What was hot this week in the SAP arena?

• on Thursday and Friday I found some more details on Business Suite 7 launch by Jon Reed and Ray Wang. Although I have to damit that I have not digested all of them. Jon Reed’s upcoming post on what impact BS7 will have on skills is going to be an interesting one.
• during Thursday posts emerged on Twitter that SAP has started to enforce new clauses whereby customers may not be allowed to strike third-party maintenance deals. Frank Scavo and Dennis Howlett stepped in quickly with further (possible) explanations and analysis for this. This could be SAP’s reaction to the fact that the time for “mega software-deals” is over and even more focus needs to be given to service revenue streams.
• Wednesday morning SAP launched Business Suite 7 in New York. Despite expectations that BS7 would be more SaaS and cloud focused, SAP seemed to get fairly cautious on it, stating that research is still done in this area. SAP intends BS7 to be more about shorter implementation cycles and thus higher ROI. Or quoting Apotheker: “innovation without scary upgrades and sleepless nights. We’re done with that,” – quite a statement ! (also follow ZDNET’s Larry Dignan here). Frank Scavo’s summary is also a worthwhile read. On the whole BS7 debate, I particularly liked Dennis Howlett’s (as always) real-world contribution. There is no running away from the nitty-gritty of system implementation and testing – at least not in the short to medium term – no matter how sophisticated your methods are. Even if SAP can really deliver value with BS7, by the time we have got the facts and ROI results the downturn might already be well over.

• Uwe Fetzer releases a WDA Twitter client on SDN. Excellent stuff.

my Twitter picks:

• @rwang0: “Hearing from SAP customers that there are new clauses that will force customers to commit to no Third Party Maintenance.“
• @boris: “Twitter is like a sauna: we are all in the same space, we show everything, but are not really looking at each other.”
• @dan_mcweeney: “Enterprise software robustness cannot be compared to these toys you play with.” Leo, referencing iPhones and Clouds.”
• @dan_mcweeney: “Had banks had IS systems like these SAP customers, we might not be where we are today.” > Leo (Apotheker) during opening remark of BS7 launch in New York
• @dahowlett: “65% of all chocolate produced in the world use SAP tech” .. gimme a Cadbury’s bar – quick!!”

All the best and interesting from the last 7 days on planet SAP:

• Good Joshua Greenbaum piece on Kagermann’s curtain as co-CEO and SAP’s staff cutbacks. In terms of the way how it was handled, you would almost think SAP came out of the Q4 results fairly well (open letter to employees and Kagermann not passing the poisoned chalice to Apotheker), but…
• …then the “Das Kapital” column of FTD.de  comes along with a more sober and balanced view (Achtung, German! English translation here) on what they call a PR “signal for the moneymarkets”.
• This week we were all waiting for SAP’s Q4 results: find some news picks here, here and here. Altogether nothing unexpected. SAP announced the job cuts that had been predicted, albeit not revealing which areas of the business will be affected, but likely most of it could be fluctuations (over what time?).
• post SAP results thoughts: Dennis Howlett draws an interesting comparison between the car industry and a (possibly) saturated top-end ERP market.
• Jon Reed with a good, digestible summary of SAP’s PKOM (Partner Kick-Off Meeting) event last week. Also touches on the certification debate and the upcoming Business Suite 7.0.
• EbF conects iPhone with Lotus Notes and SAP solutions with their Ebf.connector. Looks like an additional proprietary middleware server is required through which the iPhone pulls the data. Download available from iTunes App Store in about 2 weeks.

This week’s Twitter Picks:

• @SAPMentors Blogged about SAP Mentor Highlights 2008 http://is.gd/hMSD
• @jonerp: “Chase skills over $, challenge over comfort zone, and you’ll have adventures in excellence.”
• @fkoehn: “a fool with a tool is still a fool”
• @monkchips: the activity, or lack of it, on SAP ecohub (nothing to do with sustainability) is disappointing. @dahowlett will surely “eviscerate” it

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).