Comments on: Jon Reed: SAP to start paying more attention to R/3 users http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sap-watch/jon-reed-sap-to-start-paying-more-attention-to-r3-users/ A SearchSAP.com blog Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:02:54 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: EXPERTreed http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sap-watch/jon-reed-sap-to-start-paying-more-attention-to-r3-users/#comment-922 EXPERTreed Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:11:57 +0000 http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sap-watch/?p=1171#comment-922 Peter, thanks for the comments about my post. Sikka has some pretty large shoes to fill with Plattner gone, and while I for one will miss Plattner's legendary scribbling on the white board, I do like Sikka's willingness to engage honestly with his constituents. We had a private Mentor meeting with Sikka where he fielded questions about SAP's future with a lot of forthrightness, and his honest comments about ByD were actually at the main public press conference. To me, the big thing SAP has on its plate right now is follow through. For example, as you noted, I was impressed in my private sessions with SAP product managers to see a different emphasis on providing important functionality to 4.x users (like BI tools and UI enhancements) without having to upgrade. So much of what we heard the last couple of years from SAP was about ERP 6.0 bells and whistles which implies upgrading along the way. So it was a nice contrast, but the products I saw are not yet out there - nor are many of SAP's most interesting applications in terms of cloud-based apps. That means follow through will be important. It will be a defining year or two for SAP as we see whether some of these "pockets of innovation" that we see at DemoJam and elsewhere at TechEd take center stage. One other interesting note is the individual NetWeaver developer licenses, a topic which SAP Mentors have been pursuing with SAP (and in fruitful dialogue on) were announced in conjunction with TechEd Vienna. Another story to watch - will this spur more developer-based innovation, and if not, what other obstacles stand in the way that must be addressed? Peter, thanks for the comments about my post. Sikka has some pretty large shoes to fill with Plattner gone, and while I for one will miss Plattner’s legendary scribbling on the white board, I do like Sikka’s willingness to engage honestly with his constituents. We had a private Mentor meeting with Sikka where he fielded questions about SAP’s future with a lot of forthrightness, and his honest comments about ByD were actually at the main public press conference.

To me, the big thing SAP has on its plate right now is follow through. For example, as you noted, I was impressed in my private sessions with SAP product managers to see a different emphasis on providing important functionality to 4.x users (like BI tools and UI enhancements) without having to upgrade. So much of what we heard the last couple of years from SAP was about ERP 6.0 bells and whistles which implies upgrading along the way. So it was a nice contrast, but the products I saw are not yet out there - nor are many of SAP’s most interesting applications in terms of cloud-based apps. That means follow through will be important. It will be a defining year or two for SAP as we see whether some of these “pockets of innovation” that we see at DemoJam and elsewhere at TechEd take center stage. One other interesting note is the individual NetWeaver developer licenses, a topic which SAP Mentors have been pursuing with SAP (and in fruitful dialogue on) were announced in conjunction with TechEd Vienna. Another story to watch - will this spur more developer-based innovation, and if not, what other obstacles stand in the way that must be addressed?

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