This Week in SAP

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I’m trying to gradually gnaw my way back into a Monday rhythm, so a Thursday edition this week, Wednesday the week after and then back in Monday mode. That’s the plan.

Thanks to @monkchips, I’ve come across this set of brilliant IBM marketing slides from 35 years ago. One example is here (it actually looks very much like Pixelbase office):

Let have a look at my picks, shall we?

Twitter snippets…

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[blackbirdpie id=”27056205725704192″] “The power of social media…”

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SAP is looking for new Mentors, wants more

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March 2011 will mark my second anniversary as SAP Mentor. Being a member of this group has brought me even closer to the leading people in the industry. I have presented, discussed, worked, collaborated and even celebrated with some of the best minds in “SAP Land”.

STOP, REWIND, PLAY. Did you notice something? I had to say “some of the best minds” in the previous paragraph, because the truth is, there are still plenty of people out there who are not a SAP Mentor yet. If you know of such a person, then using Mark Finnern’s form. Mark Finnern is the Chief Community Evangelist for SAP and the mastermind behind the unique SAP Mentor programme. He has also created a little video, asking for new nominations:

Regular readers on here might not be too surprised when I proclaim that I very much value the fact that Mentors have “Balls”. So this is a main criteria for me.

When I was offered membership back in 2009 my main concern was that it might be more difficult to be critical about SAP and its products, that it could even impact my independence. I couldn’t have been more wrong. More than any other corporation in the industry SAP wants the kickback, the qualified and constructive criticism from the Mentors. If you know someone who falls into the “balls” category then regard it as your duty to nominate her/him. 🙂

This Week in SAP

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Hello everyone and welcome to the first edition of TWIS in 2011. This week’s edition is a bit of a catch-up going all the way back to early December so excuse some posts and tweets that are older than a week (they’re still worthwhile mentioning here, you know!). Buckle up, here we go…

  • after 14 years this is Thomas Wailgum’s last post for CIO.com, talking about Forrester’s bold outlook for Business IT in 2020. “The IT status quo will collapse (…)”. Fair enough, but surely we’ll still have Microsoft Sharepoint (aka “The Document Nirvana”). I’d like to wish Thomas all the best for his next career step and would also like to thank him for all his great posts. TWIS won’t be the same without his CIO.com musings.
  • SAP is buying security software and other assets from its swiss partner SECUDE. The deal encompasses SECUDE’s Secure Sign On and Enterprise Signle Sign On solutions, which will be rolled out to all customers free of charge later this year in a basic version. CIO’s Chris Kanaracus writes that SAP is trying to introduce its own offerings in a market that is also inhabited by Oracle. While I think it’s a good move in terms of product offering and (external) innovation, the bigger question obviously is how secure offerings have been thus far.
  • in another IP-related move, SAP and Intellectual Ventures reach an agreement to give the Walldorf concern access to more than 30,000 intellectual property assets.
  • wonderful post by Vinnie Mirchandani on “Commercialization” in the coming decade. I really like the last two paragraphs about going back to IT’s roots.
  • SAP’s Matthias Steiner writes about the first edition of the “SAP Mentors Quarterly” magazine, a great new addition to the vast output SAP Mentor’s produce.
  • Short and sharp. James Governor on what you should do in 2011: “Work On Stuff That Matters. Ignore Everybody. Get Excited and Make Things.“
  • A year would not end properly without Blag’s annual SDN blog picks. So here’s his list for 2010.
  • Silicon.de with an interesting outlook on the (german) SAP Freelance market in 2011. (english version here)
  • and: let’s start 2011 with another takeover post. This time from Seeking Alpha.

Horses may have bolted on some of those tweets. I’ll post them anyway.

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SAP ByDesign SDK – A River runs through it

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As 2010 is drawing to a close it’s probably a good point in time to take stock on SAP’s Business ByDesign SDK. For those who are not privy to the topic: SAP’s cloud-based ERP offering for the small and medium sized enterprise called “Business ByDesign” (BYD) is extendable by a software development kit (SDK). Said SDK was introduced at 2010 SAP TechEd conference and participants were able to gain some hands-on experience with an early release of the toolkit. More insights and a thorough review of the SDK can be found here.

What’s good for SAP’s River isn’t necessarily good for BYD’s SDK

Yesterday’s Twitter post by Ethan Jewett struck me:

His last sentence was clearly aimed at the new C#-like language that SAP has introduced to allow third parties (so-called “solution partners”) to develop BYD extensions and add-ons. Whether or not this was a good idea is open to debate. In the end, only time will tell. However it is surprising to see that another cloud-based development platform by SAP has chosen a different route by allowing business logic to be developed in Javascript (which was one of my initial ideas in the BYD SDK post I mentioned earlier). So in contrast, SAP’s River development team leverages the vast amount of Javascript expertise on the planet.

No BYD Store (yet)

All add-ons for BYD are supposed to be delivered by an App Store like infrastructure, from where BYD customers can directly deploy the solution they’ve chosen for their core system. At TechEd in Berlin it was mentioned that the store would be up and running by end of 2010, but nothing has been announced as such yet. Back in October I was under the impression that a Q4 deadline was pretty ambitious for a BYD Store, so I’m not too surprised.

Community is good, Partners are better

At the TechEd 2010 Press Conference I asked the SAP panel whether or not a larger community was approached to help the BYD SDK to gain momentum. I thought the fact that BYD SDK is based on C# and uses MS Visual Studio as its development environment would be a perfect shoe-in for a large part of Microsoft’s C# community. Back then, the gist of the answer from SAP was that a more exclusive partner programme is the preferred way forward. Such a programme will also come with an entrance barrier attached to it, basically a monetary entrance ticket to the world of BYD add-on development. While such a partner price tag is not unheard of in the enterprise application space, it is clear that a higher fee will be hard to swallow for small, flexible software outlets and freelancers. Moreover, a move such as this would be even more surprising given the fact that SAP has been harping on about “Innovation” since SAPPHIRE NOW 2010. A final decision on entrance barriers for the solution partner programme has (officially) still not been made.

In addition, it appears that SAP is banking on consulting partners from the tried-and-tested On Premise world. A lot of noise was made at the recent SAP Influencer Summit about the fact that Accenture will become a BYD solution partner. Question here is whether this will really be the kind of inspired breakthrough in the consulting business that customers want to see (more agile approaches, shorter implementation, virtual consulting, less consulting overhead) or if it’s just a sign that the real aim is to deliver the same-old-same-old at equally high rates. A major point here will be the flexibility that bigger consulting players have got to offer. Or as a spectator in the SAP space commented in a conversation with me: “If you can’t play you can’t innovate”.

BYD UI question needs to be solved mid-term

SAP could also have problems on its hands with regards to the Silverlight UI that was chosen for BYD. Microsoft recently shifted Silverlight’s focus to the Windows Mobile world, which will have implications in the mid-term for SAP’s UI strategy for BYD. My take is that BYD’s external APIs could play a significant role for smaller consultancies that snub a potentially pricey partner programme and innovate “on the fringes” of BYD.

2011 Outlook

In 2011, SAP has to deliver a lot on its various promises (HANA, mobile, BYD, River, to mention a few). With a new conference concept (2 SAPPHIRE NOWs, May 2011 in Orlando, then November 2011 in Madrid for a combined SAPPHIRE / TechEd) the Walldorf concern certainly doesn’t shy away from the limelight. We are in for an exciting twelve months ahead.

This Week in SAP

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This edition of TWiS is actually put together while I’m watching SAP Mentor Monday, a special edition for the unveiling of Hugh MacLeod’s “Freaking (Fucking) Amazing” picture in a SAP main meeting area in Palo Alto.

In other news, we’ve obviously still had some fallout from the SAP/Oracle TomorrowNow case. Are these two items linked? Maybe they are… maybe the ruling -despite whether SAP appeals or not- will spur them on to be even more “freaking amazing”. I’m getting carried away.

  • It certainly was the week of the SAP/Oracle roundups. Some a more worthwhile read than others. I won’t talk about the latter, so let’s start with CIO’s Thomas Wailgum, who writes: “Justice is supposed to be blind, but public opinion certainly isn’t. While SAP might have more likeability than does Oracle, it doesn’t absolve SAP executives from paying for their sins.“.
  • I also liked Thomas Otter’s shakespearean take on the TomorrowNow ruling: “Coming out of this, I’d hope that software developers think a little bit more about intellectual property and IT law generally.“
  • an interesting Computerwoche article by PAC’s Tobias Ortwein nudges the topic a little more towards the difference between US and continental european IP culture (english version here).
  • Seeking Alpha’s Dennis Byron continues his SAP bish-bash-bosh and drowns a few SAP follower kittens by aiming at Shai Agassi, but praises him for his work re the Netweaver platform. Huh.
  • Dennis Howlett spotted a reinvigoration of the maintenance topic during his visit at the SAP UK & Ireland user group.
  • RedMonk’s James Governor with an excellent piece on openness, HTML5, news firewalls and the power of developers. He links to Apple Enterprise page and its strange statement (which always puzzled me) and -most of all- he mentions “Die Zeit”, my favourite Online and Print paper.
  • oh, and did you know, “River is out and available”. Ethan Jewett’s comment says it all…
  • Silicon.de’s take on Snabe speech during SAP UK&I conference in Manchester: “Fun in less than 7 minutes”. Yes, he’s still talking SAP (english translation here).

If I can tweet it there, I’ll tweet it – anywhere…

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This Week in SAP

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Welcome back to my SAP News roundup. In a way I’m glad I missed my usual Monday deadline for TWiS this week, as it means I’m able to include one of THE SAP news headlines of the year. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

What’s been happening in Twitter valley?

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[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/jamesfarrar/status/4976063486627840″] nb: Dennis was asking his Twitter followers for a hairdresser recommendation in London

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/MarkYolton/status/4968121639108608″] nb: english translation here

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