SAP plans to sell hosting business to BT

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Michael Koch

According to Wirtschaftswoche, a weekly German business magazine, SAP plans to sell its hosting business SAP Hosting to British Telecom. SAP has not commented on this so far, but a potential sale of its hosting business might indicate problems in the delivery of SAP’s “Business byDesign” package, which the second part of the article further explains.

extension of certification exams – SAP listens

Posted on October 23, 2008 by Michael Koch

This morning I found an email in my inbox from SAP UK Education telling me about an “extension of certification offer plus 10% discount on courses”. Obviously a decision has been made to offer the certification date range until the end of 2008 for TechEd Berlin 2008 attendees, which exactly what I proposed in my TechEd Berlin roundup from last week.

No matter what the motive for this was – I think it is great news for potential participants of certification exams in the UK.

Ask the Execs

Posted on September 2, 2008 by Michael Koch

The differences between the attendance fees for SAP TechEd has been a bee in my bonnet ever since I went to my first TechEd in Vienna 3 years ago. This year, according to my calculations, attendees for Berlin have to pay a whopping 1274 USD more than their Las Vegas counterparts (2595 USD vs 3869 USD).

Let’s not make any mistakes here: SAP TechEd is a well-run, worthwhile and great event for everyone in the SAP arena. There is no doubt about it.

When I saw the opening of the “Ask the SAP Execs” competition, in which carefully selected video questions are played to SAP Executives during their keynote, I just couldn’t resist.

Have a look at my entry for yourselves…

Some years ago I asked Shai Agassi the same question and he told me that this would be something SAP “has to look into”.

Starship Enterprisey reloaded

Posted on July 16, 2008 by Michael Koch

Craig’s revived the Enterprisey Mediacast and feed so I reflected the changes on here. Some time ago I wrote about the I Love ABAP episode which I can only highly recommend to you. Craig keeps on churning out this stuff, I don’t know how he does it.

Berlin here I come !

Posted on July 16, 2008 by Michael Koch

ICC Berlin I am really looking forward to be at this year’s SAP TechEd in Berlin. Come this October it’s been 3 years since my last visit to SAP’s annual conference on technical education and things have certainly moved on in “SAP Land”. It’s also been over 4 years since my last visit to “my” capital city.

At TechEd 2005 in Vienna I focussed on learning more about XI (now renamed to PI), Consuming Web Services and a little bit of WD4A (WebDynpro ABAP). As far as this year’s session offerings are concerned I actually haven’t made up my mind just yet, but I’ll probably go for a mix of advanced ABAP and beginner’s Composition. I’ll also be able to access Virtual SAP TechEd for the first time – a good opportunity for me to see all those sessions missed. I’ve been very critical about Virtual TechEd in the past, but things move on – simple as that. I expect a lot of valuable information: I remember sitting on the plane back from Vienna in 2005 with my head buzzing. This time round it will probably be worse.

Social networking has changed the way how the SAP community communicates and a lot of the key people will be joining the party in Berlin. So most of all I am excited about putting faces to names. For example the ESME (Enterprise Social Messaging Experiment) project is going to be part of the Demo Jam. Whenever time allows I try to keep up to speed with what’s happening there and seeing it demoed in Berlin will surely be a treat. They’ve achieved so far in such short space of time… I wonder what it will look like in October.