For the newshounds among us it might have been a less interesting TechEd than usual as last minute mails stated that "The event has undergone some changes in the past few days as a number of SAP executives that were planning to attend will no longer be in Berlin". Thus not many "fireside chats" with executives for us bloggers.
But over the days, having more time with all rungs of management and the usual suspects with ears to the ground, an interesting picture started to take form in my head. By all means probably not entirely right, but still...
- There's a "spring cleaning" taking place, new world situation adaption seen as an opportunity and not entirely a bad thing.
- The maturity level of the platform is accepted, defence of the old seems to be shifting towards a new openness to the future.
When I first saw the messages about instant and dramatic budget cuts my first thought was "typical panic button, put on the helmet and duck behind the desk hoping for better times to return". But not so much when I started to poke around, seems the "freeze" can be seen as a natural extension of changes set in motion this spring.
"This is the best thing that could happen, at last an excuse to clean out bad (and expensive) habits, move people around perhaps even loose a few" was mentioned in hushed voices, eyes roaming around for unwanted eavesdroppers. First one voice, then another and soon I sensed a hushed chorus happy with what was happening.
But it did not start or stop there, seems this has been going on since Sapphire this spring, gathering speed in the current financial crisis.
"This is not a reorganisation!" - was made abundantly clear - "re-allocation of resources" is better. That might explain the lack of dramatic messages from within and why I really did not "get it" until business cards were swapped and new interesting lines of reporting were described. New and fresh and smart faces popped up all over the place, and many of my old friends (I only have smart friends ;)) could report about changes to their immediate org structure and much new energy flowing.
Surprising - no more blind defence of status quo, rather a keen willingness to pose questions and listen.
Sucking in and analysing a combination of Léo Apotheker's keynote, browsing the sessions programs and just walking and talking my way through the halls - I would say the current focus seems to be some kind of "pluck the lowest hanging fruit": New and nifty UIs, more and more useful composition tools, flexibility added where none existed, but as a "big path" forward it hardly makes anyone wide-eyed.
Looking for some signs of new "big pictures' being painted the only brief moment of "aha!" came with Leo's last slide regarding the "future architecture" that included a full width blob named "Semantic Layer". That sent me (yet again) out on a chase to look for real radical core stuff. After much running around I found Gunther Stuhec, the same chap I found one year ago after even more journalistic footwork. He has now been elevated to a full quarter of the "future architecture" slide!
Image by Prashant Rai
Although, when drilling down, not quite a "Dramatic Future Technology": Even if W3C's standards are used,and some very cool stuff regarding the semantic part of the "semantics" is delivered, it still does not question the underlying data-model - which would have been truly dramatic of course - an area where I think the real value of the W3C methodology lies. Translation and better handling of different semantics is the name of the game, don't touch the existing base, a layer as in a "coating" or at most as in "glue".
At last SAP and I agree fully that what they call "manual processes", others call "knowledge worker" and I term as BRP is in fact a bigger (and barely explored) market than the Easily Repeatable Processes - thus much good work is put into the BPM area. In fact it was when I dipped into that area that I started to have real fun (thanks Marilyn for all the nudges!). Here I found people open for radical views, here I found a former unheard of willingness to explore and discuss. Not much need to defend status quo as this area is reasonable new to SAP, combined with some interesting changes to the organisation mentioned above in the Spring Cleaning section.
I think the credit crunch came in the nick of time, it seems to have given SAP an "excuse" to reinvigorate the important parts of their organisation and opened up for a new and unheard of willingness to drop the defence mode and start talking reality with an open mind.
SAP, despite budget cuts, were kind enough to cover my, and my fellow bloggers, travel and accommodation costs, then allowing us unfettered access to all and everybody - thank you SAP and in particular Mike (and Stacey) that works so hard while putting up with us! It certainly displays an organisational self-confidence and maturity not found in many other large organisations, especially in times like these.
Add openness to new realities and a new energy emerging, my belief in SAP is only strengthened. Gonna be interesting this.
in my opinion sap is dragging their feed in embracing anything 2.0 - in short, once they go down that path their license fees will start crumbling and they cannot accept that. just my 2c. cheers, jake
Posted by: tcode | February 16, 2009 at 11:19
I don't believe they are dragging their feet on anything 2.0, I just think they want to do it right. Just hoe do you combine 2.0 and enterprise anyway?
Posted by: Ryan Culling | April 06, 2009 at 01:56