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).

scratches on the Alloys?

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After the re-branding of “Atlantic” into “Alloy” we have now been given a launch date (March 2009). So what can Alloy bring to IT departments, developers and -most importantly- to Notes/SAP users?

First of all it’s going to create some work for IT departments on the Notes side, as a minimum of Notes 8.02 server side is required (info as of TechEd 08). Especially SAP/Notes experienced IT departments with a large homegrown Notes app suite won’t be too happy about this, as there is a lot of testing effort for mission critical Notes applications.

In addition, development teams that have Notes development expertise might not migrate older Notes apps into Alloy, as there is probably not enough business benefit. The holiday and approval apps have probably already been built using pre-Alloy technology, SAP integration might have been achieved using Lotus Notes Connector. However development managers will be all ears when it comes to new developments, integrating new Notes/SAP workflows in those areas where business benefits can be discovered. Alan Rickaysen’s blog on SDN indicates that Alloy is primarily aimed at HR implementations, but nothing holds developers back to use Alloy to integrate CRM workflows, for example. As an aside, Rickaysen also clarifies what Alloy can do:

This product is not a mashup – it’s an alloy

Which is a more apt description, compared to claims that Alloy is an enterprise mashup.

Another benefit is that Alloy users tend to find their information in one space (Notes) rather than having to swap between Email, SAP Client and web browser all the time. However, my own experience with Notes is that integration of non-Lotus software is not always as good as it could be. Everyone who has tried to view MS Office documents in (older versions of) Notes might know what I am talking about. In terms of developer skillsets, some companies might also find challenges here, as very often Notes and SAP development is done in separate teams.

On the whole, I do believe that a lot of SAP/Notes shops will find a fair amount of milage in Alloy, especially the ease of converting SAP Workflows. Therefore it can enable users to collaborate even better when using Alloy. However, migrating existing Notes workflows will be harder and thus less beneficial to migrate. Whether a pre-installed selection of leave and other approval apps is enough to entice customers to ditch their homegrown applications in favour of Alloy remains to be seen. And if customers are partial to Microsoft products then there’s also the Duet offering.

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”

a future for SAP in hardware ?

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Hardly anyone in the news and blogsphere commented on Apotheker’s outlook statement at the end of the Rose interview last week (exept Dennis Byron from ITBusinessedge.com). Maybe that’s because it’s too far fetched a statement or maybe because 10 years from now is an eternity in IT business terms. Nevertheless I find his thoughts worthwhile exploring.

Rose: “What business might you be in in 10 years time that you’re not in now?”

Apotheker: [looks surprised] “That’s a good question! Maybe we could even be in hardware. It depends.”

Rose: “Really?”

Apotheker: “Yeah, it really depends. Not making them, but shipping complete appliances (that’s another term for you).”….

Rose: “… Routers?…” [laughs]

Apotheker: “…Yeah, if you can make them intelligent with software, why not?”

One thing that really surprised me about Apotheker’s answer is that he did not opt for the obvious future scenarios, namely cloud computing, social media and enterprise 2.0. It could have been so easy! Instead, the first thought that springs to his mind appears to be along the lines of a vertical integration of commodities and services before and after the deployment of SAP software.

A very interesting idea, I find, as it would put SAP closer to a model that has been one of the main reasons for Apple’s success within the computing and entertainment market for years now – having control over the hardware and software together. Apotheker did emphasise that he can’t envisage Walldorf to churn out hardware themselves, agreed, but if SAP had more control over the hardware that their software runs on, their end product will be a faster, more stable and reliable. This might even be a neat solution for on-premise versions of a BBD release, who knows? The funny bit: After big mainframe (IBM, Digital, Wang, etc ) and later on office solutions (for example AS400) in the 70s and 80s IT would once again have come complete circle again. In those days software and hardware were also both wielded under the same roof, for different reasons, but it’s a similarity nonetheless.

But let’s keep it in perspective: Even if Apotheker’s ideas have no meaning whatsoever, at least they prove that he is willing to think out of the box.