Michael Doane chimes in with views on Certification: “My long-held belief is that systems integrators, not individual consultants, should be held to a certification/ratings fire. To date, they are not. Most of them tend to claim “our clients love us” but it is readily evident that they are not talking to all of their clients.”
It’s been a while now since the fireworks of SAPPHIRE Now (my takes on day 1, day 2 and day 3). I thought it would be apt to have a little catch-up on what has said been about SaaS ERP in general and SAP’s Business ByDesign (BYD) in particular since then. I also want to add a few points re the SDK and beyond.
SAP has also produced a cute little video explaining BYD in a nutshell, which is worthwhile sharing.
Despite the simplicity that is presented here, ERP pundits have always been in agreement over the fact that anything SaaS based represents a new ball game for the old-skool “Big ERP” players such as SAP and their partners. In my view, the last few weeks have put a little bit more flesh on the argumentative bone.
Dennis Howlett provides some great insights and thoughts in his worthwhile read on “So you want to be a saas Consultant ?”. Dennis points the spotlight on the consulting and implementation partners for solutions such as Netsuite and ByDesign. Where is the possibility for them to make money? With regards to saas deals for small and medium sized clients he writes:
The upside is that in a deal of this kind, there is every incentive to ensure client success because you’re into a recurring revenue stream for as along as the client remains onboard.
This view is very much reflected in an excellent interview Jon Reed did with Skyytek’s Ray Tetlow (listen from 2:20 onwards). Skyytek has been working in the saas field as implementation partner for a number of years now and has 1000+ completed projects under its belt. Skyytek has also been chosen as BYD partner.
Furthermore, Tetlow points out that in his view classical ERP implementation firms will struggle to enter the saas market due to shorter implementation lifecycles, which renders long presales activities obsolete. It’s what Joshua Greenbaum calls a “tectonic shift in the marketplace”. Moreover, Greenbaum points out:
How SAP’s partners will make the healthy margins they need to be in the game with SAP has been, in retrospect, a bigger problem than the technology issues that stymied ByD’s initial release. And, by the way, thinking that value-added partners – the smart, savvy ones SAP wants to have on board selling ByD – will be happy with a volume business won’t cut it. Smart and savvy won’t be interested in volume, IMO.
Going back to Jon’s interview with Ray Tetlow this makes sense, as it appears that low office footprint, virtual consulting and less face time is what Skyytek’s model is shifting towards. Whether this will also be valid for larger saas projects and bigger end clients remains to be seen. Dennis points towards the importance of skills when implementations are done on a larger user scale:
Here’s the kicker – larger saas implementations require a lot more than understanding a general ledger. You really need industry expertise in order to help clients move towards implementing best practices and processes. I’ve argued many times that practitioners have these skills – they just don’t necessarily know it. Now is the time to think this through and think about how and where you’ll start assembling teams. The likelihood is you’ll need to look outside your own walls.
Greenbaum diverts the saas-interested audience to another topic which especially in SAP BYD Land is going to hot up even further over the coming months: BYD enhancements and tooling.
Expect long queues when SAP’s BYD SDK “ByDesign Studio” (now renamed from “Copernicus)” will be available for 4 hour hands-on sessions at this year’s TechEd. What we know so far is that ByDesign Studio will be based on Microsoft’s Visual Studio, C# and potentially SQL Server. Despite some noises from the developer community I think this was a good choice, as SAP is able to tap into a pool of millions of developers who can innovate and extend BYD to their heart’s content in a “partner layer”. It can be expected that these ByDesign Studio based add-ons will use web services to access the ABAP-OO based BYD cloud system and leverage BYD’s Silverlight UI.
Skyytek’s Ray Tetlow believes that only larger custom developments like for example a call center extension are best use cases for partner solutions. Smaller extensions like custom fields or table enhancements can be customised by implementation teams and with little effort.
But where are solution partners going to market their extensions and add-ons in order to tap into the long tail? A go to market strategy for this still remains to be seen and answers will hopefully be provided during this year’s TechEd. Excitement for ByDesign Studio could be significantly hampered if SAP misses out to provide clarity on this when presenting ByDesign Studio. This is especially important with regards to pricing, if SAP is planning to take a cut in a “BYD App Store”.
Moreover, it will be important for SAP to mobilise beyond the existing developer and BPX community it has today, of which a large part has little or no C# skills. You might think that SAP ERP core skills are not that relevant anymore in this new field and you would probably be right. However, if ByDesign Studio really leverages web services then everyone who has used SAP web services before is in an advantageous position.
In the long run, it can be expected that these skills will become commoditised, but for the next 3-5 years SAP is going to have to engage not only with their existing community, but also reach out even further to those Microsoft developers it will eventually need. Given the uphill climb it already has on the partner involvement side, it is not going to get any easier.
interesting analysis by Panorama Consulting’s Eric Kimberling. He’s posted a functional comparison of SAP v Oracle. The two packages are closer together in customer evaluation than one thinks.
Jarret Pazahanick with an interesting and popular SDN blog on Five Ways Twitter will Help your SAP Career – well spotted stuff. Many people still underestimate the power of Twitter in the professional space.
CIO’s Thomas Wailgum sees SAP in danger to make the same mistakes with ByDesign as with TomorrowNow. He has a point, but have a look in the comments to see my view on it (apologies for the dreadful layout!).
Enterprise IT veteran Joshua Greenbaum on “How to make money in the cloud (…)” says, “Smart and savvy won’t be interested in volume, IMO”. One interesting observation here is that he sees the BYD SDK as a clear advantage for BYD over competitor products.
some good ones in this week’s Twitter category, me thinks:
thorstenster: Just parked on SAP’s board & CEO reserved spaces in front of WDF01. Security greeted me on my way to the door. Quick!
thorstenster: @pixelbase Driving Larry and Hasso reminds me of the riddle where you row a wolf, a sheep, and a salad across the river. Larry’s the salad. (nb on the same topic!)
se38: RT @martin_english: RT @micdoane: “Only two major industries, one of which is illegal, refer to their ultimate customers as users. “
welshcathy: Interesting – just seen self referencing DDIC table type definition bring down an entire SAP system!
SAPinsider: Today’s IT joke: A software engineer is smoking. When a lady points at the health warning, he replies, “We care about errors, not warnings!”
OK, folks. FIFA World Cup is over and with that ended the biggest distraction – also known as football. Therefore time to regroup, rethink and rekindle our relationship with the world we know and love as “SAP Land”. Welcome back !
Dennis Howlett with some food for thought for all those who want to be SaaS consultants. Dennis does a great job of reflecting on parts of the Netsuite/ByDesign/Salesforce consulting model. It means a new way of working and making dosh – on several levels.
Brazil, Argentina, England – World Cup favourites come and go, but This Week in SAP can’t be knocked out that easily. This little project of mine is a labour of love and therefore might experience the odd blip in broadcast. Blame my clients who keep me busy.
SAP extends offer to acquire Sybase. As not all conditions for the merger are met, like the approval for the European Commission, there has got to be another 25 day review period by the EU. Nothing too serious there? Au contraire! “This is not something SAP needs right now”, says Enterprise Irregular Dennis Howlett.
gingle posted a few “Full Monty” blogs on SDN with installation guides etc on popular SAP trials. A great resource from a mysterious man Down Under.
SAP Me Sideways strikes again with a good piece on “Confidence vs Arrogance”, which very much resonates my own experiences in larger parts of SAP Land.
a bit older, yet still worth mentioning is a silicon.de post re SAP’s ambitions to triple users by 2015. (english translation is here). Execution for the app strategy might still throw up the odd question mark and the next months need to provide more clarity with regards to this. One example will be the upcoming ByDesign SDK entitled Copernicus.
And here comes the Twitterverse:
jonerp: There is such a thing as overthinking SAP career options. Hot skills chase – avoid. Passionate pursuit of excellence – that’s more like it
OK, there’s been a little gap in weekly updates. I knew that the title “This Week in SAP” would come to haunt me one of those weeks. I blame the World Cup and Konrad Zuse’s birthday. But now, after some dire performances from Germany and England, I’m desperately looking for some distraction in the vaults of the SAP world… let’s see.
Welcome back! It’s been a Sapphire-tastic week both in Frankfurt and Orlando, so most pickings of mine are still influenced by that. I’m glad I went over to Frankfurt to witness all the action. Co-Mentor Nigel James summarised it best by saying “SAPPHIRE WOW”.
numerous Sapphire wraps have been posted (including mine here, here and here). Those most noteworthy in my mind are the ones from (a very complimentary) Ray Wang, Vinnie Mirchandani, Dennis Howlett (note: also check Vinnie and Dennis’ latest after thoughts, now the “drugs have worn off”! follow their links), CIO.com and also the summaries on Craig Cmehil’s FMR for day1, day2 and day 3.
more thoughts by Dennis Howlett on SAP’s SME SaaS offering Business By Design and its pricing. Dennis also mentions the SDK for BBD which is supposed to hit the community later in 2010. Generally there seems to be concerns around entry level for partners, infrastructure (what if SAP decides to outsource the hosting?) and pricing. Personally I would like to see a clearer strategy announcement from SAP around partnerships – hopefully this will be in place by the time the SDK is released.
two excellent Enterprise Geeks podcasts around Agile and (of course) the Certification 5 and their efforts to move the needle on SAP Certification. Unfortunately I missed out with all the fun as 4/5 of the group gathered in Orlando.
DearingGroup: the # of times we’ve seen Sustainability in tweets from SapphireNow almost equals the amount of consultants it used to take to implement SAP
bitterer: Bill McDermott looks, speaks, and acts like the other Bill. Clinton, that is. #sapphirenow
The third and last day of Sapphire Now in Frankfurt started for me with a round table with SAP CTO, Vishal Sikka, during which he emphasised several times that Netweaver was still SAP’s supported platform and that it’s staying. It was good to have this confirmation, as Jim Hagemann Snabe’s keynote on Tuesday didn’t mention the work “Netweaver” once. Moreover, Snabe talked about a “future stack” and SAP having talks with “software vendors about it”, which initially brought a little confusion to the community.
Then there were of course the much anticipated keynotes from Sikka and Hasso Plattner. A lot of what Vishal was talking about had already been touched upon at the round table earlier in the day.
On In-Memory, I think the community was suprised and even delighted to hear that support for the product goes all the way back to SAP 4.6c. Vishal also talked about “Project Gateway”, which seems to be a key to SAP’s On-Demand ambitions for the “normal” ERP world. The next weeks and months will hopefully provide further clarification on Gateway. Sikka also mentined an internal SAP challenge back in March 2010 to produce 500 mobile apps. Up to Sapphire, more than 600 have now been developed (not all of these published though). It would have been nice to see and hear more about this, but I’m expecting more on this soon.
Plattner’s keynote was more of a dive into In-Memory Database, rounded off with a demo of In-Memory Analytics within a little real world scenario. Plattner delivered it in his usual off-the-cuff style which can be very entertaining. It certainly demonstrated the power this sort of technology has, especially its non-disruptive nature.
Biggest take away for me on day 3 was Business By Design (BBD) though. At a round table with SAP Go-To Market SVP Markus Schwarz and Eric Luengen we were given a demo of BBD version 2.5, the latest version of the on-demand SME solution. It was the first time I had seen BBD in the flesh and I have to admit that I liked UI look and feel (I know that the UI is not everyone’s cup of tea).
Customers should basically be able to re-configure simple things in their system themselves, whilst more complex changes or additions/extensions would be developed by an SDK to be released later this year. The SDK will be based (as mentioned before by Anne Petteroe) on the Microsft Visual Studio and C#. Dennis Howlett mentions some concerns around the possibility of SAP outsourcing the BBD infrastructure to third parties. Once SAP’s BBD team has found a good way how enhancements and plugins developed with this SDK can be marketed, there could be a big potential for a new or enlarged partner ecosystem. Let’s also hope SAP’s marketing efforts are strong enough to get all of this off the ground, as Dennis points out (he knows more about SME SaaS than me).
On the whole, it was a good and down-to-earth SAPPHIRE for me. I was expecting more fluffy, hot air type of stuff, but actually walked away with more hands-on info than I thought. This is also down to the great work of Mark Finnern, Craig Cmehil, Oliver Kohl and also the SAP Global Communications team. Altogether they provided very informative 3 days for me in Frankfurt. Thank You to you all!
Day 2 at Sapphire was very much a continuation on SAP’s message regarding innovation and rejuvenation. Apart form the keynotes by the co-CEOs, SAP Mentors and Bloggers had the opportunity to participate in a round table with Jonathan Becher, Executive Vice President of Global Field Marketing. Jonathan explained more about SAP’s aim to use Sapphire to demonstrate to customers the change that is happening within SAP. One major attempt in this area is the re-branding of Sapphire into “SAPPHIRE NOW”. My take on the conference so far is that SAP has managed to show itself in a much more grounded and listening kind of way. A refreshing change from a rather chilled atmosphere not too long ago, triggered by topics such as support costs, for example.
For most of the audience the two keynotes by co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe were the first time they had seen or heard what these two business leaders had to say. Where Bill McDermott showed vision and direction, Snabe filled the strategy and product gap. With Vishal Sikka there is now talk about a “virtual 3rd CEO”, responsible for the technical and architectural part. Judging by the Twtterstream during the keynotes and conversations after the speeches, my impression was that SAP has bounced back and has so far executed well.
However the software giant has quite a task on its hands as far as change internally is concerned. New paradigms such as the hybrid model for On Demand and talks about the “future stack” (for applications) have already caused quite a lot of discussions amongst employees, partners and consultants. Now everyone is looking towards this afternoon’s keynote by Vishal Sikka and the enigmatic Hasso Plattner for some clarity. To be continued.
I’m currently at SAP’s annual customer conference SAPPHIRE in Frankfurt. SAP is so far pulling out a lot of stops to get back its mojo in terms of innovation and showing leadership within the business application space. Many of the mentors are onsite in Frankfurt and Orlando (where the other customer event is run in parallel) – a nice change from an otherwise rather “suitey” event.
First session on Monday was a roundtable with SAP’s Ingo Benckmann, Senior Director Solution Management In-Memory Computing. Ingo gave us some high-level insights into how In-Memory Database (IMDB) is executed. SAP very much believes that IMDB is the “right technology at the right time”. Customers have become used to direct, immediate system responses and IMDB very much reflects this trend.
When asked about ways how IMDB will be implemented, Benckmann describes a customer’s path to SAP delivered in-memory technology as a “side car approach”. This means IMDB is added to an existing landscape, run in tandem with any relational database and therefore less disruptive, more like an addition.
“Answers questions you didn’t know you had”
Ingo Benckmann talked about the power of immediate responses from BI queries and new, quicker insights into company data. This was also reflected by other panel comments this morning. Most examples focus on improvements for BI reporting and analysis, I’m hoping to hear more about the transactional data side of things in the near future. In addition, there are necessary changes in the tooling which will probably be discussed in more detail at SAP’s technical conference later this year.
Keynotes
SAP is trying to walk the talk and tried out a new approach to the way how Sapphire is run. This year’s conference is held in parallel in Orlando, FL and Frankfurt, Germany. Keynotes were presented in both locations and via real-time multicast, emphasising the on-demand, immediate and real-time message. Overall, both keynotes by Sir Richard Branson and former US Vice President Al Gore lived up to expectation, albeit a strange interview format with Branson.
Panel Discussion with Jim Hagemann Snabe
On Tuesday morning, a CIO panel discussing “customer demand in a changing business environment” was asked questions by SAP Mentors (note: I’m part of the SAP Mentor group) regarding outlook and commitment on Agile project methodologies. Wolfgang Gaertner, CIO of Deutsche Bank couldn’t see any reasons why agile methodologies shouldn’t be adopted where it makes sense and is safe. Co-CEO Jim Snabe emphasised once again SAP’s commitment to make Agile part of SAP’s lifeblood.
Another interesting question was asked by SAP Mentor Richard Hirsch with regards to the role of SIs and SAP Partners in an on-demand software model. Snabe’s view is that SAP’s job is to create and maintain a stable core platform with various business processes, leaving the differentiation to the partners. I can imagine that this would mean quite a game changer for SAP partners (and potentially a lot less project work).
During the same session Snabe also emphasised a “hybrid” model of on-premise and on-demand software for many years to come. According to Snabe, On-premise is going to become more “shrink-wrapped”, which was most likely a hint towards more Best Practices.
All in all a good start to Sapphire and SAP’s efforts to regain customer confidence. Two more days to come.
60 hours to the start of Sapphire. With all the SAP/Sybase Acquisition news you’re obviously in for a treat. Ladies and Gentlemen, come closer and have a good look at a larder full of SAP news. You won’t be disappointed ! For your convenience, I’ve split the news into “SAP/Sybase” and “Other”.
Deal Architect’s (Vinnie Mirchandani) first and later reaction. On the whole, he says that SAP probably had already enough on its plate, but senses a lot of buzz (similar to the Business Objects acquisition). He’ll encounter SAP’s statement of “Sybase is about customer choice” with a question about incorporation Zoho, Netsuite and Rimini at next week’s Sapphire press conference. Let’s see what they’re going to say.
Several blogs chimed in with what I see as the most important outcome from all this: clarity. I remember walking around the stalls at the last TechEd and speaking to the Skys and Sybases etc of this world. It was like a game of Mikado – everyone tried to stay in the game without making a hash of it and clinging on to what they’ve got. The Sybase acquisition “reduces options” in a good way (Forrester’s Stefan Ried). The blogs I found which emphasised this were: William Newman’s “View from the C-Level”, and John Appleby’s blog on SDN (another new SAP Mentor!).
CIO.com’s Thomas Wailgum thinks “SAP stays classy” and I do agree with him. Whilst others like Bob Warfield seem to think that SAP just wanted to make a big splash (“This deal is a classic example of a wounded elephant crashing through the jungle”…), I think it is clear that Sybase was a clearly thought through, carefully executed move.
analysts and pundits seemed to be quieter on the In-Memory-Ambitions that SAP links to the acquisition. Dennis Howlett gives his view (amongst other things) here, remaining slightly unconvinced, citing an example of a recent Deutsche Bank announcement.
rather strange post in InformationWeek talking about the “SAP Recession”. I guess we all agree that BI has had an effect (or maybe IT in general?), what about electronics or mathematics? Fine. Let’s all agree it’s been a “human kind induced recession” then.
Vendorprisey: Early call on SAP licensing challenges. SAP product naming is confusing and frustrating.
chriskanaracus: Business ByDesign interface is more colorful than before, but still won’t be mistaken for a Wii game or anything
steverumsby: Stupid Java stack. Whoever in SAP thought this was a good idea? Please can everyone go back to coding in ABAP?
z_basis_adm: @steverumsby SAP on Java makes me laugh. Tons of useless logs. Really poor memory management. Apps that just die without gening errors. Fun! (in response to @steverumsby)
My name is Michael Koch, SAP Mentor and Independent SAP Consultant. This is my personal blog featuring news and infos about SAP Development Consulting.
Working in IT since 1990, I've been involved in the SAP arena since 1997. Doing the needful.
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This feed isn't my only source, but contains some of the SAP-related news that I regard as important. Some of the ones included are also listed further down in this column.
Keep calm and tweet on…
