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…

This week in SAP

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 http://bit.ly/cYLoRA
• 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 – http://bit.ly/93jTcm (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… http://bit.ly/adewZZ

This week in SAP

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: http://bit.ly/bNdnRA
• 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.

This week in SAP

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

• European Commission approves SAP acquisition of Sybase
• 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 funky and groovy ByDesign video by SAP 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!”

This week in SAP

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 !

• Forrester’s John R Rymer sticks up for SAP – “SAP is good enough”.
• Silicon.de joins into Rymer’s tune by emphasising “SAP bleibt SAP” (“SAP remains SAP”). English translation here
• Jon Reed with an excellent podcast interview with Skyytek’s Ray Tetlow (download link), a SaaS Consulting Business and SAP ByDesign partner.
• 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.
• Reality Bites: Thomas Wailgum’s pledge for a more instrumental role of the CIO (rather than mopping up afterwards).
• SAP Me Sideways with what looks like a follow-up on the Confidence v Ignorance post the other day.
• Richard Hirsch with an insightful SDN blog on impacts of In-Memory Technology on Process Environments.
• Eric Kimberling’s comprehensive list of ERP lawsuits.

Between several Twitter downtimes, I managed to capture the following:

• dahowlett: This from @twailgum had me in fits of laughter: “SAP: The Big Made Easy” http://is.gd/dhFvR #sap
• thomas_jung: One of the more useful UI prompts I’ve seen: http://flic.kr/p/8gh3Mi
• jonerp: Wondering what’s next in the wacky story of the @SAP Twitter account, once possessed by a teenager with attitude…
• ConsultantBox: Why do many SAP consultants not want to work with SAP agents when searching for SAP jobs? http://nblo.gs/5CLmR
• ddav: Check out the SAP Uber Geek app now on the ‘new and noteworthy’ in iTunes store! http://bit.ly/cFcVdx http://twitpic.com/24x19b
• dparnas: RT @scottwambler: Certified #Scrum Master training = 16 hrs. Starbucks Barista training = 24+ hrs. #agile
  

This week in SAP

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.

Anyway, what have we got?

• Vinnie Mirchandani explains on Enterprise Irregulars how his new book The New Polymath has drawn on virtual communities in general and -for example- on SDN sources / SAP Mentors.
• 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.
• about time: Angelika Dammann becomes SAP’s first female board member. (english version here. nb: translated second part of title is misleading)
• fellow mentor John Appleby explains “why the iPad is the most important sales tool since the cellphone“.
• 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
• vendorprisey: RT @hrportal: SAP Records Management is now called “SAP NetWeaver Folders Management”: . http://bit.ly/cxy4c9 >more renaming games???????
• openczun Hint : just because SAP says some functionality is supported, doesn’t mean it works.
• schucci @enterprisegeeks did anyone notice that “innojagd” is really an anagram for “ninja god”…must be Craig’s nickname.
• qmacro Overheard: “I can’t code anymore. I’m going to have to do Architecture” (!)

This week in SAP

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.

• Redmonk on Software AG’s global approach, giving it to us straight; interview with Dr Peter Kuerpick.
• fellow SAP mentor Sandy Kemsley is not happy and lets rip on Enterprise Collaboration. A very noteworthy and apt insight.
• Talking Bay Area, Crossroads, Sapphire and Crossroads Cafe: Mark Finnern interview with Anne Petteroe
• Jon Reed and Andy Klee interview each other on ASUG-SAPPHIRE Orlando 2010, SAP training trends, SAP certification, and other conference takeaways…
• Thomas Wailgum on a new TV series: “ERP Undercover”. I’d really like “ERP Vice”, but that’s me.
• ex-SAP Steve Mann hits hard with his criticism re SAP’s presence on Twitter.
• For the second time now, SAP Inside Track London didn’t disappoint. See here an initial wrap-up by Dennis Howlett and Martin Gillet’s Flickrstream.

selections from Twitter, not necessarily from the last 7 days.

• PuruGovind: I have shifted most of my SAP-context tweeting to SAP talk, our inhouse microblogging tool.
• dahowlett: Resetting my #sdn password for the 3rd time in as many days…..grrr…..

This week in SAP

Decompressed and recovered after SAPPHIRE the Blogsphere and Twitterverse was back on track… I thought… but it was rather quiet.

• SAP begins tender offer for Sybase. The deal is starting to take shape.
  
• a few days older, but still good: Thomas Otter with some interesting compairsons between ERP sofwtare and buying a (virtual) piano in “What buying a piano taught me ab out enterprise sofwtare“

Tweet, tweet, tweet….

• rhirsch: ROFL – my daughter just saw @dahowlett avatar and said “Look, there is Santa Claus” – if only she knew the truth
• twailgum: RT @pgreenbe: My post on SAP and SAPPHIRE goes up on ZDNET.http://bit.ly/cEUebn
• dparnas: RT @hkisker: New #Forrester blog: ‘SapphireNow 2010 – The Quest for Innovation’ #SapphireNow http://bit.ly/bIWVnD
• ccmehil: bit.ly/innojagd Game is on for those up to the challenge in the SAP ecosystem #Cinch: http://www.cinchcast.com/ccmehil/61544
• timoelliott: In Europe waiting for your iPad? There’s the first app you should download! (#SAP #BusinessObjects Explorer for iPad):

This week in SAP

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.
• I can probably get away with mentioning Dennis Howlett a third time by pointing to his excellent blog on the Certification 5 experience with Bill McDermott. Goosebumps guaranteed!

and finally from the Twitterverse…

• 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
• rhirsch: RT @bitterer: Real real-time from SAP. Unreal. #sapphirenow >> now that is reality
• vendorprisey: just googling Virgin’s IT set up. Lots of Oracle, some SAP, some netsuite. #sapphirenow
• SAPProJournal: Must say this is the first time at an SAP conference that colonizing another planet had come up in the discussion. #SAPPHIRENOW
• njames: Ash #ash go away Go away and stay away I don’t care why I don’t care how I want to get to @sapphirenow
• dahowlett: All the smart people are in the lobby bar #sapohirenow (nb. couldn’t resist, Dennis!

This week in SAP

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”.

SAP/Sybase

• SAP News Room: SAP to acquire Sybase, Inc.
• Heise.de sees SAP pushing onto Oracle’s patch (english translation here)
• 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.

Other

• A good article by Panorama Consulting’s Lena Laakso on Overcoming ERP Project Fatigue.
• 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.
• Ann Rosenberg, SAP, announces the new Professional Level Certification for BPXers.
• SAP’s latest Sustainability Report went live.
• Craig Cmehil with a little more detail on Innojagd, SAP’s new innovation initiative
• Jon Reed with a great podcast on “SAP Soft Skills - Myth vs Reality”. Accompanied by the magnificent Guy Couillard.

and here’s the Twitterverse for you

• 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)

This week in SAP

The UK parliament is hung, my throat is sore and Sapphire Frankfurt is only a week away. Let’s see what got stuck in my dragnet of SAP News:

• ZDNet’s Dennis Howlett with a piece on SAP’s new initiative “Innojagd” (INNOvation + JAGD, german for “hunt”), which is lead by Craig Cmehil. I’m planning to have a chat with Craig about Innojagd in Frankfurt next week. In separate items in FT Deutschland (english translation) and Germany’s Computerwoche, co-CEO Snabe talks (english translation here) about a lower proportion of R&D costs on the revenue. This is due to SAP’s ongoing internal restructuring, which is expected to be completed by summer 2010. The coming  months will show whether Snabe’s statement will have an impact on Innojagd or not.
• SAP Mentor head Mark Finnern announces new SAP Mentors (incl 4 new Mentorettes!).
• SAP Mentor Thorsten Franz with a SDN blog post on tooling changes within the Composition Environment and their strategical impact.
• lining up the ducks: short Plattner video putting in-memory back on the agenda for Sapphire (as if we didn’t know that
• Cory Coley-Christakos talks about SAP Education: From Evolution to Revolution and talks amongst other things about “evolutionary” steps from the old classroom model to online presence. If this means that SAP will abolish the classical classroom model entirely then I’m not sure if that’s a move into the right direction.

and what had the Twitterverse to say for itself?

• qmacro: How many people in #ERP who talk about #SOA really know what it is?
• jspath55: SAP Go Live check refers to Note # 1347084, as in “The requested SAP Note is either in reworking or is released internally only”. #FAIL
• esjewett: @jspath55 Why would SAP refer to a note that it’s customers can access? Clearly you ask too much (nb. in reply to jspath55)
• vlvl: A customer here explainig how using “Process Runner” they can enable using excel as the frontend instead of SAP. Hmmm… #ISUG2010
• rhirsch: Like the fact that SAP is adding another “analyst” (@skemsley ) to @SAPMentors – another sign of the increasing importance of “openness”
• sappro: Plattner is going to talk about In mem databases again at Sapphire,> C’mon that has been being discussed for 2 years now, let’s move on
• blich: @vlvl @pixelbase @rhirsch @dahowlett with #innojagd #evilplans and all other cool stuff, #EcoHub grows impact. Not a competition.

This week in SAP

It’s been the week when SAP announced its quarterly (Q1) results, so let’s get straight down to the nitty gritty, the numbers and figures, the fact & fiction.

• SAP announced its Q1 2010 results (guess you saw that one coming!). Obviously there have been several views and opinions about this. JP Morgan upgraded the SAP share and was rather bullish, Informationweek is a little bit more to my liking, talking about Snabe’s  same-old, same-old SaaS “mantra” during the result call. Interestingly enough, the latter then link to Global CIO’s interview with McDermott, which hails McDermott as the one who gives SAP a new image and perspective. Germany’s Silicon.de sees troubles over low investments fade away as SAP reports double digit growth (in german) for english translation click here. Let’s round this off with 2 more distinctive insights: Helmut Guembel is cautiously hissing the recovery flag, saying it looks as if “customers are glad to get back to their old agendas”. Guembel also sets his sights and hopes towards Sapphire, where he expects a “new vision – one that is meaty”. ZDNet’s Dennis Howlett sees the growth and decline as a bit of a “mixed bag” and specifically points out the 18% decline in training revenue. Dennis is also in eager anticipation for Sapphire 2010.
• after all these figures something a little more light-hearted: CIO’s Thomas Wailgum with the “Top 10 Rejected Marketing Slogans” for Sun & Oracle.
• what a difference 11 weeks can make (can they?): Global CIO’s Bob Evans sees SAP “to have made significant progress” with its turnaround. Wow.
• Computerwoche writes “Bye Bye R/3″ in its article (english version here) about the shrinking number of R/3 installation base (19%). Interestingly, Computerwoche tried to establish if these remaining, predominantly SME based installs would be interested in 3rd party maintenance once an SAP Netweaver/ERP upgrade had gone live. However, since a large number of these SMEs are lead or closely-linked to larger concerns, there will most likely be a someone else to pick up the bill.
• The next big thing in enterprise software -according to Leo Apotheker on CIO.com- is inter-company process optimization. Is it just me or do we hear more from the ex-SAP CEO now that he is with SCM Vendor GT Nexus?
• Mark Finnern talks Rugby shirts in this interview with the leader of the SAP Mentor initiative on ERPExecutive.com

and nothing from the Twitterverse this week…

This week in SAP