SAP Business Influencers Summit 2009 - Attempts at Live Blogging

I'm going to attempt to live blog this to some degree because I can't tweet due to really bad wifi and a dead power strip too. More on my gripes later. Jim Snabe, for Product Strategy (Jim Snabe is an SAP Board member) (8:50am) SAP is focusing strongly on applying themselves to market trends. One that they clearly see as unique to them is "in memory" which increases the speed of application development and the agility of the response of the networks and the data. Mobile is another trend they are focused on heavily as they are on the cloud. They showed the classic "time it took for (blank) to reach a 50 million audience. Radio 38 years, Facebook 2 years (etc, etc blah blah blah). Yet certainly not everything is changing e.g Pacioli developed double entry bookkeeping in 1494. IT innovation cycles are at different speeds. Jim Snabe - people devices things have short 6 weeks innovation cycles. New innovations in lines of business are 6 mos. Standardization of best practices takes 6 years - though I'm not sure that is innovation nor do I have any idea how they come up with 6 years as an innovation cycle We need a new architecture so that there are a landscape of applications that can use consumable best practices out of the box - and then extract resources from "the box" that allow for flexible extensions. This would allow for immediate consumption. This is the architecture that SAP had in mind. We are developing an architecture called "timeless software." Collection of pre-integrated, pre-implemented best practices to provide rapid benefit, but architected so that there are no real disruptions to the core processes. That would be layer one sitting in the SOA. The second layer is rapid innovation (PG: How is that a "layer"?). The delivery vehicle for these innovative extensions is on demand. (PG: This is what one of SAP's partners, Coresystems will be showing today with BusinessOne and their product via a private cloud). Must be able to consume the standardized processes in the back and the information that you need to find across the enterprise via personalized search ("the individual use case"). This also includes the new tools of social networking. This is our architectural blueprint that we have. Started with the now 6 year old SOA commitment that we made. Now working on the middle layer to extend the reach of the business suite with a more rapid innovation cycle. Snabe now starting to talk about SAP Business Suite. Since beginning of 2009, began to look at how to deliver more business value via end to end business processes built into suite. Also "prepackaged best practices" (PG: hearing this a lot today so far). Also looking at lower cost. That's being provided as individual enhancements without upgrade. Snabe called it "unique" (PG it isn't. See RightNow etc.). Integrated end-to-end processes. Talking about Accelerated Lead-to-Cash. That incorporates Lead Managment, Sales Order Management, Order Fulfillment, Invoicing and Collections. This is prepackaged in Business Suite 7. Content incorporated into the process. "We believe the three letter acronyms will disappear. In future, request will be "lead to payment" not CRM, ERP, etc. (PG: Hmmmm. "Lead to Payment at the Speed of Light"????). (PG: Seems to be a KEY driver for SAP in 2010). Snabe now talking about the costs of support. Now says "need support that lives up to mission critical nature of your software." Healthy for industry to discuss what value is being delivered. Now looking at reduction of TCO through the use of their enhancement packs. He is talking about their on demand strategy. One for large enterprises through delivery of narrow scope large enhancements and for SME market is to deliver "a whole suite on demand" (PG: I presume he means Business By Design. I think SAP is reaching their Waterloo when it comes to Business By Design. Need to deliver what they keep talking about in the SME market. Especially if now they are saying that their delivery strategy is for SME is on demand) Next we have to look at the user in this collaborative world, because it is with the user its all coming together. It is the interaction point between the structured and unstructured that is a HUGE opportunity for SAP in the future "and we will invest heavily here going forward." He is showing a chart that has an X axis of structured to unstructured data and a Y-axis of Casual to Expert User. Top right Collaboration. Lower Left is Analytics. The user experience has to be so easy that "you can do it yourself." (PG: Not sure what that means.) Now talking about lifcycle management, maser data management, and process orchestration to provide consistency. The portfolio for this is Large Enterprises (with NetWeaver SOA): CRM and Esourcing on demand, BUsiness SUite 7, SCM, Travel & Expense Management and HCM on Demand are in our future. They have SAP Business Objects BI on Demand and Carbon Impact on Demand is coming. Will be enhancing mobile, and allowing the backend to be interacting with other systems. Portfolio for SME is three apps: Business1, Business All in One and Business By Design. Delivered 2.0 version of BBD. Says that in 2010 will go to market with BBD that has the TCO that they expected to. (PG: I'm a skeptic until that happens. Since he gave a firm date for release which at this point is a year, not a month, I'm holding them to it. Good luck to them). The common SAP architectural principles are a "consumer grade user experience (PG: Like this). extensibiiity; end-to-end prcoess and data integration; & unified lifecycle management. "We want the user, not just the IT dept., to be the viral adopter of the SAP system." We are also connecting our solutions end to end from consumer to raw materials. (PG: Odd conjunction but the idea is good). SAP is looking not at the vertical integration of the stack (database, hardware, etc.). But we believe the hardware and data move into the cloud. (PG: Wow. Coming from SAP that's a rather amazing statement. How do they provide cloud capacity? Amazon?) This is a horizontal approach. That's as step by step migration though - into the cloud. Not everyone is going to be able to make the move quickly. "We believe that we can accelerate the innovation due to the consistency and the transformation of processes, etc. we have done at SAP." THATS IT FOR THIS BLOG ENTRY.

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We believe that we can accelerate the innovation due to the consistency and the transformation of processes, etc. we have done at SAP..