SAP TechEd Wrapup

[former_member2987]

I was lucky to attend TechEd && d-code last week and it was an amazing experience. From a SAP IDM point of view things are looking pretty good.

This was a different type of event for me since I was there this year as a speaker. I had the chance to present ITM 118: SAP Identity Management – Experience from a Customer Implementation Project. I spoke about some best practices for planning and organizing the start of your SAP IDM project, everything that should happen before anything gets involved.  I hope those that were able to attend got something from it.

I was also interviewed by ASUG regarding SAP IDM (Shameless plug, you can view it here.) this was a new and interesting experience for me as well, and I might add, a lot of fun! I really enjoy being able to share my passion about the product and the nature of Identity Management.

I also had the chance to meet (and re-meet) some great people in the SAP and ASUG community! tammy.powlas, The specified item was not found. , and  jason.cao among others. I also got to see some old friends from past companies and past projects, always good to catch up with folks!

Ok enough about me, now let me tell you about what was happening in IDM Land during the event.

I was able to attend a hands on session for learning about using REST and IDM with SAP IDM 8.0, quite ably led by avatartest While we were still using a Beta product (The images for the event were made months ago, which is quite normal) I still got a good feel from the product. It was not terribly slow, showed some new features, while keeping some old ones as well. It had its little quirks, but I think those should be resolved by Ramp-up release in November, 2014, and certainly cleaned up by GA release late Q1, 2015.

Most of my learning this year came from the show floor. alexander.zubev gave a great presentation on how to optimize SQL statements in IDM (Tip to the event organizers, rather than VPN to Germany, bring the demo systems local to the event, or at least use a local image.) We also received the latest information regarding the SAP IDM (and SSO) roadmap from gerlinde.zibulski Looks like there’s some good stuff coming along for IDM, including HANA as a backend database and integration with cloud services coming in 2015.

I also had a fantastic one-on-one session with Gerlinde, which was more of a chance for me to tell her about what I’ve been seeing out in the field. As always, Gerlinde was receptive and interested, asking a lot of questions and pulling out details and concepts that I had not considered. She also reminded me that anyone who has comments and suggestions regarding SAP IDM should log into the Idea Place page for IDM. This is the absolute best place to get your ideas noticed by SAP IDM Product Management. It is another fantastic resource from SAP where ideas can be discussed, evaluated and processed. Please take some time to review the suggestions already posted there and maybe post one of your own.

Finally, as a person who is further into his 40s than he would sometimes like to admit, this year’s entertainment, Huey Lewis and the News, was a lot of fun! Nothing like having a chance to rock out to some of my favorite tunes!

All of this make me look forward more than ever to SAP Tech Ed && d-code 2015!