day 1 at SAPPHIRE

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I’m currently at SAP’s annual customer conference SAPPHIRE in Frankfurt. SAP is so far pulling out a lot of stops to get back its mojo in terms of innovation and showing leadership within the business application space. Many of the mentors are onsite in Frankfurt and Orlando (where the other customer event is run in parallel) – a nice change from an otherwise rather “suitey” event.

First session on Monday was a roundtable with SAP’s Ingo Benckmann, Senior Director Solution Management In-Memory Computing. Ingo gave us some high-level insights into how In-Memory Database (IMDB) is executed. SAP very much believes that IMDB is the “right technology at the right time”. Customers have become used to direct, immediate system responses and IMDB very much reflects this trend.

When asked about ways how IMDB will be implemented, Benckmann describes a customer’s path to SAP delivered in-memory technology as a “side car approach”. This means IMDB is added to an existing landscape, run in tandem with any relational database and therefore less disruptive, more like an addition.

“Answers questions you didn’t know you had”
Ingo Benckmann talked about the power of immediate responses from BI queries and new, quicker insights into company data. This was also reflected by other panel comments this morning. Most examples focus on improvements for BI reporting and analysis, I’m hoping to hear more about the transactional data side of things in the near future. In addition, there are necessary changes in the tooling which will probably be discussed in more detail at SAP’s technical conference later this year.

Keynotes

SAP is trying to walk the talk and tried out a new approach to the way how Sapphire is run. This year’s conference is held in parallel in Orlando, FL and Frankfurt, Germany. Keynotes were presented in both locations and via real-time multicast, emphasising the on-demand, immediate and real-time message. Overall, both keynotes by Sir Richard Branson and former US Vice President Al Gore lived up to expectation, albeit a strange interview format with Branson.

Panel Discussion with Jim Hagemann Snabe

On Tuesday morning, a CIO panel discussing “customer demand in a changing business environment” was asked questions by SAP Mentors (note: I’m part of the SAP Mentor group) regarding outlook and commitment on Agile project methodologies. Wolfgang Gaertner, CIO of Deutsche Bank couldn’t see any reasons why agile methodologies shouldn’t be adopted where it makes sense and is safe. Co-CEO Jim Snabe emphasised once again SAP’s commitment to make Agile part of SAP’s lifeblood.

Another interesting question was asked by SAP Mentor Richard Hirsch with regards to the role of SIs and SAP Partners in an on-demand software model. Snabe’s view is that SAP’s job is to create and maintain a stable core platform with various business processes, leaving the differentiation to the partners. I can imagine that this would mean quite a game changer for SAP partners (and potentially a lot less project work).

During the same session Snabe also emphasised a “hybrid” model of on-premise and on-demand software for many years to come. According to Snabe, On-premise is going to become more “shrink-wrapped”, which was most likely a hint towards more Best Practices.

All in all a good start to Sapphire and SAP’s efforts to regain customer confidence. Two more days to come.

This Week in SAP

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60 hours to the start of Sapphire. With all the SAP/Sybase Acquisition news you’re obviously in for a treat. Ladies and Gentlemen, come closer and have a good look at a larder full of SAP news. You won’t be disappointed ! For your convenience, I’ve split the news into “SAP/Sybase” and “Other”.

SAP/Sybase

  • SAP News Room: SAP to acquire Sybase, Inc.
  • Heise.de sees SAP pushing onto Oracle’s patch (english translation here)
  • Deal Architect’s (Vinnie Mirchandani) first and later reaction. On the whole, he says that SAP probably had already enough on its plate, but senses a lot of buzz (similar to the Business Objects acquisition). He’ll encounter SAP’s statement of “Sybase is about customer choice” with a question about incorporation Zoho, Netsuite and Rimini at next week’s Sapphire press conference. Let’s see what they’re going to say.
  • Several blogs chimed in with what I see as the most important outcome from all this: clarity. I remember walking around the stalls at the last TechEd and speaking to the Skys and Sybases etc of this world. It was like a game of Mikado – everyone tried to stay in the game without making a hash of it and clinging on to what they’ve got. The Sybase acquisition “reduces options” in a good way (Forrester’s Stefan Ried). The blogs I found which emphasised this were: William Newman’s “View from the C-Level”, and John Appleby’s blog on SDN (another new SAP Mentor!).
  • CIO.com’s Thomas Wailgum thinks “SAP stays classy” and I do agree with him. Whilst others like Bob Warfield seem to think that SAP just wanted to make a big splash (“This deal is a classic example of a wounded elephant crashing through the jungle”…), I think it is clear that Sybase was a clearly thought through, carefully executed move.
  • analysts and pundits seemed to be quieter on the In-Memory-Ambitions that SAP links to the acquisition. Dennis Howlett gives his view (amongst other things) here, remaining slightly unconvinced, citing an example of a recent Deutsche Bank announcement.

Other

and here’s the Twitterverse for you

  • Vendorprisey: Early call on SAP licensing challenges. SAP product naming is confusing and frustrating.
  • chriskanaracus: Business ByDesign interface is more colorful than before, but still won’t be mistaken for a Wii game or anything
  • steverumsby: Stupid Java stack. Whoever in SAP thought this was a good idea? Please can everyone go back to coding in ABAP?
  • z_basis_adm: @steverumsby SAP on Java makes me laugh. Tons of useless logs. Really poor memory management. Apps that just die without gening errors. Fun! (in response to @steverumsby)

This Week in SAP

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The UK parliament is hung, my throat is sore and Sapphire Frankfurt is only a week away. Let’s see what got stuck in my dragnet of SAP News:

  • ZDNet’s Dennis Howlett with a piece on SAP’s new initiative “Innojagd” (INNOvation + JAGD, german for “hunt”), which is lead by Craig Cmehil. I’m planning to have a chat with Craig about Innojagd in Frankfurt next week. In separate items in FT Deutschland (english translation) and Germany’s Computerwoche, co-CEO Snabe talks (english translation here) about a lower proportion of R&D costs on the revenue. This is due to SAP’s ongoing internal restructuring, which is expected to be completed by summer 2010. The coming  months will show whether Snabe’s statement will have an impact on Innojagd or not.
  • SAP Mentor head Mark Finnern announces new SAP Mentors (incl 4 new Mentorettes!).
  • SAP Mentor Thorsten Franz with a SDN blog post on tooling changes within the Composition Environment and their strategical impact.
  • lining up the ducks: short Plattner video putting in-memory back on the agenda for Sapphire (as if we didn’t know that 😉
  • Cory Coley-Christakos talks about SAP Education: From Evolution to Revolution and talks amongst other things about “evolutionary” steps from the old classroom model to online presence. If this means that SAP will abolish the classical classroom model entirely then I’m not sure if that’s a move into the right direction.


and what had the Twitterverse to say for itself?

  • qmacro: How many people in #ERP who talk about #SOA really know what it is?
  • jspath55: SAP Go Live check refers to Note # 1347084, as in “The requested SAP Note is either in reworking or is released internally only”. #FAIL
  • esjewett: @jspath55 Why would SAP refer to a note that it’s customers can access? Clearly you ask too much 😉 (nb. in reply to jspath55)
  • vlvl: A customer here explainig how using “Process Runner” they can enable using excel as the frontend instead of SAP. Hmmm… #ISUG2010
  • rhirsch: Like the fact that SAP is adding another “analyst” (@skemsley ) to @SAPMentors – another sign of the increasing importance of “openness”
  • sappro: Plattner is going to talk about In mem databases again at Sapphire,> C’mon that has been being discussed for 2 years now, let’s move on
  • blich: @vlvl @pixelbase @rhirsch @dahowlett with #innojagd #evilplans and all other cool stuff, #EcoHub grows impact. Not a competition.

This Week in SAP

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It’s been the week when SAP announced its quarterly (Q1) results, so let’s get straight down to the nitty gritty, the numbers and figures, the fact & fiction.

  • SAP announced its Q1 2010 results (guess you saw that one coming!). Obviously there have been several views and opinions about this. JP Morgan upgraded the SAP share and was rather bullish, Informationweek is a little bit more to my liking, talking about Snabe’s  same-old, same-old SaaS “mantra” during the result call. Interestingly enough, the latter then link to Global CIO’s interview with McDermott, which hails McDermott as the one who gives SAP a new image and perspective. Germany’s Silicon.de sees troubles over low investments fade away as SAP reports double digit growth (in german) for english translation click here. Let’s round this off with 2 more distinctive insights: Helmut Guembel is cautiously hissing the recovery flag, saying it looks as if “customers are glad to get back to their old agendas”. Guembel also sets his sights and hopes towards Sapphire, where he expects a “new vision – one that is meaty”. ZDNet’s Dennis Howlett sees the growth and decline as a bit of a “mixed bag” and specifically points out the 18% decline in training revenue. Dennis is also in eager anticipation for Sapphire 2010.
  • after all these figures something a little more light-hearted: CIO’s Thomas Wailgum with the “Top 10 Rejected Marketing Slogans” for Sun & Oracle.
  • what a difference 11 weeks can make (can they?): Global CIO’s Bob Evans sees SAP “to have made significant progress” with its turnaround. Wow.
  • Computerwoche writes “Bye Bye R/3” in its article (english version here) about the shrinking number of R/3 installation base (19%). Interestingly, Computerwoche tried to establish if these remaining, predominantly SME based installs would be interested in 3rd party maintenance once an SAP Netweaver/ERP upgrade had gone live. However, since a large number of these SMEs are lead or closely-linked to larger concerns, there will most likely be a someone else to pick up the bill.
  • The next big thing in enterprise software –according to Leo Apotheker on CIO.com- is inter-company process optimization. Is it just me or do we hear more from the ex-SAP CEO now that he is with SCM Vendor GT Nexus?
  • Mark Finnern talks Rugby shirts in this interview with the leader of the SAP Mentor initiative on ERPExecutive.com

and nothing from the Twitterverse this week…

This Week in SAP

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Well, in many respects its been an interesting week for me (more about it further down), but it was also the week when SAP told the world that they would acquire Technidata. Plenty to talk about, so lets get stuck into this week’s “SAP Souffle”:

  • SAP announced that they’re going to buy German Partner Technidata, a specialist in Product Safety, Health and Environment Solutions. I guess Greenmonk can really claim they were on the money when back in March 2008 it reckoned that “SAP should really buy Technidata so that it can move forward more quickly in this space” (nb carbon accounting solutions). James Governor also saw something like this coming in 2007.
  • Vijay Vijayasankar once again was on fire this week when he posted his great blog on “South beach diet didn’t work for me and neither did Agile development” (so much for a modest title). Great post with some great comments. I tend to agree with Vijay to some degree. To me, Agile is a little bit of “old wine in new bottles”, but old wines can taste good, too.
  • I liked Thomas Wailgum’s “why is the CFO still boss of IT?” – this still is far too common and his statistics prove it.
  • as mentioned above, this week 5 SAP Mentors (Dennis Howlett, Jon Reed, Leonardo de Araujo, Martin Gilett and myself) published a White Paper on SDN with regards to the current state of SAP Certification (“The Certification 5 Report“). The response couldn’t have been more resounding. Read Dennis SDN post here, ZDNet’s Larry Dignan comments in his blog, Pixelbase had a (pimping) write-up, Michael Douane had a pop (“SAP Certification Ruckus”) – and let not forget the 33 comments (so far) on SDN!
  • Jon Reed’s podcast with Eric Brown on ByDesign is a good one. Make sure it’s coming to an iPod near you soon!
  • good old SAPMeSideways is back with the “same old, same old“
  • great interview on German TV with SAP co-founder Dietmar Hopp (link here – but make sure you skip to chapter 2. Chapter 1 is with D. Hasselhoff!)

take it away, Twitter!

Hommage to the Certification 5

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“Can we meet again next week same time? How does that suit everybody else?”

A simple question, however finding the answer is a little bit more tricky, because the meeting participants live in 5 different countries, 4 different time zones and on 2 continents. Those involved are: SAP Mentors Dennis Howlett, Jon Reed, Leonardo de Araujo, Martin Gillet and myself, Michael Koch. Meeting venue is the world wide web, Skype conference calls to be precise.

Quality isn't Job One - Being totally frickin' amazing is Job OneSo what have we been up to then?

Over the last 9 months we’ve been fighting time zones, meeting calendars and busy social diaries for one thing: SAP Certification, well, collaborating to manifest our view on it, make a critical statement and suggest what can be improved. If that’s not true passion for SAP then I don’t know what is.

We’ve created a SAP White Paper document that’s evolved over time, had several reviews and feedback (including SAP’s).

So why should you pay attention to our White Paper? Because I think it is an important stake that is being firmly placed in the ground by a group of five committed individuals. Moreover, we approach “SAP Certification Land” from different angles. There is Dennis Howlett, an experienced industry blogger and consultant on social computing projects. Jon Reed blogs, podcasts and tweets about all things SAP and is an expert on skills and market trends. Leonardo de Araujo weighs in as a SAP Logistics Functional and Technical Consultant with 12+ years experience. Martin Gillet brings the same expertise to the table for all things HCM and in addition runs HR training courses for SAP. Last but not least there is me, with deep technical and functional SAP experience across a range of modules and areas.

Our initial motives to work together as the “Certification 5” had been slightly different. Which is no surprise, because our approach and our exposure to SAP Certification was diverse. To me, one of the main achievements from our collaboration so far is that we managed to create a document that reflects this diversity, yet still shows that we’re all aligned in the desire to make SAP Certification better. The White Paper goes into a lot of details, but we also summarised our thoughts into Problems and Recommended Action Items in Dennis’ SDN blog post.

The result can now be viewed, downloaded and commented on SDN. We’re really keen to receive input and feedback from the community on our paper. Go to SDN and let us know what you think!