The German company's new software takes aim at the emerging market for pre-integrated hardware-software "appliances"
When SAP's co-chief executives, Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe, took over in February, they promised a nimbler company that would deliver compelling software faster. On Dec. 1, the German company will announce one of the first fruits of that effort, a new set of programs for analyzing sales and workforce data that can yield answers to complicated questions in seconds.
SAP (SAP) Chief Technology Officer Vishal Sikka, at a conference in Bangalore, India, will unveil software that can hold hundreds of millions of database records—say, 10 years' worth of sales data—in a computer's memory instead of retrieving them from disk drives. In some cases, the software has been able to analyze hundreds of billions of records within seconds, SAP said.
