Welcome to a TWIS Valentines edition. This week’s highlight was probably the SAP Innovation Center announcement, but let’s look at all of my pickings:

• SAP to built Innovation Center in Potsdam (or a “Silicon Sanssousci”, linked to the summer palace of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, which is also in Potsdam). I think SAP really needs more superlatives for ambitions such as this. As Sanssouci served Frederick as a place to relax from all the pomp and circumstance, I assume the Innovation Center is going to do nothing less.
• great post by James Governor of Redmonk on Couscous, Trifles, Software and Choice.
• Jon Reed grabbed ASUGNews.com’s co-CEO Duo Courtney Bjorlin and Thomas Wailgum for a podcast interview. The only question is: who is Jim and who is Bill?
• Thorsten Franz and his thoughts on WebDynpro ABAP’s old and wrinkly brother, ABAP Dynpro. I agree with Thorsten that we should have more direction (and innovation?) from SAP on this UI technology. It’s old, yes, but still the one that is most used.
• Xcode, SOAP and iPhone – Gerwin de Groot shows us how it’s done.
• German, Austrian and Swiss SAP Customers ignore Cloud and Mobile, a confidence gain for SAP products and talk of  “de-emotionalised support issues” at Silicon.de (english version).
• and finally my own favourite of the week comes from SAP’s Juergen Schmerder, who does a very good job at cleansing a muddy “River” that has been flowing recently.

You tweetin’ at me?

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Welcome to my personal, weekly SAP news summary.

• Eric Kimberling gets a mention in Silicon.de’s report on new price models for implementations (english version here).
• Diageo’s CIO says “Processes are more important than a single ERP“. Consolidation days appear to be over at the FMCG giant.
• “No Employment Freeze at SAP”, says the Walldorf HR top manager Angelika Dammann (english version here).
• CIO’s Chris Kanaracus on SAP ByDesign FP2.6 which delivers SDK (software development kit) goodness. Important point made by Constellation’s Ray Wang: “The most important thing right now for any software company is making sure they have a strong developer ecosystem,”

Move over and let the Twitterverse have a go:

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Back in the “Monday TWIS Saddle” again, here’s my purely personal and selfish look back on the last week in SAP Land:

• the latest Enterprise Geeks podcast covering Achievement Driven Development and Model Driven Development
• Global CIO’s Bob Evans with a piece on speed and disruption. I particularly like the introductory story by Vishal Sikka.
• Matthias Steiner and his colleagues at SAP give us the Missing Manuals for Netweaver CE. Surely Composition Environment has always been intuitive enough so developers could dismiss the lack of documentation 😉
• ASUG’s Thomas Wailgum with his thoughts on traction for SAP ByDesign, comparing it to early hopes and past fears for Walldorf’s SaaS ERP spring-chicken.
• after short life, SAP’s Innovation Weekend gets renamed into SAP InnoJam, coming to a TechEd Applause-o-meter near you soon.
• SAP Mentors from Down Under grab the microphone and deliver podcasting goodness!
• Richard Hirsch with an interesting overview of Gateway and River on SDN: “Aggregation patterns in OnDemand Edge Platforms“
• Dennis Howlett with his criticism on Richard Hirsch’s other interesting blog “Guerilla Tactics for SAP’s OnDemand ‘Go To Market’ Strategy” -I made my view clear in the comments of Dennis’ post. Got a bit heated that one…

It’s a long way to Twitterary (OK, I’ll take my hat…)

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Another out-of-sync edition of TWIS before I return to my usual Monday schedule next week. Looks like I’ve timed it well to come out just after SAP’s Q4 2010 earnings report. Sorry, I meant to say “SAP, the double-digit growth company”.

As videos or images seem to become a kind-of permanent TWIS feature, let me give you my favourite video of last week.

“We will even mop your executive brows”.

OK, let’s get cracking.

• I’ve mentioned the Q4 earnings report already, so here’s the link to the official SAP documentation. As was to be expected, the Co-CEOs emphasised the continued strong performance from an operational perspective. Let’s bring in some other voices at this point: Gartner’s Thomas Otter praises the field org and Walldorf’s bold product strategy. As Michael Kroker of german Wirtschaftswoche (english here) describes, SAP is keen to “tick off” the TomorrowNow dispute, albeit potentially further legal steps, and move on. Another interesting fact that I would like to add is that co-CEO Snabe confidently announced that SAP reckons it will have 1000 Business ByDesign (BYD) customers by the end of 2011. There was also a poor post from silicon.de on the results, which uses Switzerland as an example and criticises SAP’s lack of strategy, which I can’t quite follow.
• Dennis Howlett sees a fresh approach for SAP customers in ASUGnews’s appointment of Courtney Bjorlin and Thomas Wailgum.
• Sexiness and Workflow don’t match, you think? Jon Reed and Thorsten Franz will prove you wrong.
• Jim Spath blogs from the ASUG’s Annual Volunteer Meeting in Chicago.
• Interesting post by Panorama Consulting on system customisations, which seems to argue against a vendor-driven trend to less bespoke solutions and more best-practice.
• and finally a very much stockmarket-led analysis on SAP’s current situation by Forbes.com

stand on the scene like a Tweet machine

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