SAP Sapphire clean up
ARM Research analyst and SAP watcher Bruce Richardson offers his top ten list of takeaways from SAP's Sapphire conference last week. His conclusion:
We are seeing is the maturation of SAP’s strategy around business process platforms and enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA). If I were an SAP customer, I’d find that very reassuring, particularly if I’m still wrestling with ERP instance consolidations, global rollouts, upgrades, or driving down my total cost of ownership.
Top 10 list (check out Bruce's commentary on each one):
1. SAP’s betting $125M that NetWeaver will draw innovation
2. Musings on Kayak
3. Model-driven development nears reality
4. New pricing models
5. Will Duet lead to a duel?
6. 2010 target: 150,000 customers—do we need to worry about serious skills shortage?
7. Growing customer development business
8. Launch plans for Business Process Platforms
9. TomorrowNow investment paying off for SAP
10. Please bring back Ian Kimbell
In addition, many of blogger/analyst/pundit scribes gathered by Jeff Nolan have weighed in with their post-event thoughts.
Zoli Erdos goes deep on Duet, the Microsoft/SAP joint development effort. Ross Mayfield wrote about his Sapphire experience, calling it a "watershed moment for how enterprises engage in social media." Vinnie Mirchandani has several posts from his Sapphire sojourn. Ishmael Ghalimi provide his reasoning as to why SAP should open source NetWeaver.
Niel Robertson ponders SAP's proposed new corporate world order and promotes the role of the 'chief process' officer.
But the biggest SAP-related news of the week can be attributed to the visionary and spiritual leader of the company, Hasso Plattner.
Hasso Plattner, Chairman of SAP's Supervisory Board (Photo: SAP)
The Chairman of SAP's Supervisory Board, and biggest shareholder, said the company would be open to a merger or acquistion by a U.S. firm if it made business sense. He cited three potential buyers: Google, IBM and Microsoft (which had talks about a merger in 2003). "If shareholders think that a combination, and not independence, is better, then it will happen," he told the Financial Times Deutschland.