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!)