XERO

Xero to launch "Farming in the Cloud" service mid-year

Online accounting software company Xero has announced that its new ‘Farming in the Cloud’ solution, which brings real-time, single ledger reporting to the farm for the first time, will be ready to go to market mid-year 2014.The solution allows farmers and their accountants, banks and rural service companies to work together from the same set of online, real-time data, and will provide one centralised home for key accounting and farm management tools.Key to the solution is a growing eco-system of farming software partners that are fully integrated with Xero’s beautifully simple online platform, and has the potential to be a major boost for farmers, and for the country.“Farming is the backbone of our nation,” said Ben Richmond CA, Xero Sales and Product Lead New Zealand, who leads Xero’s rural strategy. “When the rural sector does well, New Zealand does well, and Xero is committed to working with farmers, their advisors and stakeholders to lift the future of farming productivity together.“There’s a huge appetite for greater collaboration with industry stakeholders and by working together from the same set of data, the accounting role becomes less about compliance, and more about exploring opportunities for greater profitability.”Key farming software partner Figured has been instrumental in delivering farming specific tools to complement Xero’s accounting expertise. It launched today in conjunction with Farming in the Cloud at Xerocon 2014.“With seamless information between all parties and no need to transfer data, everyone’s focus is on adding value rather than gathering information,” said Duncan Anderson, Project Director, Figured.com.“Just as you don’t need a tractor for every implement in the shed, Figured means you no longer need separate ‘engines’ for your financial management. It can now all be done using our complete livestock reporting and farm budgeting tools combined with all the proven functionality and simplicity of Xero.

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Meet the Indians

Meet the Indians Behind

the Refresh at SAP

By 2008, Vishal Sikka, the first Chief Technology Officer of SAP, the world's third largest software company, had almost given up. Customers, analysts and competitors saw the i16-billion German multinational as too slow, unable to innovate or to adapt its enterprise software for the cloud. SAP's software is designed to manage business operations such as accounting, supply chain, inventory, human resources and customer relationships. Smaller rivals such as Salesforce.com had started giving SAP sleepless nights. As if that was not enough, Sikka was injured in a car accident.

Sikka wanted to quit. "I cannot do this any more," he told SAP Chairman and Co-founder Hasso Plattner over dinner one evening at a hotel in Aspen, Colorado. But Plattner was having none of it. "Damn it Vishal, you have to lead the intellectual renewal of SAP," he said, thumping the table. Sikka came away wondering how to reinvigorate the company. Should he form an intellectual renewal committee? Or hire a Chief Intellectual Renewal Officer? He spoke to other executives and concluded it had to be a product that would fire everybody's imagination. "The burden was not only to build a product, but to do it in a way that was exemplary," he says. "It had to demonstrate that the company could innovate. It needed to revive the pride of developers."

Later that year, he started the HANA Project.
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Sikka, who is of Punjabi heritage, grew up in Rajkot. His father was a civil engineer with the Railways. After high school in Baroda, Sikka went to the US and ended up with a doctorate in computer science from Stanford University. After founding two start-ups, he joined SAP in July 2002. Sikka was appointed to SAP's board in 2010 and in addition to HANA, he also leads all of SAP's products and innovation.

While Sikka played a prominent role in conceptualising and developing HANA, as well as in the subsequent revival of SAP, important contributions to HANA came from around the world - China, France, Germany, India, Israel, South Korea and the US. Besides Sikka, a few other Indians are also playing global roles that could well determine the future of the product.

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