The new offices of SAP SE in Newport Beach combine a trendy interior with a relaxing view to the scenic harbor front outside—just the mix to spur more innovation for the Germany-based enterprise application software giant, company officials believe.
Company officials, including co-founder and chairman Hasso Plattner, formally opened the space on Sept. 6, with a reception and presentation for about 150 guests and co-workers.
It is SAP’s first formal office in Orange County.
“We were really impressed with what we found here in the economic development in Orange County,” office director Hans-Martin Will told the Business Journal as the opening got underway.
“We have a strong university with UCI which is very much focused on also being part of an economic ecosystem that’s being developed.”
Will said there are about 40 SAP employees assigned to the office on 3366 Via Lido, but the number is in flux with sales staff and other people coming and going.
“We actually also are thinking about where else we would expand in the area as more people will come on board,” Will said, adding that Plattner was “very personally involved” in the creation of the Newport Beach location, which the company said falls under its “SAP Innovations Centers” concept—it now has five such locations worldwide.
AI, Voice Technologies
Will, whose formal title is Director/Head of Innovation Center Newport Beach, said his team’s focus is on artificial intelligence and machine learning for the intelligent enterprise.
He said AI in the business environment requires “something that can follow along the context, mostly stays more in the background and maybe occasionally steps in the foreground.”
In addition to AI, the Newport Beach center will have a focus on ambient voice technology, as well as data labeling and anonymization, according to the company’s website.
The company’s website currently shows about a dozen open positions, primarily software development roles.
“In my own team, we definitely have a strong bias towards team members in their first years out of school,” he said, but quickly adds senior team members are also needed to help guide the newer recruits.
He said the cloud innovation team has also decided to be located in the Newport Beach offices.
Alexa Ties
Will, who is 49, came over to SAP from the Amazon Alexa project in March. He still resides in Marina del Rey and commutes to and from Newport Beach.
The two-story building in Newport Beach has been operational since April and looks out onto sleek cabin cruisers docked outside. SAP maintains a boat there for its employees, customers, and guests.
SAP (NYSE: SAP), with a market value of $150 billion, is sharing space in the office with a related venture. HanaHaus, a Palo Alto-based coworking company backed by SAP, has taken a spot at Burnham Ward Properties’ Waterfront building, a roughly 20,000-square-foot office that once held Newport Balboa Savings.
Joern Keller, senior vice president and head of the S/4HANA Enterprise Architecture & Cross-Engineering, SAP told the audience earlier this month: “We were one of the first companies that really started standardizing software which gave us a competitive advantage in the market, which really helped us grow our customer base.”
“We have to make sure that we keep reinventing ourselves, reinventing our product” to keep delivering superior value, he added.
During a brief panel discussion during the opening, professor Marios Papaefthymiou, the dean of information and computer sciences at UCI, said: “This facility has been around for only a few months and things between our school and SAP are already happening.”
“I know that SAP has already hired some of our students,” he said. “Come and recruit our students.”
SAP is likely the largest tech-focused tenant along Newport Beach’s waterfront. Artificial intelligence-driven marketing company Veritone Inc. headquarters was previously nearby, but decamped to Costa Mesa more than a year ago.
Property owner Burnham Ward, a real estate investor and developer also based in the city, said it achieved a “significant tech win” by attracting SAP to the Via Lido site.
