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SAP TechEd Conference Activities
SAP Executive Keynote Speakers
Wednesday, November 28 · 9:15 a.m. - 10:45 a.m.
Claus E. Heinrich, Member of the SAP Executive Board
Claus E. Heinrich has been a member of the Executive Board of SAP AG since 1996. He is responsible for the internal SAP IT organization, the optimization of internal business processes, as well as the global SAP Labs network. Since 1998, he has served as the Executive Board member in charge of employee relations, and is therefore also responsible for global human resources (HR) and labor relations at SAP.
Heinrich joined SAP in 1987, responsible for major software development projects, including manufacturing resource planning (MRP II) and logistics controlling. In 1996, he was appointed to the Executive Board with responsibility for the development of logistics applications, particularly in the area of production planning and control.
Heinrich began his career in the academic world. After completing a degree in business administration at the University of Mannheim, Germany, in 1981, he continued as a teaching assistant and researcher at the university as part of their operations research faculty. In 1986, he earned his doctorate in the field of production planning with a specialization in operations research. The following year, he gained international experience working on multiple research projects at Cornell University in New York and other universities in the United States.
Heinrich has been a member of the business administration faculty at the University of Mannheim since 1988 and continues to lecture in the field of supply chain management at his alma mater.
Vishal Sikka, Chief Technology Officer of SAP
Vishal Sikka is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of SAP.
Reporting directly to Henning Kagermann, Sikka is responsible for driving the company's technology and architecture strategy across its product portfolio. Sikka is ensuring a clear and harmonized roadmap for SAP products to deliver new innovations and increasing value to customers. As CTO, Sikka also leads the company's forward-thinking efforts around emerging technologies and is responsible for mapping SAP's next-generation architecture.
Prior to his role as CTO, Sikka was the senior vice president of architecture and Chief Software Architect at SAP, responsible for the roadmap and direction of the architecture of SAP's products and infrastructure. Prior to this role, Sikka was the head of the advanced technology group with responsibility for strategic innovative projects.
Before joining SAP, Sikka served as area vice president for platform technologies at Peregrine Systems (Remedy) responsible for application development and integration technologies and architecture. He joined Peregrine following the acquisition of Bodha, Inc., where he served as founder and chairman/CEO. Bodha developed technology for non-invasive, service-based integration of enterprise applications and for semantic information integration.
Sikka holds a Ph.D. degree in computer science from Stanford University and his experience includes research in automatic programming, information and application integration, and artificial intelligence at Stanford, Xerox Palo Alto Labs and two startups.
