This Week In SAP (#14)

Posted on May 16, 2009 by Michael Koch

This week obviously saw the start and end of Sapphire 2009 in Orlando, which is reflected in this week’s news items.

news just out before the start of Sapphire 2009: SAP aquires Clear Standards
Sapphire 2009: Dennis Howlett with an apt first-day-keynotes-summary – this also includes the “Sapphire 2009 press conference that never was”.
CIO.com ‘s Sapphire 2009 round up
Vinnie Mirchandani with some interesting insights from Sapphire here, on sustainability here and here.
“Even SAP can be cool”. CNN.com with a report on Leo Apotheker who is soon taking over the reigns at SAP.

I’ve decided to include this week’s Tweet picks courtesy of Thomas Wailgum (CIO.com), who’s posted some great Tweet pickings from Sapphire 2009, Orlando.

This Week in SAP (#13)

Posted on May 8, 2009 by Michael Koch

Whoops! What happened over the last few weeks? Because of a recent change in direction for me my “This week in SAP” column suffered a little bit. More to be announced soon!

So let’s get this SAP News Show back on track…

Forbes’ Dan Woods sees SAP taking revenge as Oracle customers will face an implementation headache further down the line. Nothing really new in this article (the integration headache argument is already 4-5 years old). Woods added some Business Suite 7 sprinkles worthwhile a read though.
SAP aquires High Deal, a private France telecom spin-off which especialises in real-time billing.
“There’s not going to be a lot to report.”, that’s what SAP’s Bill McDermott said when asked about the status of Business By Design (BBD) prior to its annual Sapphire conference. My guess is that SAP is keeping cards close to its chest whilst fumbling their way into a SaaS world.
SAP Business Suite 7 has now come out of ramp-up is available to customers worldwide. I’d like to know what all the companies mentioned use BS7 for and for which processes. Heavyweights such as Colgate Palmolive surely have not implemented BS7 across their enterprise. And: are they’re still using it now? Hopefully Sapphire will tell us more.
and finally an interesting CNBC interview with SAP’s Bill McDermott once again. As a journalist, how badly prepared can you be? They have a big gun in front of their cameras and then mess it up like this. Funy to watch though. (via Vinnie Mirchandani and Jon Reed)

TwitterSAPLand:

@erwintenhumberg : “BTW, we’re now at 68 non-SAP registrations for the Eclipse DemoCamp in Walldorf. Pretty cool I think!”

This Week in SAP (#12)

Posted on March 20, 2009 by Michael Koch

Once again I’ve been scraping the bottom of the SAP News barrel for you this week:

SAP redundancies: it emerged that “natural fluctuation”, as mentioned in its letter to employees back in Jan 09, was not enough. Chris Kanaracus at IDG News Service / Frank Scavo: “One laid-off SAP worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said SAP’s move “wasn’t unexpected, given how slow business has been. Everybody’s been sitting around for a few months waiting for the other shoe to drop.” “
Sign of the times: SAP cans Community Day at its TechEd conferences.
As SAP’s global Marketing VP Steve Mann blogged about his resignation, CIO reports on the “uncertain future of SAP’s Social Media Strategy“
“The body can not live without the mind” (The Matrix): a good article why SAP is losing out “how to capture the new brain”. Linking back to Steve Mann’s departure, describing his departure as loss of a “huge asset”. My question: Why is Social Media supposed to be so marketing-driven?

and check out my Twitter produce:

se38: “SAP beginnt mit Entlassungen in Palo Alto” (“SAP starts layoffs in Palo Alto”)
SpinAct: Folks from SAP layoffs can now sign-up on SpinAct and monetize their knowledge and expertise
thorstenster: @Blag What an absolute shame! No more Community Day –> TechEd loses at least 50% of its value. 🙁

This Week in SAP (#11)

Posted on March 13, 2009 by Michael Koch

My top SAP news picks of the last 7 days:

big SAP announcement of the week: SAP and Sybase’s cooperation on bringing Business Suite apps to all mobile devices. Good take on it (as usual) from Dennis here. I just can’t see the iPhone (yet) breaking into the corporate market on a scale similar to Nokia and RIM. There is also something inside of me that simply refuses to believe that a device that is upgraded and synced with a music management software (iTunes) is going to make it in the business world.
Computing UK interviews SAP Europe Chief Exec Jose Duarte. An honest, short and sharp interview.

Anyone for SAP Tweets?

chiprodgers: “Well done @mepmarcelo on Community Day Brazil last week! Super job of documenting the event too.”
njames: “I have got to say this is a great Press conf for playing enterprise buzzword bingo.” (on the SAP Sybase webcast)
fiskerton: “I am done with you ABAP Debugger, begone! And yet… you remain. And mock me with your unresponsiveness. Don’t make me log out of SAP”
jonerp: “Had interesting talk with major T1 SAP BI player today. They do offshore some SAP BI work but keep some onsite – needed for user buy-in.”

This Week in SAP (#10)

Posted on March 6, 2009 by Michael Koch

Read and marvel in this week’s finding from the cool, leafy, green valleys of SAP-Land:

OK, let me start off with the BIG news item of this week and that’s obviously the new SAP Mentors ! I’m completely over the moon about my mentorship and looking forward to what’s promising to be an exciting time.
German government promises to give EUR 500m of its stimulus package to (german) IT sector. Leo Apotheker commented he had hoped for more.
Harald Reiter with an excellent report on how freelancer’s can use SDN Subscriptions to their benefit. Harald’s blog extends and complements nicely my previous posts about SDN Subsccriptions here and here.
An ERP satisfaction survey by Panorama Consulting reveals that SAP scores highest. Some interesting remarks by Eric Kimberling in an interview with Search SAP are also worthwhile a read.
I really enjoyed Tim Elliot’s little Web 2.0 manager cartoon.
Dennis Howlett on why “SAP Mentors will crush it for SAP”. Also watch out for the comments.
SAP’s big public announcement this week certainly was the sustainability efforts it is trying to implement over the next few years.

anything SAP related from the Twitterverse?

sapnetwork – “A Freshers Guide to ABAP and SDN: A Guide to all freshers entering into SAP-ABAP, also help them with some tips .. http://tinyurl.com/dhrphv“
mepmarcelo – “Community Day Brazil just started !!!“
jamesfarrar – “Apotheker: SAP 51pc CO2 reduction equals 60pc per employee by 2020“
@SAPMentors “Newsflash: You get 50% off SAP certification at all TechEd stops. Study up, as the test is not 50% easier 😉 Many stumble.”
@jonerp – “SAP (confirmed) buzzword change alert (ugh): NetWeaver BI is now NetWeaver BW again. The BIA is now the BWA. “Back to the Future!” “

This Week in SAP (#9)

Posted on February 26, 2009 by Michael Koch

This week’s SAP News picks:

German SAP Consultant partner Steeb offers a discount of up to 25% on the purchase cost of old ERP system(Achtung! German, english translation here) if customer decides to implement SAP. I like this sort of initiative, obviously smaller corps are able to offer this sort of flexibility and pricing. Here’s hoping that more UK companies contemplate similar “creative” pricing.
SAP Launches Online Resource for Academic Community
Jon Reed with some good observations and (dare I say it) “insights” into BI skills and the important role of data
Mark Yolton with a SDN blog on the value of SAP certification. My comments and views on this are included in my previous post “value of current SAP certifications?“. There have been no reports or reactions from last week’s SAP Mentor webinar – let’s wait and see.
Enterprise Geeks latest podcast is a real gem, discussing Certification, Coghead and Facebook TOS. Also have a look through the very interesting comments by Eddie Herman and Jon Reed.

Pixelbase.

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