Australian innovation competition brings together technology, business and industry experts to develop new technology prototypes based on the SAP ecosystem
SYDNEY, Australia — SAP Australia has announced the winner of the SAP InnoJam Sydney competition during the final day of SAP Australian User Group (SAUG). The winning team, Forecasting Using Prediction Markets, who developed a prototype for assessing the success of new products based on internal employee feedback and external social media monitoring, has earned a spot at the prestigious SAP TechEd Demo Jam taking place on the 13th September in Las Vegas.
InnoJam, SAP’s first ever Australian innovation competition, took place from the 30-31 July at the University of Technology, Sydney. The event was facilitated by SAP Research who provided technical support, arranged access to SAP prototypes for use by the participants and arranged a keynote speech and judges for the event. Over the course of the non-stop 30 hour event around 40 participants formed five teams and each developed a prototype application using a range of available, and soon to be available, SAP technologies. These included HANA, Sybase Unwired Platform, SAP Network Gateway, Gravity and SAP Research’s Holodeck* project. Each team was then given six minutes to present its concept the panel of judges to see which three ideas would be presented to the panel at SAUG.
At the beginning of the event, users were offered the chance to present concepts to be developed and recruit people to join their team. The team members were made up from a diverse group of individuals, in many cases with no previous connections. These teams literally worked through the night developing their prototypes to present to the judging panel, Professor Bernhard Wieder, UTS Business School, Dr. Karsten Schulz, SAP Research and Grahame Reynolds, SAUG.
The top three teams from the InnoJam, Mad Doc, Cibernators and Forecasting Using Prediction Markets presented at SAUG. The prototypes focused on document code for lazy programmers, disaster management and crowdsourcing respectively, with Forecasting Using Prediction Markets ultimately being voted the winner.
Tony de Thomasis from Acclimation, who was a member of the winning team, Forecasting Using Prediction Markets, said: “I got to use beta products like Gravity, had access to Holodeck* and was able to spend half a day on HANA. We single-handedly loaded half a million records into HANA and learnt as we went. The SAP experts at the event were amazing and the amount of knowledge we gained during the 30 hours was incredible.”
Lynda Willshire from Kimberly Clark, a member of the team, Keeping the CFO Happy, said, “As a member of the innovation team at Kimberly Clark, I work more on the business side in terms of what business processes need to happen. I am not at all techy so felt that I would be like a fish out of water, but could not have been more wrong. I felt like an integral part of the team, had an opportunity to see HANA in action, and got to do some configuration work, which was a totally new area for me. All the new technology presented at the start of the event was amazing and my mind was bursting with ideas of how our business could use it.”
Dr. Karsten Schulz, Vice President and Practice Lead at SAP Research said, “This was a great event for all those involved and gave people a chance to really get hands on with our products. It also brought together technology focused experts and business experts providing a balance, and ensuring what was developed has real world business applications. By holding the event at UTS we were also able to get students involved, with several joining a team working on a plant maintenance scenario. Getting students involved and letting them see what our technology can do worked out well and it is something we will be looking to continue at future InnoJam events.”
Notes to Editor:
- Participants had access to SAP’s newest software, such as:
- SAP NetWeaver Gateway – a technology that provides a simple way to connect devices, environments and platforms to SAP software based on market standards. The framework enables development of innovative people centric solutions bringing the power of SAP business software into new experiences such as social and collaboration environments, mobile and tablet devices and rich internet applications.
- Project “River” – a cloud-based development environment which supports
- *Holodeck (working name) – transforms any whiteboard or wall into an electronic whiteboard, just by using an iPhone and a projector. The technology enables participants to collaborate from different locations and brainstorm ideas. Holodeck captures content from the meeting and helps participants build ideas from a brainstorm. And, it is integrated with SAP Streamwork which allows user to save the brainstorming sheet.
- Sybase Unwired Platform – a mobile enterprise application platform that enables you to simply and quickly develop mobile applications that give business users secure access to diverse business data on a broad range of mobile devices.
- HANA – enables organizations to analyze business operations – based on large volumes of transactional and analytical data as it develops – and to instantly explore and analyze the data from virtually any data source in real time.
- Participants could submit their own business scenarios for the event and work on real-world implementations to see how these technologies can help solving them.
- For photos of the event, please click here.
For more information, visit www.sapinnojam.com; www.saug.com.au.
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SAP Australia and New Zealand: @SAPANZ
SAP Australian User Group: @SAPAusUserGroup
SAP InnoJam:
@SAPInnoJam
Hashtag: #InnoJam #SAUGSummit
For more information, press only:
Andy Sephton
Recognition PR
(02) 9252 2266
asn@recognition.com.au
