>> Voiceover: It's theCUBE, covering SAPPHIRE NOW. Headline sponsored by SAP HANA Cloud, the leader in platform as a service, with support from Console, Inc, the cloud internet company. Now here are your hosts, John Furrier and Peter Burris. >> Okay, we are live back here at SAPPHIRE NOW. This is SiliconANGLE Media's flagship program, theCUBE, where we go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise, and I want to do a shoutout to our sponsors that helped us get here and present the great content, SAP HANA Cloud Platform, Console, Inc, Capgemini, EMC, thank you very much for the sponsoring. I'm John Furrier with Peter Burris. Our next guest is Rodolpho Cardenuto, who is the President of Global Channels company wide for SAP, as well as the general business, which is the SME as they talk about in the industry. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, John, thank you, Peter. Good to be here. >> So one, congratulations. We've had a lot of your folks on theCUBE and this area of the floor is buzzing with action, but real meat on the bone, as we say. It's real, it's a sizzle and the steak is here, so they had beer here yesterday, so German company, so we always like to see the Heineken beer out here. >> Peter: (mumbles) back here. (Rodolpho laughing) >> It was good to have Heineken out there, it's good, some good beer. So give us the update. I mean, you guys have had growth. Share with us and the folks watching, just from where you guys have come from, because SAP has always had a strong ecosystem. You go back to the ERP days back in the late '90s, certainly that revolution is 25 years ago when SAP came out of the woodwork and you got Oracle, all these companies were born. They had an ecosystem, they had people deploying and delivering software. It's changed now, so the dynamics are different. Talk about the dynamics and some of the growth that you guys have. >> I think it's better to position the organization, GB, as you've well said, general business, the SME space. Our ecosystem that we built historically was very focused on the enterprise to support the business suite and to support the enterprises to implement, et cetera, and now we are building in the last 10 years, we started to build a very focused, strong ecosystem, ecosystem for the SME space, that's why we're doing it, and I was just sharing with you, we just kicked off SAPPHIRE NOW last Monday with 2,000 of our partners with us, kicking off the SAPPHIRE, 2,000 of GB partners that serve this segment for us. >> So I said yesterday in the close, and I mentioned this to you, you correct me, I want to get this out there and then can clarify the record, I said that you bolt on the partner summit with the end user conference, which is a huge show, 25,000 plus, whatever the number is, massive, why everyone is here is what makes sense, and I was saying that this is being so important that you should break out your own partner event so people feel like a first-class citizen in that partner world, and you had to correct me. So share the correction that you guys do partner events, (mumbles) the big tent event, so why not have everything here for that? But you guys are doing events. Just clarify that. >> Just to give you an idea, I said we came up from the partner summit last Monday with 2,000 of our partners kicking off the SAPPHIRE NOW, but we do have a partner summit here in North America in the US. We have partner summits in Latin America. By the way, the next one is going to be in Punta Cana, (speaking Spanish) we have partner summits in Europe, APJ, Greater China, we do have a series of partner summits-- >> Do you do those partner summits in native tongue, or can theCUBE come there? >> The native tongue, that cannot, if I speak, yes. (John and Peter laughing) >> We have to get a whole new crew for theCUBE. We're looking for some hires down there, if you're watching, since now you brought that up. Okay, so let's get down and dirty. Channels are great. The leverage of channels, the leverage of the cost per order dollar for SAP, from your perspective, it's phenomenal, and that's great business, indirect sales combined with direct sales, phenomenal approach. What's changing, though? Because at the end of the day, people in the channel have an attitude of, "What's in it for me?" They're running a business. They also serve on the front lines with customers. What's changed in the channel today? Is it the same challenges, training, product? Is it different? Do you see different configurations? >> Well, it's changing a couple of things, and I'll try to summarize here, but the fundamentals are changing from on-prem to cloud, because we were, you very well said, historically an on-prem company, the fundamental of the on-prem are changing now to the fundamentals, the economics are changing from on-prem to the cloud, and the second thing is specialization. We were a company that was built on the ERP, and now we are a company as you saw here from Bill McDermott to Rob Enslin, Bernd Leukert, et cetera. We are (mumbles) HCM, Ariba, or supply manufacturer SRM, or CEC, so we have a lot of specialization. So the economics are changing for the channel as much as they are changing for us, and the specialization. You require a lot of specialization. One of the things that we are hear, listening clearly from our customers, is the specialization with integration. You saw, you'll hear from Bill McDermott and Rob Enslin and Bernd Leukert talking today about this integration, and we are doing a lot of our effort, with our channels also, to specialize, but at the same time to integrate them with SAP core. >> So there's something in application development that's been around for probably 40, 50 years called Conway's law, which suggests that the application that gets built is, or the complexity of the application that gets built is a reflection of the complexity of the organization that built it. When we talk about all enterprises of all sizes wanting simpler, faster, more integrated, more convenient, more natural to use, a lot of your partners are at the vanguard of thinking about how to make it simple because they don't have the institutional and organizational complexity to make it complex. >> Rodolpho: Yeah. >> So, is SAP learning from your partners as opposed to just your partners learning from SAP as we move into this digital world that has such a focus and emphasis on simplification? >> Peter, a great insight. I think that now only learning, we have to listen to them and react to that, because if we react in a complex way to serve our partners, they cannot serve our customers, because in the end, they're serving our customers, and as you said, they don't have the infrastructure or they cannot afford complexity, period. They cannot afford. So they need to be simple by nature, and if we are complex to serve them, they're not going to work with us. They're going to pick another one, the application and everything, so we need to build an organization that is fast and agile and is simple enough to work with our channels. I'm not saying we are there. We're not there yet. But we are in our... For instance, our theme is partners first, run light, and win together. Partners first is all about the partners. Everything that I do in my organization, all programs, products, solutions, is with the partner mentality. Is this good for the partner? Is this good with business models, simple enough for them-- >> John: It's a business partnership. >> And is it partner ready? Because if it's not partner ready, it doesn't fit my model. Run light is about the customer, and win together, it's SAP, the partner, and the customer. The customer should be comfortable enough that we are serving them with this partnership. >> Take us through some meetings internally at SAP, because that's a really great point. You got to meet the channel's requirements on how they do business, because they have a business and you have a partnership. So that means you're the favorite guy in town inside the company. Hey, here's my product. Go sell it through the channel. >> Rodolpho: Yes. (Rodolpho laughs) >> I'm oversimplifying, I'm not saying they said it, but that's the knee jerk reaction. >> That's the historical norm. >> That's a historical norm, "Hey, boom, here's the product. "Go just do some training." >> Keep her. >> But now you have to hold the line. You're the safeguard for the customer. So what are some of those conversations? Because you now have to be a forcing function to the product groups, and we've so much transformation, SAP S/4 HANA, HANA Cloud Platform, all these enabling technologies is a gold rush for the partners. So you have to hold the line. Share some internal color. You won't get in trouble. >> No, no, and I have no problem being in trouble, but I'm going to illustrate that with a simple case you just mention, S/4 HANA. S/4 HANA is the flagship of a product for the large enterprise. You saw Nestle up today with Rob Enslin. Nestle, one of the largest corporations in the world, 350,000 employees, $80 billion worth of, pretty large, pretty large by any metric, pretty large, and they use S/4 HANA. My job, and I have an organization, my organization, we package, we price, we enable, and we support the channel to sell and to support the S/4 HANA for the SME market. We are 60% of the S/4 HANAs for SAP. If you get all the S/4 HANAs, 60% goes through the channel that we manage. So, we package-- >> Peter: Is that the number of installations? >> Yeah, yeah, 60% of the S/4 HANAs today that we sold are sold through the channels that we manage in the SME, in the GB space. So that's the job. It's my job to package, to price-- >> John: You're giving money away. You're handing people money. Here, here's some business. >> It's my job to package, to price, to enable the channel, and to support the channel, to actually make S/4 HANA available for the GB space. So that's what we do. So we do that two folds. Of course, I have an organization to do that and I have it also to educate the other organizations. As you said, "Oh, here's my product. "It's perfect for SME. "Go and sell." Okay, let's have a conversation. Let's package, let's price-- >> Is the channel ready? >> Exactly. >> So run light, that means it's got to be turnkey. >> Yeah, we call it the package, price, enable, and support, because you need a different package, it needs to be much more simpler than the enterprise. You cannot go to a Chinese menu for the GBs, so it has to be templates. Price, very specific price for the GB. It needs to enable the channels. Who's going to enable the channel? Technically, pre-sale, sales, et cetera. And we need to support a channel once they sell or during the process. This is my organization, that's why I educate the other organizations. >> So there is not a company on the planet that has mastered the fine art of reaching-- >> Other than us? >> Other than you. Well, you said you got more work to do. (Rodolpho laughs) There's not a company on the planet, you're getting closer, that has mastered the fine art of reaching the general business population of companies. Increasingly also, as we move more into digital business, your biggest customers want to use software in digital interfaces and technologies to reach their small, medium sized business customers. Are they coming to you and saying, "How can we start bringing your platform, "your go-to business, and coupled with our SAP back end "to facilitate the process of helping to reach..." In other words, are you going to be able to catalyze a global change in the approach to reaching small businesses because of the SAP platform? >> Well, I don't know if we can do that, but I think it's a good vision for us to pursue, Peter. We do have an organization that has inside sales, digital sales, social sales, we use social to reach out to our customers. We use digital to reach out to our customer who have feet on the street, direct sales. We have our 12, today, I think 13,000 partners, ecosystems that reach also to our customers, and they are divided by territory, by industry, by solution, so we can map, get the world and map it by territory, by solution, by industry, the partners that we have, and we use a lot of our new methodologies and our social sales, digital sales, a lot of things. So we are building the infrastructure to support any kind of the products from SAP. We are very well serving them support for you, for the market, from SAP, so we have a lot to digest. >> So one of the things, we talked about, a lot of channel partners, SIs down to the ISVs-- >> Resellers. >> DABs, VARs, as you call, and we hear the following from them. I want to get your take on this and how you're addressing this. "We want a partner that's going to be with us "from cradle to grave, through the life cycle "with our partnerships," the things you said. The other thing that was interesting was, "We want to increase our gross profit," and services is 100% gross profit, so me as the partner, I make money on professional services, whether that's quick fix in the old days or architecting clouds, integration, so that's a big part of their revenue. So they want to make money, that's code word for money. So how will you guys shift in the economics to enable the partners to wrap their own unique services. It certainly makes sense in foreign markets, but across the globe, that's a big challenge. How are you rolling out for them, at the same time, bringing the big accounts to them? So how are you enabling me to wrap my services around them? >> And that's (mumbles) going back to your point or to your first question when I said the economics are changing, so we need to follow up the new economics. The channels, as you said, they make a good part of their business is about implementation. Once you go to the cloud, though, this part of the business reduces by one third, because in the cloud, you have less of a share of this service. So the service share is reduced by one third. So what you need to do is to compensate that with what we call an ARR, annual recurrent revenue, from the cloud. So we are building business model, and I launched that last Monday, our cloud business partner new business model, which is give the partners a ARR, annual recurrent revenue, because service is good because it's recurrent revenue. Once you sign a service SLA, a service contract, you don't have anything, but you have a recurrent revenue with that, but this is going to be reducing in a cloud, so we will compensate that, and that's the idea-- >> So you're shifting the dollars into the same consumption model, the cloud, with some sort of subscription-like or recurring revenue model. >> I'm willing to cut a share of my revenue with my partners, from the cloud. >> Well, you might be able to get it back longer term, but it's that up front. >> Yes, yes. >> Peter: So typically you sell up front, you pay for the sales guy up front, and a lot of these partners say, "I can afford to wait for the--" >> Now it's more of a recurrent revenue battle, so I'm willing to get a share of that to split that with my partner for more business. >> So you're financing their business model transition? >> Rodolpho: That's it, yeah. Transition, that's the word. >> Their fear that this transition, because they're on paper, they're getting cut, so they have to have an immediate pop, change, so you're financing that over the long term for the relationship. >> Well we are willing to have this conversation, and the new business models that we are developing, and we introduce it here, they actually address that in a very, very programmatic way. It's not a one-by-one, it's not opportunistic, and by the way, you said the channels, we are getting channels, we have only 15% of our business from the channel. My business, only 15% is opportunistic, that you come with a transaction, 85% is predictable. 85% is loyal, it's about loyalty. >> Great base. >> Exactly, I want to invest in the channels that are here for the long run. >> Peter: So it will support that business model transition? >> Yes, yes. >> So that's a good loyal base, so they probably give you very candid feedback. >> Yes, please. >> What did they say, no they do, if you have a loyal base, they'll tell you the truth, right? What are they saying? What's the feedback on the new business model? What are some of the examples? >> After I presented on stage and we had the conversation, I had, as you can imagine, a dozen conversations with specific partners that are willing to adopt and sign off. It's just for us to start to roll out, of course, to roll out the new business models you need to think about countries, a lot of the other specifics, but we expect in the next six month to have the whole world covered. >> That's great, and you have the events coming. Thanks for clarifying that. Well, we really appreciate (mumbles), coming on theCUBE and sharing your insights. >> Thank you. >> You're very dynamic, and great guest to come on theCUBE, certainly, we'd love to have you again, and if you need us down in the other summits, let us know. >> Rodolpho: It would be my pleasure, thank you. >> We'd be happy to bring theCUBE. Channel is big, the ecosystem is a competitive advantage, and you guys are looking good as they off the T. This is theCUBE here, live in Orlando. I'm John Furrier with Peter Burris. You're watching theCUBE. We'll be right back. 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