New Business Model: What kind of consultant will arise?

Question

Some evangelists predict the 'death of the consultant' as is there. To what extent we will be affected by this revolution?
"With the availabilty of the HANA technology, exisiting business processes become real-time, process steps become obsolete, new process will evolve that were not possible so far and companies will invent new business models based on new products and services - all that requireed consultants who support that transition!"
Michael Lamade (OpenSAP Team)
"Future does not have to be an increment of the past."
Dr. Vishal Sikka, quoting Alan Kay in "An Introduction to SAP HANA"
What do you think?

Answer 1

I don't believe BW is really dying as a "modeling environment".
What might probably happen is for BW to disappear as an additional persistence layer (the BW Box), i.e. the Embedded BW scenario tends to gain more and more visibility. With virtual infoproviders and transformations being pushed down to the HANA layer, you can get pretty much the same results than a persistent BW with very good performance and 1/10th of the data footprint (zero replication).
This is already true today. Check for example the details on the analytical applications on top of SFIN (Smart Financials) 1.0. SFIN is the new FI module (aka HANA GL), rebuilt from scratch on top of HANA. i.e it is the first piece of ERP that was not adapted but born on top of an in-memory architecture. It was what HANA was developed for in the first place (i.e. the next-generation SAP ERP architecture). And its analytical applications, for example the new SAP Smart Cash Management app, are completely built on top of Virtual Infoproviders in Embedded BW (i.e. BW as a LDW, Logical Data Warehouse). This means the modeling skills of BW Consultants are not gonna disappear, they'll still be required since BW infoproviders on top of VIPs, Composite Providers, BEx Queries etc. are all gonna be there for a long, long time.
More details on SFIN analytical apps:
Smart Financials 1.0 – SAP Help Portal Page
https://websmp102.sap-ag.de/~sapidb/011000358700000164402014E/SmartFinancials_RN_EN.pdf
BI Content for SAP Smart Cash Management - SAP Library
Adaptations for Smart Financials Planning Applications - Integrated Business Planning - SAP Library
SAP delivers the following planning applications:
Cost center planning on years and periods
Project planning on years and periods
Internal order planning on years and periods
Market segment planning on years and periods
Profit center planning on years and periods
Functional area planning on years and periods
P&L planning on years and periods
These applications consist of “local” BI content. “Local” means that this BI content is shipped with the Smart Financials system and not with the “central” BI content. Local content runs on the ERP system directly using the “Embedded BW” and does not need a separate BW installation. The content for Smart Financials planning consists of HANA views, InfoProviders, MultiProviders, Aggregation Levels, Queries, Filters, Planning functions, Planning sequences, and Analysis Workbooks.
Another point is that this means that the investments that SAP customers have made on top of BW are also going to be protected.
They just need to adapt the Data Source layer to the new ODP (Operational Data Provisioning) concept and the rest will pretty much work as is.
The same adaptions are being made by SAP in the standard BI Content.
Best regards,
Henrique.