Does SAP's technical strategy pass the customer hygiene test?

Eddie Herrmann is the showmaster for the Enterprise Geek podcast series. He is a personal friend employed at one of SAP's largest global customers and I value his insights as a checkpoint for topics in which I am interested. Eddie is widely regarded as one of the world's most knowledgeable SAP developers and has been recognised for achievements in developing tools that are widely used in SAP landscapes. He is also a fellow SAP Mentor. Eddie lives with the practical realities of developing, implementing and deploying SAP solutions in a complex landscape at a company that is often at the bleeding edge of what SAP is offering.

Eddie had the opportunity to quiz both Vishal Sikka, SAP's CTO and Oliver Bussman, SAP's CIO. In this 6 minute video (see link at top,) Eddie starts out by talking to the mobile strategy and HANA, the in-memory compute strategy as outlined by Dr Sikka. In the final clip, Eddie moves on to the CIO challenges concluding with his thoughts about how well SAP is presenting a strategy in which customers can believe.

On mobile, he anticipates that following this year's announcements, his company will need to re-assess its mobile strategy, especially since SAP is now offering solutions rather than pointing to third party providers. On HANA, he says the company is taking exploratory steps.

In the final segment, Eddie points out that one of his assessment tests is whether SAP is eating its own dog food. He says that vendors should lead by example. Acting differently to what they tell customers will cause 'uproar.' However, in providing an assessment, Eddie is mindful of the difficulties the CIO of a company like SAP faces.

See also: Enterprise Geeks Exclusive Interview with SAP CTO Vishal Sikka