The Secret to Our Success: A Q&A With SAP Practice VP Karl Kesselring

In our last Q&A with Karl Kesselring, we gained an insider’s view of SAP HANA and S/4HANA Services. Since then, NTT DATA Services has made great strides with our clients in supporting their journey to the cloud, supported by a strong acumen in data analytics and intelligence. In fact, we’re looking to the future with our co-innovation partners at SAP, and getting plenty of attention from the analyst community.

The NTT DATA Services SAP Practice has gotten quite a bit of attention from the analyst community this year! Our capabilities have recently been validated by different analyst firms including NelsonHall, and the ISG Provider Survey. We have also been recognized by Gartner in their 2019 Magic Quadrant for SAP S/4HANA Application Services, Worldwide.

What do you think is the secret to NTT DATA’s recent success with analyst rankings?

KK: In the 2019 NelsonHall report released in April, NTT DATA was ranked as a Leader in two independent categories — SAP HANA implementations, and SAP S4/HANA implementations. This report basically supports our leading market position for S4/HANA implementations on a global level.

Similarly, in the 2019 Gartner report released in May 2019* we were recognized based on our completeness of vision and ability to execute.

Last but not least, in the the ISG quadrant report titled ISG Provider Lens Quadrant report July 2019, NTT DATA was ranked in the leadership quadrant for SAP S4/HANA, business suite on HANA transformations and SAP HANA infrastructure and platform services. So it does seem true that all good things come in threes!

What we are also proud of is that we are seen as a market challenger in SAP Leonardo Transformations, which is essentially applying intelligent technologies like AI, machine learning, blockchain and robotic process automation.

In addition, we are helping many of our customers realize their digital transformation goals through integrating SAP S4/HANA and applying the value of intelligent technologies to their digital core.

And SAP is now also bundling their digital core with their intelligent technologies solutions. With the recognition from the analyst community as a leader and market challenger it validates that we possess these skills.

At NTT DATA Services we have released a new set of next-generation digital offerings — the SAP practice is very instrumental in supporting the towers of digital operations, including our Journey to the Cloud offering, and the Data Intelligence and Automation offering with a large set of SAP solutions.

Our favorable ratings from the three analyst companies recognize in a great way our competencies in our offerings such as application management, dynamic workplace, digital EAS, cloud transformation, intelligent automation and the Internet of Things.

As we look to future client priorities, we see them entering the next generation of digital enterprise through intelligent technologies, as well needing to remain competitive with digital core processing. We feel we are very well qualified to support our clients on their journey. Even more so, considering our long legacy and strong market position in the technology infrastructure space strategically collaborating with partner scalers like Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure.

Moving forward, what will your focus areas for our SAP business be?

KK: We’ll continue to emphasize the digital core with a strong focus on S4/HANA, as well as our industry solutions with a strong focus on model company and industry accelerators. We’ll also concentrate on line-of-business native cloud solutions with a strong focus on SAP SuccessFactors, Ariba and SAP Cloud for Customer. Last — but not least — we’ll continue to innovate the intelligent technologies where we have been successful working with SAP around use cases, using SAP Leonardo intelligent technologies.

In that sense, having the independent validation from our three recent analyst rankings in exactly these areas is very gratifying.

Learn more about NTT DATA’s SAP HANA and S/4HANA Services.

* Gartner, Magic Quadrant for SAP S/4HANA Application Services, Worldwide, Fabio Di Capua | Susan Tan | Allan Wilkins, 20 May 2019

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