My first hands-on experience with SAP HANA was in the early days of its development back in 2011. I was a student at the time, and in one of the practical phases of my dual studies, I was working in a department that did application development on top of SAP HANA. Working with the in-memory technology was so innovative and exciting, which is why I was so happy when, after graduating in 2012, I got my very first job in the SAP HANA team. In that role, I worked as a developer in the team responsible for the SAP HANA client interfaces.
Fast forward a few years, and I’m now a development manager in the Database Cloud Infrastructure Team. My job covers multiple tasks: I’m a co-product owner for SAP Cloud Platform, SAP HANA Service. I am also part of the SAP HANA Cloud Infrastructure leadership team. And I manage a team of over a dozen people, so my job does include some administrative tasks in addition to various aspects of people development, which I personally enjoy very much.
In fact, it was one of my experiences with SAP HANA that led to my decision to pursue the management career path. When I was part of the porting team working on enabling SAP HANA to run on IBM Power Systems, we were closely collaborating with IBM, which was a really interesting experience. Over the course of the project, I also had the chance to work as a development angel for some of our bigger customers and was even able to travel to Australia and the US for their go–lives. The best part for me was being able to see how our customers are actually using SAP HANA and what significant value it brings for their businesses.
Celebrating the successful go-live with Joe Caruso and Scott Groth at the Pfizer office in 2016
This experience really brought me closer to the customer, and it has really helped me a lot in my role as a product owner and development manager. It allowed me to discover that I have a knack for working with stakeholders, coordinating projects, and customer collaboration, and I wanted to put these skills to use.
In my role as a product owner, it’s helped me to challenge myself when working with stakeholders to make sure that we’re really delivering what they need rather than what we think they need. The focus always needs to be on what issues the customer is trying to solve and how we can help.
Looking at the future of SAP HANA, I think I can say that it’s all about SAP HANA Cloud. It’s about extending and continually driving SAP HANA Cloud forward, making it even easier for customers to run and operate, as well as developing all the cool new features we have planned. I’m excited about our cutting-edge Kubernetes-based architecture and enjoy working with and learning from our stakeholders. I believe it’s exactly this kind of collaboration that will really bring value to our customers in SAP HANA Cloud.
