Disclaimer: This blog post and video interview contains absolutely no proprietary information or trade secrets from SAP. However, you should still read on, especially if you are interested in SAP and the folks who use or build the products. Participants I interviewed have given free and informed consent to participate in my interviews, and to allow me to make these public.
The SAP Development Kick Off Meeting (DKOM) is an annual event held amongst SAP’s internal teams responsible for the development and management of products and solutions. This year, DKOM was held in 10 cities around the world, from Santa Clara to Sofia to Shanghai – at or near major SAP development centres (also call SAP Labs).
Although no longer part of the Products and Solutions team, I was fortunate to attend the DKOM event in Vancouver. I arrived with goals to strengthen my ties with Product and Solutions development colleagues, and to better understand SAP’s product development strategies going forward. I’m glad to say I left the event satisfied and eager to see more of our internal Business Analytics and BI experts participate on SCN in 2011.
One re-connection I made at DKOM in Vancouver was with Hervé Couturier, Executive Vice President of SAP’s Technology Development group. I remember one of my first meetings with Hervé was in the Business Objects office near Paris, where he impressed on our product management and field teams the importance of providing details, justification and evidence to back-up any statements/feedback we receive about Business Objects products.
Since then, Hervé’s group has grown quite a bit larger with SAP. Yet I met the same honest and passionate leader, who delivered the keynote presentation to over 450 developers attending DKOM in Vancouver.
I had a chance to catch up with Hervé, asking for his thoughts on SAP BusinessObjects products claiming 4 out of 6 SAP Design Excellence Awards (these are internal SAP awards). Here’s what he had to say...
Thanks Hervé, for sharing your thoughts with the community on the topic of business analytics!
This is an important topic for our SCN community as well, and the reason we BusinessObjects Community Becoming the Business Analytics Community on February 28, 2011 the BusinessObjects community to the business analytics community. You'll be seeing even more conversations in the coming months.
