Tag Archives: This week in SAP

This Week in SAP (#7)

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After weeks full of SAP quarterly results announcements and the BS7 launch the last seven days were slow. So here are my SAP-related highlights of last week:

  • Jon Reed’s latest contribution on services and skills required for SAP Business Suite 7.
  • Michael Krigsman blogs on ZDNet about last weeks SAP event in NY, during which a blogger interview with Roche CIO Jennifer Allerton was held. A key point for me is Allerton’s view on system integrators and their (according to her) need to reinvent themselves. “The old Accenture model, where you trained [inexperienced] consultants for many months on your dollar, just doesn’t work anymore. The hardest thing is to get the consultants out at the end of the project, because they try and hang around as much as possible. We do use external consultants very successfully, because you can’t have all the skills in-house.“
  • Eric Imberling of Panorama Consulting Group with a brief and insightful report on how ERP and CRM deployments can help organisations to weather the economic storm.

This week’s SAP Top picks from the Titterverse:

  • @jamesfarar: “Just done w Lunch gig w Prince Charles at Clarence House. He says: ‘SAP? What is that? I can’t keep up with the acronyms’. Hmmmm”
  • @leeprovoost: @chiprodgers how is SAP going to deal with the fact that lots of companies have now “no travel” policies for cost cutting?

This Week in SAP (#6)

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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.

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!!”

This Week In SAP (#5)

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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

This week in SAP (#4)

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

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).

This Week in SAP (#3)

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Interesting SAP related news links from the last 7 days:

  • SAP’s worker’s council wants job guarantee (Achtung, German! – english translation here, albeit Leo Apotheker translated as “pharmacist”). via, @rwang0. Isn’t the worker’s council trying to square the circle here?
  • “Never.” SAP US boss Bill McDermott interview predicts a SaaS disillusionment. A fairly misjudged and badly interpreted interview, or, as @jonerp put it: “SaaS true believers portraying SAP as legacydinosaur“.
  • SAP and SaaS: SeekingAlpha’s Jeffrey Kaplan sees SAP in denial. I thought this article lacks real insight into what products such as BBD deliver. Also, what’s wrong with being cautious about ERP in the cloud? For instance, the idea of SAP SaaS snap-on’s to work toegther with SAP ERP is a good one, as it could ease customers into SaaS.
  • this week also saw the go-live of the Enterprise Geeks website with interesting contributions from Craig Cmehil, Dan McWeeney, Ed Hermann, Rich Heilman and Thomas Jung. I’ve certainly subscribed to their feed.
  • This doesn’t come as a big surprise, as SAP customers had to continue facing the music: a survey by Panaya Inc showed that 75% of all SAP upgrade projects are still going ahead as planned, some with lower budgets. Main driver appears to be support cost avoidance.
  • SAP confirms it has won UN implementation project. Might just be a drop in the ocean financially, but bums on seats is always good PR.

This week’s Twitter Picks:

  • @jonerp: As of January 1, 2009, Business Objects is no longer “Business Objects, an SAP Company.” It is now: “SAP Business Objects.” Noted. 🙂
  • @dahowlett: “When SAP asked me how I felt about eSOA last year, I retorted something along the lines that I’d rather have an anal probe by Rosa Klebb“
  • RajeevTrikha: “India’s outsourcing revenue is $50B and Satyam’s take was $2B. But definitely the impact on India’s reputation seems to be bigger than 4%.”
  • @rooreynolds: “Facebook is about people you used to know; Twitter is about people you’d like to know better”

This week in SAP (#2)

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This week’s top news/blog posts:

SAP Twitter Picks:

  • @scobleizer: “(…) Enterprise 2.0 is a new range of services that build social collaboration in from the start. SAP? No. socialtext? Yes.”
  • @ITSinsider: “ironically, SAP “gets” e20 better than most, as evidenced by its large communities. just hasn’t incorporated social into its sw.”
  • @jonerp: “While SAP is asking for a jury trial, still expect settlement. SAP and Oracle in high stakes card game, Oracle with better hand this time.” (on Oracle-SAP lawsuit)
  • @erickimberling: “Downward trends in ERP sales require software vendors to prove the measurable value of their solutions.”
  • @MyCustomer: “Could SAP cause a rift in its customer base by exempting Germany and Austria from it’s pricier support programme?”
  • @thomas_jung: “(…) SE16N (despite the N) was created by FI and not Basis – so not intended as a replacement for SE16” (on a question regarding SAP’s data query transaction SE16)
  • @yojibee: “(…) but not that I would want to give SAP my open source code to maintain” (with regards to Leo Apotheker’s  open source statements during the Charlie Rose interview)
  • @vchalana: “heard that Satyam is one of the biggest SAP consulting shops in India. India SAP job boards are flooded with resumes of Satyam employees.”