It’s spring and as we all know it’s the time when SAP rises. Let’s see…

• According to Forrester there is an uncertain future for SAP’s Netweaver
• Dennis Howlett hits home many birds in one go with his post about SAP’s wasted passion. “What they’re all missing is a discussion around how SAP harnesses the passion of the Caroline’s of this world. Work on that and things could change dramatically.“
• The Economist with a great piece on IT leaders. We think the Jobs/Schmidt spat is new, but a look into corporate history reveals that it’s always been like that. It’s all egos and pissing contests.
• Rimini Street strikes back – and sues Oracle
• Sapience writes about the determination of SAP’s Business By Design (BBD)
• Thomas Otter on why “Usability doesn’t mean UI”. I like it how Thomas is on the same page with developers and analysts when it comes to what REALLY matters in business application development (and why it shouldn’t be more like Facebook).

Tweet, tweet

• tbroek: Is SAP going the same way as Philips (video 2000) a decade ago? Great products and solutions but not able to sell them?
• yojibee: RT @Tech_Women: New blog post: The New Face of Geek Chic  by @ITSinsider#ALD10 << featuring me <blush>

here is my selection of favourite SAP spehere blogs over the last few days:

• Enterprise Irregular Phil Wainewright with some thoughts on Saas, Cloud and impact on SAP Partners
• according to the new SAP co-CEOs it’s now “pedal to the metal”
• Thomas Wailgum sees the “Techies back in charge” at SAP
• Mentor Trio Jon Reed, Stephen Johannes and Vijay Vijayasankar talk about “The state of SAP CRM”
• the VAR guy compared SAP and Oracle in terms of social media activity. Doesn’t quite capture the SAP side in the right light, I thought.
• Jon Reed with another good one on “

What’s the story, Twitterverse glory?

• dbmoore: RT @pixelbase: NYT “SAP says it is now pedal to the metal”  <<like Toyota? 😉
• steverumsby: 12sprints has been renamed to SAP StreamWorks. #saptt #sapteched
• esjewett: I’m becoming pretty convinced that SAP marketing around in-memory is believed internally and is going to result in bad strategic decisions.

Last week, in a SAP land just a mouse click away from you…

• Mark Yolton writes about SDN passing the 2 (!) milltion member mark. Congratulations, guys!
• It doesn’t come as a surprise that at the ageing and cast-aside CeBIT 2010 Salesforce.com and Adobe representatives spoke about the “decade when enterprise software died”. The argument is not new and was also reflected in recent posts by -amongst others- Marc (End Of Software) Benioff, Vinnie Mirchandani and SAP’s Charles Zedlewski. Whilst I appreciate the long overdue look towards consumer software, I tend to agree with some of Zedlewski’s arguments. I also think that changing enterprise software and IT just for hipness sake -which is what a some of this sounds like- would be a fallacy,
• “RightNow” making a bold stand with revamped services model for its SaaS CRM suite. An attempt to push envelope on enterprise value. Frank Scavo comments: “The large vendors will look at this, see that RightNow is a relatively small company, dismiss this as a sideshow and carry on as though nothing has happened. At least in public.”
• ZDNet’s Paul Greenberg thinks that SAP has got “The Message back on Target” on Sustainability.
• By a similar token, SAP’s co-CEO Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe released an open letter, trying to bring the customers back on target.
• excellent post by Gartner’s Thomas Otter on “Excel Hell“

and Twitter strikes back…

• Z_BASIS_ADM: Working through some silliness that is SAP on windows. Kind of like putting the Porsche logo on a Volkswagon and thinking it will be fast.
• vendorprisey: Was very refreshing to hear a SAP board presentation that didn’t make any anti-oracle digs. #sapcebit
• hkisker: McDermott @ #SAP CeBIT: We will make SAP a lean co & become double digit growth again (expect +4-8% SW rev in 2010). #sapcebit
• finnern: @c821311 – Tony that stopped my breath for a second. R/2 ABAP Quick reference guide. Sweet.