Welcome back to a TWIS edition from Boston (hence the picture below). I’m currently here for the combined SAP Run Better Tour and SAP Influencer Event with Vishal Sikka.

Let’s have a look at last weeks news selection.

• Vijay Vijayasankar combines Watson and HANA and sees new possibilities. I agree with Vijay, a combination would open up new, so far unthinkable applications. For more (Jeopardy action!) on Watson see here.
• Thorsten Franz took River through its paces and reports back.
• Joshua Greenbaum was impressed how a new SAP involved punters at a recent launch event for Sales On-Demand. Vinnie Mirchandani agrees, to a point.
• Dennis Howlett and Skyytek’s Ray Tetlow on “Could you implement ByDesign?”. Very impressive to hear that their consultants work on 25 projects (!) simultaneously.
• here’s the cracker of the week (and if you’re only reading one article this week make it THIS one). Jon Reed, Vijay and Leo de Araujo talk “Road Ahead for SAP Consultants 2011 – The SAP Mentor View”. Wonderful stuff, touching on BYD, HANA, BI, ABAP… you name it, it’s in it. I particularly like their “real world” view on things – what matters to customers and what will matter soon.
• Silicon.de reports on Hasso Plattner’s new book on In-Memory. (english version here). update: book will be released in the US on March 31 (Thanks, Greg!)

Let me guide you through my personal, careful news assortment from the sunny side of SAP Land (besides, is there any other…?). Short and sharp version this week. Busy days…

Let’s start with this week’s classic Dilbert, which made me chuckle.

• Ethan Jewett’s video blog on the “licensing thread of death”. Insights into apps developed using SAP standard web services, for example. If you thought it was all covered by the company running the SAP stack, then it looks like reality isn’t that simple. It was all sparked off by a blog post from Antonello Lapolla on SDN on XML services from a native iOS app.
• Dennis Howlett with a very interesting and insightful update on BYD with regards to GTM, general uptake and buzz. I know it’s early days, but I like the transparency, especially when it comes to how customers seem to find their way to BYD.
• Joshua Greenbaum only blogs on SAP every now and then, but when he does, he always delivers a cracker. This time of SAP and Gamification. I still think the buzz around “Gamification” is old wine in new bottles, but there you go.
• A new on-demand powerhouse created by Jon Reed and Dennis Howlett. I’ve just watched their first show and it looks very, very promising.
• “Implement SAP Business ByDesign for €0”. It all has to go… (engl version here).

Tweeting Me, Tweeting You

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Welcome back to yet another weekly summary of all those things that happened “over the SAP hills and far away”.

• ERPExecutive with a post on Panaya’s latest SAP salary review (the above graphic is a screen grab of one of Panaya’s slides). I found the gender salary difference sobering, the US/EU comparison interesting. This and far more can be found here.
• Computerwoche.de’s Eric Jochum with a report on automated testing tools for SAP (english version here). Unused potential?
• I enjoyed reading Thomas Wailgum’s post on customisations: “Customisations are dead. Long live customisations!”
• I’ve read the Mario Herger’s “Gamification” blog post a few times now and still struggle to see it as an upcoming trend in ERP land. I wouldn’t call it gamification. It’s more of a trend between UI Design and Reward Systems.
• Mentor “Leitwolf” Mark Finnern with another YouTube video on SAP’s Mentor programme.
• Tom Raftery of GreenMonk with an interesting post on high energy efficiency through Netweaver 7.3

I’m a Twitter, not a quitter.

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Welcome to a TWIS Valentines edition. This week’s highlight was probably the SAP Innovation Center announcement, but let’s look at all of my pickings:

• SAP to built Innovation Center in Potsdam (or a “Silicon Sanssousci”, linked to the summer palace of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, which is also in Potsdam). I think SAP really needs more superlatives for ambitions such as this. As Sanssouci served Frederick as a place to relax from all the pomp and circumstance, I assume the Innovation Center is going to do nothing less.
• great post by James Governor of Redmonk on Couscous, Trifles, Software and Choice.
• Jon Reed grabbed ASUGNews.com’s co-CEO Duo Courtney Bjorlin and Thomas Wailgum for a podcast interview. The only question is: who is Jim and who is Bill?
• Thorsten Franz and his thoughts on WebDynpro ABAP’s old and wrinkly brother, ABAP Dynpro. I agree with Thorsten that we should have more direction (and innovation?) from SAP on this UI technology. It’s old, yes, but still the one that is most used.
• Xcode, SOAP and iPhone – Gerwin de Groot shows us how it’s done.
• German, Austrian and Swiss SAP Customers ignore Cloud and Mobile, a confidence gain for SAP products and talk of  “de-emotionalised support issues” at Silicon.de (english version).
• and finally my own favourite of the week comes from SAP’s Juergen Schmerder, who does a very good job at cleansing a muddy “River” that has been flowing recently.

You tweetin’ at me?

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Welcome to my personal, weekly SAP news summary.

• Eric Kimberling gets a mention in Silicon.de’s report on new price models for implementations (english version here).
• Diageo’s CIO says “Processes are more important than a single ERP“. Consolidation days appear to be over at the FMCG giant.
• “No Employment Freeze at SAP”, says the Walldorf HR top manager Angelika Dammann (english version here).
• CIO’s Chris Kanaracus on SAP ByDesign FP2.6 which delivers SDK (software development kit) goodness. Important point made by Constellation’s Ray Wang: “The most important thing right now for any software company is making sure they have a strong developer ecosystem,”

Move over and let the Twitterverse have a go:

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Back in the “Monday TWIS Saddle” again, here’s my purely personal and selfish look back on the last week in SAP Land:

• the latest Enterprise Geeks podcast covering Achievement Driven Development and Model Driven Development
• Global CIO’s Bob Evans with a piece on speed and disruption. I particularly like the introductory story by Vishal Sikka.
• Matthias Steiner and his colleagues at SAP give us the Missing Manuals for Netweaver CE. Surely Composition Environment has always been intuitive enough so developers could dismiss the lack of documentation 😉
• ASUG’s Thomas Wailgum with his thoughts on traction for SAP ByDesign, comparing it to early hopes and past fears for Walldorf’s SaaS ERP spring-chicken.
• after short life, SAP’s Innovation Weekend gets renamed into SAP InnoJam, coming to a TechEd Applause-o-meter near you soon.
• SAP Mentors from Down Under grab the microphone and deliver podcasting goodness!
• Richard Hirsch with an interesting overview of Gateway and River on SDN: “Aggregation patterns in OnDemand Edge Platforms“
• Dennis Howlett with his criticism on Richard Hirsch’s other interesting blog “Guerilla Tactics for SAP’s OnDemand ‘Go To Market’ Strategy” -I made my view clear in the comments of Dennis’ post. Got a bit heated that one…

It’s a long way to Twitterary (OK, I’ll take my hat…)

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