Industry Cloud advances within the Utilities market.

Thomas Mueller and I pursued partner interest in utilities co-innovation use cases for Industry Cloud.  With the help of many named below, Thomas and I received many use cases, and the whole team selected the best ideas for participation in a program [called SPRINT1] to quickly guide those selected partners through development of the solution. The intent for the end of SPRINT1, each partner should post the app on the SAP Store that is deemed Industry Cloud and promoted by the industry teams.

The SAP team agreed that the use cases needed to be in Utilities ‘whitespace’ with reasonable business case viability for the customer, partner and SAP. We spoke to many partners about Utilities requirements, co-innovation, use cases, Utilities roadmaps and solution whitespace, PartnerEdge Build, SAP Store, go-to-market approaches and Industry Cloud. And just because a partner is ‘big’ didn’t mean they had immediate expertise to grasp the breath and benefit of SPRINT1. The partner use case recruitment process was exhausting and time-consuming, as each partner required and deserved a conversation about their specific needs and objectives.

Humbly, partners understood and submitted about 30 use cases. The cases were from both international and regional partners. The cases were for global use case and for local markets. The cases were simple and complex. Some cases were easy to understand, some confusing. After a challenging internal vetting process with members of the SPRINT1 team from the Industry Program, Co-Innovation Lab [COIL], Business Technology Platform [BTP] Product Management, Utilities Development, the group collectively agreed on nine partners with nine use cases. @AppOrchid, @ASINT, @EnergyOS, @Infosys, @Intense, @Natuvion, @Neo Technologies, @SightCall, @Utegration were selected as participants in the Industry Cloud SPRINT1 program for their Utilities use cases. A good mix of international, regional, big and not-as-big.

Big thank you to those SAP colleagues that led SPRINT1: @Miliau Pape, @Peter Snowdon, @Joey Bronner, @Wael Labidi, @Praneeth Chennuru, @Gokula Ponnusamy and dedicated time to ensure partners were enabled on critical industry cloud subjects.

Thanks also to key members of the IBU for contributions; @Gero Bieser, @Juergen Kuhmann, @Holger Schweinfurth, @Stefan Engelhardt, @Thomas Mueller.

What happened?

For one week – June 27July1 – SPRINT1 began with the nine partners advancing their use case through deep-dive enablement by those technical experts from the COIL, BTP Product Management, Industry Business Unit, Global Partner Ecosystem Success [PES] and Utilities Development. I applaud the many hours my colleagues spent to guide the partners in this Industry Cloud program. The SPRINT1 sessions concluded July1 with a brief presentation by each partner to SAP Utilities/Industry Executive Management for executive awareness of the Industry Cloud use cases. Great sessions with the nine partners.

What Next?

With the partner SPRINT1 use case ‘approved’ on July 1, the partners are then tasked to finalize the development of the app. In the next few weeks and months, the SPRINT1 team will guide the partners about app productization, GTM approaches and commercialization. Each partner will complete development based on complexity of the app. Hopefully, partner apps will be completed in Q3-2022 so SAP can promote at SAP for Utilities [S4U] event.

SPRINT1 isn’t a competition. All partners win by eventually posting their Industry Cloud.

It has been fun, exciting and educational working alongside these interested partners. I’m looking forward to commercialization.