Welcome back to my little personal haven of SAP news. I can assure you that no paper.li aggregators have been used and no animals harmed in the process of assembling this blog post.

To get started, let me show you a clip of one of my favourite movie lines ever: Vinnie Jones saying “It’s been emotional” in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”. In my view a good way to summarise last week’s WebDynpro saga… more below…

• Computerwoche: Thanks to Carbon Impact et al, SAP wins GreenIT award in “Enterprise Category” (english version here)
• Vinnie Mirchandani gradually getting back into the saddle again. Good to have you back, Vinnie!
• Classic from Shai Agassi on the Oracle/SAP TomorrowNow trial: “Oracle would sue if we dripped sandwich sauce on its lawn.”. Here is also an early analysis (2.11) by the FT.
• drop that Blackberry, Shai! Seems the trial Oracle/SAP attorney had to ask a “dismissive and annoyed” former SAP board member Shai Agassi to put down his Blackberry during a video evidence link.
• John Moy asks in his blog “Can we reinvent the grey-haired ABAPer?”. Whilst I generally agree with John’s observation and points in terms of future-proofing your career, I do think that he is generalising a lot here. Not every developer at ever end user installation has to act as he suggests. As far as grey hair is concerned, I’m not even going to go there.
• SAP’s Jochen Rundholz added his “SOA consumption on Android” SDN blog. Starting with SOAP here, but maybe we see some more REST based stuff in the future (also see comments at the bottom of the post).
• As Vinnie Jones said in Lock Stock & 2 Smoking Barrels:“It’s been emotional”. Thorsten Franz’s blog last week on “Kiss of Death for WebDynpro Java” sparked a few emotions on both sides of the “ABAP/Java WebDynpro pond”. Let me point out Wolfgang Hilpert’s clarifications and Michael Bechauf’s excellent post on the state of affairs (“Technology Stability in a World of Constant Change”). Especially in Michael’s case I have to say how positive it is to see contributions and insights such as this (and here’s hoping for more like this in the future). See also some of the memorable WDJ tweets below.
• interesting analysis by RAAD research, summarised by silicon.de – “Innovation from the standard”: RAAD asked R/3 and ERP customers about closeness/distance from SAP standard. 51% of ERP customers said they would see themselves close to vanilla, while amongst R/3 customers only 41% could make the same claim. They then compared this to statements of competitive advantage and came to the conclusion that more ERP customers claim competitive benefits and are closer to standard code base than R/3 customers. I’ll give you the english translation link as usual, but the graphics have unfortunately german titles in them.
• on Certification, consultant skills et al.
• ByDesign Consultant Andreas Eissmann with his insights on the BYD SDK. Some more details on the Ruby aspect, here is the english link.
• More ByDesign goodness: BYD Partner Skyytek provides more insights into their Partnership with SAP on ByDesign.

Beam me up, Twitterverse…

• thorstenster: “Wow, I never thought my kiss of death blog would cause so much trouble. To say some people overreact would be the understatement of the year” . nb. Thorsten commenting on the feedback he’s had on his WDJ blog post
• oliver: “@Blag guys be glad WDJ exists. Without the learning from it’s shortcomings WDA wouldn’t be what it is today.”. nb: Oliver on the same topic
• se38: “3 hrs away from twitter and there is a #wda vs. #wdj battle…”. nb Uwe Fetzer on the same
• skeohan: “Anything good is worth waiting for – which definitely includes ‘This Week in SAP’.” Thank You!

As SAP Land was catching its breath after TechEd, the Walldorf company  unleashed Q3 results on us. Apparently another company claims they’re already “running smarter” and “better” and what have you. Find out what it’s all about and make up your own mind. As usual, a list of totally personal SAP impressions below…

• There have been plenty of SAP Q3 2010 results comments. One summary to read certainly is the one by Gartner’s Thomas Otter: “The anti-Oracle posturing has its place on earning calls, and trading taunts makes for good headlines. Nevertheless, it is not nearly as relevant for SAP customers as many observers think.”
• Dennis Howlett’s AccMan blog with a SAP ByDesign perspective on development (and a link to yours truly).
• CIO’s Chris Kanaracus sheds light on the fact that SAP is now getting sued over the “Running Smarter” campaign by Laserfiche, a content management and document imaging software vendor. Ever tried to google “Running Smarter”? Laserfiche is hit no. 14 indeed… Ouch!
• “RIA is dead – Adobe MAX 2010“, says Enterprise Irregluar Michael Coté in his roundup of Adobe’s annual event. I like Michael’s writing style. A must read if that’s your field of focus.
• Thomas Wailgum tries to bring some clarity to the war of words between SAP, Oracle and (by proxy) HP due to Larry Ellison’s comments with regards to Leo Apotheker’s rise to the HP throne. Dennis Howlett thinks that Oracle sees HP as the ultimate prize.
• Facts, Speculation and Conclusion. Ethan Jewett takes a minute and tries to disect the different “In-Memory” keywords, areas and definitions.
• Abdulbasit Gulsen’s callout for SAP Inside Track Istanbul to all interested folks
• German Silicon.de reports on a bullish SAP Services market. (english version here)
• update:  Jon Reed’s interview with Leonardo de Araujo on BYD SDK impressions

a quick stop at Twitterverse central…

• @esjewett: Just did a quick BPC NW forum pass-through. Every few weeks a new batch of ‘consultants’ posts the same basic questions. Pity the clients
• @jpennikhof: @yojibee @pixelbase @thorstenster Maybe Silverlight is not dead but just “mature”? 😉 (Jan commenting on recent Silverlight rumours in the light of NW AS Java announcements)

Before I jump right into a fistful of SAP Land news, let me announce that This Week in SAP is going to have a little summer break. I will be back during week 2 in September (ish).

Yesterday, I quite enjoyed this Certification related Dilbert. Those who follow the Certification 5 output will know what I’m on about…

• Two Tribes: CIO’s Thomas Wailgum comments on the TomorrowNow saga, Vinnie Mirchandani expects more battles ahead.
• Dennis Moore sees SAP skills (amongst others) on the rise.
• Craig Cmehil announces Innovation Weekend @ SAP TechEd 2010
• come and hang out with some SAP geeks at SAP Inside Track Bangalore. The afternoon has some Certification 5 content, presented virtually by C5 members from all around the global.
• The C5 have also now launched a survey project, please forward this to all SAP related consultants you know. A link to the blog is here. The survey itself can be found here.
• Simplify SAP by culling custom code. As useful and valid this article is, I find that most of the client I work for already adhere or are aware of most of these points.
• if it wasn’t for anything else, we might remember the last few days as the week when “Google Wave waved good-bye”
• Uwe Fetzer aka @SE38 must have turned down all BBQ and pool party invites and wrote Twibap instead, the ABAP Twitter API. Excellent stuff!
• Helmuth Guembel (SAPience2010) with some critical remarks regarding SAP’s actions to prevent 3rd party support providers from making inroads.

No Twitter updates this week, folks…

Let’s start this week’s edition with a good Geek and Poke cartoon I spotted over the weekend:

A new month, a new SAP BusinessByDesign release. You’ll find some BYD News links amongst my SAP Land news catch.

• “Are CIOs too cosy with their vendors?”, asks CIO’s Thomas Wailgum. Why does there seem such a loyalty to vendors, even when things have not been going as well as expected?
• A perception is a perception is a perception. Survey by the SAP UK&I user group reveals that a large part (75%) of its customers are not happy with the speed with which SAP responded to SaaS offerings.
• SAP AG reports that IDC has reported that SAP is the market leader in the BI tools market.
• SAP Mentor Thorsten Franz reveals the “third way”: CRM WebUI for ERP 6 and Netweaver ABAP. Business Object aware goodness. Great stuff, Thorsten!
• SAP cooperates with Deutsche Post in eBrief (eLetter) projects. First initiatives will cover HCM payroll and public sector processes. (english version here)
• Gartner’s Thomas Otter chimes in with his thoughts on SAP results
• SAP TV: Snabe/McDermott interview now available online
• SAP personalises Netweaver Portal with Enterprise Workspace (engl version here)
• Indian offshorer HCL is looking for experienced german-speaking SAP consultants in order to increase its foothold in SAP’s home market (engl version here)
• Just in time: the Enterprise Geeks with the last installment on an Introduction to WDA (pt 7)
• Dennis Howlett comments on SAP’s release of ByDesign Feature Pack 2.5. Still strikes me as new to see price offerings from SAP like this (see the 3 starter packs), but it’s a taste of what’s to come in the not-too-distant future. See also my comment re SDK and partner add-ons, for more reading also see my recent post “ByDesign ? ByCommunity”.

And here comes Mr. T (with a bit of spice this week, me thinks…)

• ZiaYusuf: Delighted to announce that I have joined key #sap partner and talent management leader #nakisainc as Board Advisor
• jonerp: As per @thomas_jung at #sapitstl: SAP Business Suite is gradually being rewritten from SAP GUI to Web Dynpro ABAP.
• jonerp: Interesting piece by computerworlduk reporting SAP user survey on ByD and Saas http://dlvr.it/3BWWw but SHOCKED doesn’t mention # surveyed
• monkchips: @esjewett the sap enterprise workspaces page is not even funny. file under poor marketing. cc @jbecher @vlvl
• esjewett: Another misguided in-memory SAP marketing blog on SDN – (The non in-memory stuff seems alright.)
• ewH: I am now being followed by @shortdumps – as an ABAPer, that is not a good omen
• thomas_jung: Just followed @shortdumps – if this account turns out to not be ABAP related, I don’t think I want to see the content they post. 🙂
• mprosceno: Nice recognition for SDN and the SAP Community Networks in the Washington Post..

Just wanted to wait until the end of all the twitterings around the SAP Q2 earnings analyst call before cobbling this week’s musings together.

• SAP reports healthy increase in revenue year-on-year, but Dennis Howlett had an interesting look under the bonnet (“reports healthier”). Zacks think that “SAP underperforms”.
• SAP decides goes for Black Duck to rationalise its Open Source Software use for development efforts.
• Jon Reed with an interesting PAC post regarding SAP trends for IT Services firms.
• 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.”
• Joshua Greenbaum with a follow-up on his ByDesign / SaaS related post from last week. Interestingly enough, he also sees the strong impetus the BYD SDK will have, although I miss the community aspect in all of the BYD posts I find. Also see my own post “ByDesign? ByCommunity!” on this.

Keep calm and tweet on…

• dahowlett: #SAP: SAPPHIRE got 50% more leads than 2009…interesting
• sapnews: SAP Reports 16% Growth in Software and Software-Related Service Revenues for the Second Quarter:
• yojibee: Wow, still videos on SDN only for IE? (the video was shot in 2008)
• chiprodgers: Getting very close to being able to announce the concerts for #SAPTechEd Las Vegas and Berlin. Excited! Stay tuned
• sap_star: today at client: Defect Meeting.Working Issue With Backup / Restore Not Working.Rewriting Code From Offshore Team.

Here’s a run-down of what I thought was noticable in SAP Land in the last 7 days:

• European Commission
• 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.
• SAP’s Craig Cmehil starts the TechEd Demo Jam Submission Countdown
• a to dazzle the masses
• 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!).
• SAPience aka Helmuth Guembel fears a wave of custom-built enterprise “Tamagochis” on mobile devices.
• 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!”