Random Gems from SAPPHIRE (Get it?)

Found out that SAP has a deeper commitment to communities than I thought. They have a community called BPx that has 350,000 members consisting of business analysts and application consultants, IT project managers, and process developers on the techie side and BPM guys, UI experts, change management gurus on the functional side. Run by a really forward thinking dude named Marco ten Vaanholt. A "social-smart" guy. Title is Global Head, Business Process Expert (BPX) Community (see Marco's comment below that led to this correction). They also have a 1.2 million member developers community called SDN....

Mike de la Cruz, SVP of Mobility & Analytics (CRM related stuff) seems to be the guy who drove the execution of the SAP CRM Blackberry app and he did a GREAT job. What's funny here is that when I mentioned his name on Twitter, I heard from several of the Tweet-producers that they knew him or had gone to school with him. Amazing. He is REALLY known around the industry....

Eric Clapton did what turned out to be a great show because the second half of it was cranked up by Clapton considerably from the first half. He did all his old stuff in the second half and more acoustic, quieter blues in combination with some serious electric blues discharges the first half. But he left the crowd at the end roaring. He is a god. No doubt. I saw him in his last (until the 2007 revival) Cream concert in 1969 or 1970 whenever it was in Chicago with my brother. Their final U.S. tour....

One curious thing about SAP's thinking...they made a major effort to de-emphasize not just Business by Design but what they called the "By Design platform" at one point. In reference to Business by Design they kept saying they had "Business All in One" which, of course, is their on premise small business applications. Not a notable success either. Which is me saying its not a very good product in another way. That's upsetting. They may be having some development problems, which, Hennings Kagermann alluded to in one brief comment during one presentation (I forget which one) - delayed delivery. But the almost vehement shoving of Business By Design under the table (not the bus) was disconcerting, because to play, they are going to have to have it. This is not an option. I've heard too many different release dates from too many sources to speculate on which one is accurate. But SAP HAS TO RELEASE A SOLID ON DEMAND PRODUCT TO PARTICIPATE IN THE CRM AND ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS WORLD. Their time is pretty short too. I hope they do. Because all the rest seems to be so on target.

Comments

[Marilyn Pratt]

Sorry to have missed your session at Sapphire. Volker Hildebrand told me that it was exceptionally interesting. It unfortunately coincided with our SAP mentor meeting and a community session around Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainabilty. As Community Evangelist I'd like to invite you to visit us and get a look feel for some of the collaboration activities of the BPXers in action (Perhaps the community project in the BPX wiki space is a good place to start), but I'd also love to have your input as to how to enrich the CRM community space. The geeks are all over the technical CRM forums, but it is engaging the business folks that will be the real challenge. Finding the right business content for the community is my goal and some of the material I'm looking for goes beyond product and solution speak. I'd been putting out twitter feelers to see if any of my "peeps" were engaged in the Business of CRM. Most of my folks are "techies". Sure would love to have your community approach light the way for the CRM business lurkers.

[Paul Greenberg]

Thanks for the actually not small correction, though you're being kind to call it small. I'm going to fix it in the actual post. AND for the SDN info.

[Marco ten Vaanholt]

Thanks for the kind words Paul. Small correction that might help. The BPX community focuses on business analysts and application consultants at the core, then in the range are IT project managers, and process developers on the techie side and BPM guys, UI experts, change management gurus on the functional side, however we do not focus on developers. sdn.sap.com (sdn) does.

SDN is now about 1,2M members big, and you are correct the BPX community is now over 350,000 members large.. have a nice weekend