinning the IoT, this course could well be for you.

The course is open to all comers and in the course

you will learn the fundamentals of the Internet of Things (e.g., sensors, the cloud, and more) and be introduced to new interaction paradigms (augmented reality, wearables, and more) that are changing how we interact with the world around us. You will also learn how to design and create your own IoT prototype

At the end of the course there is a “prototyping challenge” where you submit the prototype you have designed and completed during the course for feedback from your peers. The prototypes will be voted on and the winning prototypes will be showcased, and get to choose how SAP donates $50,000 to charity.

The course consists of 3 weeks of lectures commencing on September 28th, followed by four weeks of the prototyping phase.

The course curriculum looks like this:

  • Week 1: Get to Know the Internet of Things
  • Week 2: Go Deeper into IoT with SAP
  • Week 3: Create Your First IoT Prototype
  • Week 4: Submit Your IoT Prototype
  • Week 5: Evaluate IoT Prototypes of Your Peers
  • Week 6: View Results of Your IoT Prototype
  • Week 7: Winners Announced

And the course doesn’t require any previous knowledge of coding (though, it probably wouldn’t hurt!).

I signed up for the course, and I’m looking forward to trying out some of the technologies that will be showcased.

Full disclosure – I work for SAP but I’d have blogged about a worthwhile initiative like this regardless given how important and pervasive the Internet of Things is going to become. Knowing how to work with IoT will be a hugely important skill.

Internet of Things (IoT)

Global Internet of Things Evangelist for SAP

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My SAP phone on my SAP laptop

I have been recruited into SAP in the role of Global Internet of Things Evangelist starting this month.

When I left RedMonk earlier this year, I mentioned that I was talking to a couple of people, but that there was still a window of opportunity for other companies to get in touch about my working for them. SAP, and a number of others, saw the post and got in touch.

It has been an exciting few months in the meantime. I’ve had fascinating discussions with lots of companies (including the CEO of a US electric car company who wanted me to move to Palo Alto to work for his organisation).

After weighing the various options though, I decided to accept SAP’s generous offer, for a number of reasons:

  • The Internet of Things is at its very inception – it is now where the Internet was in 1994 – back when organisations didn’t have websites or a company email address even. So there are going to be seismic changes in the workings of the IoT over the next few years. This ever changing landscape, and the incredible outcomes which will accrue, are what makes this topic fascinating for me.
    Also, when I worked on cleantech, it was an area which was very broad and cut across many verticals. IoT similarly crosses many verticals, so it maps very closely with what I’ve already been doing.
  • Then there is SAP – SAP is a large enterprise software company. SAP has in the region of 77k employees, and reported revenues in excess of €20bn in 2015. By any measure SAP is an enormous organisation. And I have only ever worked for very small companies, so why go for SAP?
    Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? Working for a small company it is very hard to make an impact, but when you are working for a company with hundreds of thousands of customers, if you make even a small difference, it can have really significant outcomes.
  • fullsizerender
    And then there’s the fact that we live in the city of Seville. It is a beautiful city, and my family and I love living here. SAP had no problem with me living in Seville and didn’t even think of asking me to move to Germany, to Palo Alto, or even require me to work out of the SAP Madrid office. This was a big factor inthe decision too.

So now that I have started, I am looking forward to getting to know all my SAP colleagues, helping craft SAP’s Internet of Things strategies, and showcasing all the seriously impressive IoT solutions that are possible with SAP’s software.

If you want to get in touch to know more, feel free to leave a comment here, DM me on Twitter, email me at tom.raftery at sap.com, or get me on my mobile +34 608 252 871

Featured Posts, Technology / Software

Technology is moving us, finally, towards the vision of personalised medicine

We attended this year’s SapphireNow event (SAP’s customer and partner conference) in Orlando and were very impressed with some of the advances SAP and their ecosystem are making in the field of healthcare.

Why is this important?

Healthcare for many decades now has been stagnant when it comes to technological disruption. Go to most hospitals today and you will still see doctors using paper and clipboards for their patient notes. Don’t just take our word for it, in her highly anticipated 2015 Internet Trends report Mary Meeker clearly identified that the impact of the Internet on healthcare is far behind most other sectors.

 

But this is changing, and changing rapidly. The changes coming to the healthcare sector will be profound, and will happen faster than anyone is prepared for.

DNA sequencing cost per genome

And one of the main catalysts of this change has been the collapse in the cost of gene sequencing in the last ten years. See that collapse charted in the graph to the right. And note that the y-axis showing the cost of sequencing is using a logarithmic scale. The costs of sequencing are falling far faster than the price of the processing power required to analyse the genetic data. This means the cost of sequencing is now more influenced by the cost of data analysis, than data collection. This has been a remarkable turn of events, especially given the first human genome was only published fourteen years ago, in 2001.

The advances in the data analytics picking up pace too. In memory databases, such as SAP’s HANA, and cognitive computing using devices like IBM’s Watson, are contributing enormously to this.

To get an idea just how much the analytics is advancing, watch the analysis of data from 100,000 patients by Prof Christof von Kalle, director of Heidelberg’s National Center for Tumor Diseases.  Keep in mind that each of the 100,000 patients has 3bn base pairs in their genome, and he’s analysing them in realtime (Prof Von Kalle’s demo starts at 1:00:03 in the video, and lasts a little over 5 minutes).

As he says at the conclusion, two years ago a similar study conducted over several years by teams of scientists was published as a paper in the journal Nature. That’s an incredible rate of change.

IBM are also making huge advances in this field with their cognitive computing engine, Watson. In a recent announcement, IBM detailed how they have teamed up with fourteen North American cancer institutes to analyse the DNA of their patients to gain insights into the cancers involved, and to speed up the era of personalised medicine.

Personalised medicine is where a patient’s DNA is sequenced, as is the DNA of their tumour (in the case of cancer), and an individualised treatment, specific to the genotype of their cancer is designed and applied.

This differs from the precision medicine offerings being offered today by Molecular Health, and discussed by Dr Alexander Picker in the video at the top of this post.

Precision medicine is where existing treatments are analysed to see which is best equipped to tackle a patient’s tumour, given their genotype, and the genotype of their cancer. One thing I learned from talking to Dr Picker at Sapphirenow is that cancers used to be classified by their morphology (lung cancer, liver cancer, skin cancer, etc.) and treated accordingly. Now, cancers are starting to be classified according to their genotype, not their morphology, and tackling cancers this way is a far more effective form of therapy.

Finally, SAP and IBM are far from being alone in this space. Google, Microsoft and Apple are also starting to look seriously at this health.

With all this effort being pored into this personalised medicine, I think it is safe to say Ms. Meeker’s 2016 slide featuring health will look a little different.

Full disclosure – SAP paid my travel and accommodation to attend their Sapphirenow event

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Trends & Concepts

Technology for Good – episode thirty two with SAP’s Sameer Patel

Welcome to episode thirty two of the Technology for Good hangout. In this week’s episode we had SAP‘s Sameer Patel as the guest on our show. Sameer and I are members of the Enterprise Irregulars group – a loose group of analysts and vendors with an interest in enterprise software. Previous Enterprise Irregulars who have guested on the show include David Terrar, Craig Cmehil, and Jon Reed.

There was a problem which wasn’t apparent to us during the show and that was that the video from my side never showed up in the recording. I suspect that’s because I was using a beta version of Chrome, but anyway, the audio, and Sameer’s video feed was recorded, so all’s well.

This week we didn’t get through all the stories we had lined up, ‘cos we had such a good discussion around the ones we did manage to fit in!

Some of the more fascinating stories we looked at on the show, included the growing number of technology companies who are abandoning ALEC, IBM’s new concentrating solar array which can create clean water, as well as solar power, and a new smartphone app which will help visually challenged users to read.

Here is the full list of stories that we covered in this week’s show:

 

Climate

Renewables

Lighting

Transportation

Data Centres

Connectivity

Drones

Hardware

Apps

Education

(Cross-posted @ GreenMonk: the blog)

Featured Posts, Technology / Software

Big Data and analysis tools are facilitating huge advances in healthcare


SAP's Genomic Analyzer
As we noted recently here on GreenMonk, technology is revolutionising the healthcare industry, and the pace of change is astounding with new products and services being announced daily.

We were recently given a demonstration of two products currently being developed by SAP (Genomic Analyzer, and Medical Insights), and they are very impressive products.

The Genomic Analyzer (pictured above) can take large numbers of genomes and interrogate them for various traits. This may sound trivial, but this is a serious Big Data problem. In a talk at SAP’s Sapphirenow conference in June, Stanford’s Carlos Bustamante outlined the scale of the issue when he noted that in sample size of 2534 genomes takes up 1.2tb of RAM and consists of over 20bn records.

The industry standard for storing genomic data is in a variant call format (VCF) text file. This is then interrogated using either open source or some specialised commercial software analyse the genomic data. Researchers frequently have to write their own scripts to parse the data, and the parsing takes a considerable amount of time.

SAP's Genomic Analyzer results

On the other hand, SAP’s Genomic Analyzer, because it is based on SAP’s in-memory database technology, can take record sets of 2,500 genomes in its stride returning multi-variant results in seconds. This will allow previously impossible tests to be run on genomic datasets, which opens up the potential for disease biomarker identification, population genetics studies, and personalised medicine.

SAP are actively looking for research partners to work with them on the development of the Genomic Analyzer. Partners would typically be research institutions, and they would receive login access to the analyzer (it is cloud delivered), and the ability to create and run as many query sets as they wish.

SAP’s Medical Insights application again takes advantage of SAP’s Hana in-memory database to take in the vast swathes of medical data which would typically be housed in siloed data warehouses (EMR’s, scans, pathology reports, chemo info, radio info, biobank system, and so on). It can be used to quickly identify patients suitable for drug trials, for example or to surface new research when relevant to patients.

The medical Insights solution is currently being developed as part of a co-innovation project with a large cancer institute in Germany, but will ultimately be applicable to any hospital or medical institution with large disparate data banks it needs to consolidate and query.

SAP are far from alone in this field. As well as developing innovative medical applications themselves, many in their Startup Focus program are also furiously innovating in this field, as previously noted.

Outside of the SAP ecosystem, IBM’s Watson cognitive computing engine is also tackling important healthcare issues. And like SAP, IBM have turned Watson onto a platform, opening it up to external developers, crowdsourcing the innovation, to see what they will develop.

The main difference between IBM’s cognitive computing approach, and SAP’s Hana in-memory database is that Watson analyses and interprets the results on behalf of the researchers, whereas Hana delivers just the data, leaving the evaluation in the hands of the doctors.

And news out today shows that Google is launching its Google X project, Baseline Study so as not to be left out of the running in this space.

There’s still a lot of work to be done, but the advances these technologies are starting to unlock with change the healthcare industry irreversibly for the good.

(Cross-posted @ GreenMonk: the blog)