What happened in SAP-Land during the last 7 days ?

• SAP has cancelled this year’s SAPPHIRE EMEA event but instead enlarges its World Tour event, claiming it is responding to customer requests. The US part of SAPPHIRE will still go ahead though.
• Even if there is nothing else you’ll do on February 12th 2009, make Craig Cmehil’s 24h Friday Morning Report Marathon the only thing. During this event he aims to raise money for Doctors Without Borders.
• Dennis Howlett posted a very interesting SDN blog on the need for certification as a way to improve the quality of SAP implementations. As mentioned in my comment, I agree with his aim in principle, but disagree on the comparison between accountancy and IT certifications. Update: A LOT more comments have been added to this fountain of criticism, ideas and suggestions with regards to certifications. Well worth a read!
• Henning Kagermann to step down as SAP CEO on Jan 28th, earlier as expected. (Achtung, German! no translation yet).
• SAP & IBM’s joint project codename “Alloy” (previously named “Atlantic”), ships in March 2009. The Yahoo Finance bulletin didn’t pick up on the rename. Here is the official info on the IBM site.
• SAP helps German Federal Department of Emplyment to get future-ready. More good SAP news just in time for the analyst meeting on Jan 28th. Unfortunately no mention of the size of the order or the price tag. Interestingly, the “Implementation of the software began in early October 2008. “. Before the tendering process had ended? Maybe for a protoype ?
• SAP’s stock performs better, trading volumes were up and early analyst invites sent out seems to indicate no profit warning will be issued during their meeting on Jan 28th. (thanks @choirshark and @jonerp)
• SAP pays Sun to keep old older versions of Java up-to-date. I find it slightly misleading to call it “Netweaver Middleware”, but there you go. The long-term future of the Java part of Netweaver remains interesting.
• Blag’s (aka Alvaro Tejada) excellent “tale of an SAP addict…”. Wonderful stuff.

This week’s Twitter Picks:

• @vendorprisey: “(programming) languages are like characters in soap operas. You think they were killed in a car crash but then it was all just a dream.”
• @jonerp: “One major point of SAP PKOM keynotes that struck me: not a time to “weather the storm,” but to innovate. In my words: innovate to survive.“
• @leeprovoost: “Is IBM-SAP’s Alloy what Microsoft-SAP’s Duet should have been?”
• @oliver: “SAP ERP and Lotus Notes – two of the most beautiful UIs finally join forces to show the world how it’s done.”
• @yojibee: “The SDN search sometimes drives me nuts” (commenting on search facility on SAP Developer Network site).
• @ccmehil: “only sometimes – so it is improving – thanks for the feedback 😉” (Craig’s reply to the SDN search tool tweet).