jeffrey.word

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    SAP HANA Essentials Cover.jpgIn an earlier blog, I tried to distill some of the lessons I’ve learned the hard way about publishing. In this blog, I’ll try and explain a little bit about the very different approach to publishing we’re taking for the SAP HANA Essentials book that will be coming out in May.

     

    Seth Godin, a very successful author and ebook pioneer, just wrote a blog about how he approached the launch his latest book.  I literally could just copy/paste what he wrote and put in the title of my book for this blog—it was that spot on with the approach we’re taking with the SAP HANA Essentials book.

     

    The basic issue is that in 2012, getting an idea out to the world requires a completely different approach than in the past.  The speed of content development, digital delivery and digital reading have truly changed the way you disseminate knowledge to a wide audience.  You still have to do all the hard work of writing a really great book, but everything after that has been completely disrupted from how it was even 5 years ago.  Imagine converting all of Major League Baseball into cricket teams—it’s that big of a change.

     

    For the SAP HANA Essentials book, we started writing in earnest in mid-January, but I had been speaking with traditional publishers for a few months before that to try and find a way to do the HANA book very differently than any of my other books.  Publishers are in business to make money and that’s fine, however the “profit motive” that they have doesn’t always line up with the strategic goals that SAP has for knowledge dissemination.  That’s ok for most books, but for SAP HANA, since we’re breaking all kinds of rules in the tech world, we figured that we might as well break a whole lot of rules in the publishing world as well. 

     

     

    Here’s a few of the different goals and issues that drive the need for a different approach this time.

     

    • SAP HANA is a hugely strategic topic in the SAP ecosystem and knowledge is in short supply globally
    • SAP HANA is evolving at a mind-blowing pace and content must be constantly kept up-to-date
    • There’s lots of techie content, but its scattered around the web and not easily found
    • Nearly every SAP user, consultant and developer already has a Kindle, iPhone or iPad already (if they don’t, they all have a PC)
    • SAP makes money selling software and services, not selling books
    • SAP already operates on a Spring/Fall corporate “education” clock with the Sapphire and TechEd events as anchors to the calendar

     

    So, in order to deliver a book that “works” with all those factors, we had to do something radically different.

     

    It’s actually quite fitting that we’re writing a book in “real-time” about the engine that powers the “real-time enterprise”.  Instead of waiting until all of the chapters are completed, we’re going to release the first few chapters in May and then release blocks of new chapters as they’re finished.  So many people have told me how desperate they are to get the book as quickly as possible (for them and their teams), so if we can’t get the whole thing completed till the end of the year, the best thing we can do is to get as much high-quality content out to everyone as quickly as it’s available, and not wait around until its completely finished to ship the whole thing.

     

    Secondly, since we’re making the book available for free, we had to figure out a way to deliver it to the widest audience at the lowest cost.  Sadly, Amazon won’t let you permanently offer a book for free on their site and there are lots of restrictions on which countries can and can’t order books.  So, we’ve partnered with an ebook retailer in Germany to make the book available globally in both epub and kindle formats, completely free of DRM. We want a million people to get the info in the book, so locking it to one ereader or another with DRM is counterproductive.  Anybody on earth can go to the SAP HANA Essentials download site, put in a voucher code and get his or her preferred format for free.  They can read it on their laptop, iPad or Kindle instantly.  They can share it with colleagues easily.  No unnecessary friction to inhibit people acquiring and reading the book.

     

    Thirdly, since it’s an ebook, we can update it frequently, with new chapters, changes in content, better links, etc.  In the print world, once it ships from the printer, it’s gone for good.  You have to do an expensive revision and reprint to change anything in a print book and it takes years to get one of those done.

     

    So, in essence, we’re doing the SAP HANA Essentials book “faster, better and cheaper” than any SAP book in history and if it works out like we’re hoping, it should be the “best selling” SAP book in history.  But, since we’re not really selling it, I’ll settle for the “most widely read” title[1].

     

     

     

    This is the second post in a series of blogs where I’ll chronicle the creation of the SAP HANA Essentials book.  Starting the Journey.

     

    "You have to be brave to take out that white sheet of paper and put on it words that could be evidence of your stupidity." -- Sol Saks

     

    I’ve  been producing books at SAP for 10 years now.  Some of them have my  name on the cover and lots of my blood spilled on the pages.  Some of  them, I was just an “invisible hand” behind the scenes, guiding them  spiritually along their journey.  Some have been massive successes, some  have been mildly successful.  I’ve done techie books, dummies books,  university textbooks, MBA strategy books and even helped a bit with a  memoir or two.

     

    With  all that background in SAP books, I tend to get quite a few “queries”  each month from people inside SAP and within the ecosystem who have an  idea for a book and need some advice on how to start.   Most of them are  so terrified of the mountain it appears that they’ll have to climb,  they are paralyzed to even take the first step.   So I was reflecting on  what it's like to start a book project for the SAP HANA Essentials  book, and thought I'd write down how I approach the challenges. Here’s  how I explain “how to eat an elephant” to aspiring writers:

     

    • Know the “goals” of the book
      • Why  are you writing the book in the first place?  Hint: fame and/or fortune  are both horrible reasons to write a book. Check your ego at the door  before starting a book project.  I guarantee you’ll be psychologically  beaten and bruised by the end and be kicking yourself for thinking it  was a good idea when you started.  If you’re truly foolish, you’ll  divide your meager royalty check by the time you spent on the book and  realize that you could have made more money begging for change.
      • If  it’s to educate or entertain, you’re probably in better shape.  The  best you can hope for is that exactly ONE person on the planet reads  your book and then tells you that they enjoyed it or got some value out  of it.  My parents and wife have never even read more than the  dedication page for any of my books—just to make sure their names are in  there.
      • For the SAP HANA Essentials book, its pretty obviously  about education on a massive scale.  SAP HANA is going to be a huge  topic for everyone in the SAP Ecosystem for quite a while and there  isn't anything out there that covers the Level One knowledge  comprehensively.  So, I've got to somehow put one together in the next  couple of months
    • Know your audience
      • If  you’re writing a book for the right reasons (typically to educate),  then why would anyone want to read it?  Do you have some special access  to crucial knowledge that isn’t available elsewhere? Will this knowledge  benefit a large number of people.  How is this going to improve their  job/life/croquet skills?  Being an “expert” at some topic qualifies you  to write absolutely nothing.  For all of my books, I’ve had to teach  myself the topic before I could explain it in writing to someone else.   The important thing is to know exactly WHO you are writing for and WHAT  they need to know.
      • I've spent a lot of time working with the SAP  ecosystem, from the "code monkeys" up to CIOs.  Specifically starting  SDN, the Demo Jam and quite a few other crazy projects.  My audience  wants the straight story with as little marketing spin as possible.   Real customer examples and solid advice on how to extract business value  from HANA will be front and center in the book.
    • Know what you want to write
      • Nailing  down the scope of the book is both the hardest part of the writing  process and the most critical.  If you don’t have ultra-clear boundaries  around what you will and will not be writing, you’ll quickly plunge  down the "rabbit hole of never-ending details" and never finish.
      • Finding  the fine line between Level 1 content and Level 2 content is tricky,  but because we're doing the HANA book as an ebook, we can always link  directly to Level 2 content if its needed.  That way readers aren't  upset that we didn't go into enough technical detail or upset that the  book was to geeky.
    • Create an incredibly detailed table of contents
      • This  should be the output of the scoping exercise.   Typically, my ToC’s are  about 10 levels deep. A,1,a,i,etc. For the SAP HANA book, my working  ToC is about 30 pages long now. Once you get it that detailed, you  basically have to only write a short paragraph for each bullet.  More  importantly, you know EXACTLY where to start and stop.
    • Build a support network of content experts to help guide and review
      • Thus  far in the SAP HANA book writing process, I’ve pulled in about 75  experts from inside and outside SAP.  Some are just reviewers for the  final manuscript to give me extra eyeballs and perspectives on the big  picture.  Some are actually writing first drafts of entire sections of a  chapter.  It all depends on their level of commitment and bandwidth.   However, the general rule is the more eyeballs that see the manuscript  before you print it, the better the final product will be.  If possible,  hire an awesome professional editor to go over the final draft.  It’s a  service that pays for itself in final quality.
    • Keep putting words on the page till its done, then edit the hell out of it until its readable
      • Perseverance  is truly the only crucial skill you need to finish a book.  If you've  followed the rest of my advice above, actually putting words on the page  is the only big thing left for you to do.  Once you've got a completed  first draft, be ruthless in the editing process.  Slaughter every sacred  cow you created, if needed, in order to make it "readable"  If you’ve  just gone thru the literary equivalent of childbirth, you sure as hell  want people to read the damned thing. So, is it “readable” by your  audience? Spewing out a bunch of facts haphazardly will result in people  hating your book, or worse, putting it on a shelf for an eternity of  uselessness.  Style and tone matter, at times even more than the raw  content.  Put as much effort into the way you present the content as you  do into the underlying facts.  I’ve met some truly brilliant people  over the years who can’t string together a single readable paragraph to  describe something they’ve invented and patented. Just because you  “really know” a topic doesn’t mean you can write a book about it or that  anyone would ever want to READ a book about it.
      • Our goal is to  put out the definitive "first stop for HANA knowledge" for everyone in  the SAP ecosystem, so it has to be readable by a wide variety of people  in our customers and partners.  It should also make finding Level 2  information very easy and a natural next step.  If we can do that, then  I'm sure we'll meet our goals.
    Jeffrey Word

    Starting the Journey

    Posted by Jeffrey Word Jan 30, 2012

    This is the first in a series of blogs where I’ll chronicle the creation of the SAP HANA Essentials book.

     

     

    “It’s déjà vu all over again”  Yogi Berra

     

    Well,  for the second time in my SAP career, I’ve “volunteered” to produce a  book about a hugely important SAP technology.  The first time, I had no  clue what I was getting myself into.  So I should know better than to do it a second time, but then again, I’m often a bit dense. 

     

    When  SAP announced SAP NetWeaver in 2003, I was the “evangelist” for  technology and SAP NetWeaver was my primary focus.  So, after shooting  my mouth off about the need for “easy-to-understand” collateral about  SAP NetWeaver a few too many times, I found myself committed to  delivering the SAP NetWeaver for Dummies book  for Sapphire 2004--less than 6 months away.  Lets just say that it was  WAAAYY more successful than any of us had ever dreamed it would be. The  publisher sold nearly 100k copies of that book in the first year it came  out.  I assure you, it had nothing to do with the quality of writing  (or lack thereof).  We had just hit the right nerve—the SAP ecosystem  needed an easy-to-understand material to get their heads around the  technology so they could decide on how to incorporate it into their  roadmaps.  It was so hot that several SAP partners were ordering it 1000  copies at-a-time from the publisher.  And, no, I didn’t get any  royalties from the sales of the book, but that was ok since my job was  to spread knowledge about the technology and a book was the best vehicle  for that at the time.

     

    So,  9 years later, I find myself repeating history again (hopefully I’ve  learned a little since then). I’m back to being a technology evangelist  and I’m starting a very short and painful journey to deliver the same  type of easy-to-understand overview book on a technology that is even  more critical to SAP’s success—SAP HANA. 

     

    However,  this time, I’ve got an even more audacious goal.  Instead of “only”  getting 100k people to read the book, I’m going to try to get 1 million people to read the SAP HANA book.  Basically, we’re going to take the  same writing approach we did with the SAP NetWeaver for Dummies book,  but remove the paper and ink costs, hit repeat and crank up the volume  to 11. 

     

    Faster, Better, Cheaper

    Several  things have changed in the publishing world over the past 5 years that  actually make this plan a lot less crazy than it sounds.  First, just  about everybody in the tech world has an iPad or Kindle by now, so the  proliferation of reading devices has hit critical mass in the SAP  ecosystem. Secondly, ebook technology can help us point people to “level  2” content, which means we only have to focus the book on the “level 1”  content.  It will be a bit shallow technically for some people, but  that’s the point.  And, if they want deeper technical info, it will only  be a click away from the ebook page they’re on.  Thirdly, since we can  edit and update ebooks about as easily as a MS Word document, we’ll be  able to continuously keep the SAP HANA book up to date as the product  evolves. 

     

    The really critical feature that will make it easy for people to acquire the book is that we can make it available for free.  Our belief is that since SAP HANA is going to be so important to every  member of the SAP ecosystem over the next several years, we have to make  the Level 1 knowledge freely available and accessible to everyone who  wants it.  Whether you’re a CIO or a “code-monkey” in the SAP ecosystem,  SAP HANA is gonna be a really  big deal for you in the near future.  A level one understanding of SAP  HANA is going to be a crucial skillset for everyone who works in and  around SAP.

     

    With that, I’ll let you take a look at the current table of contents for the book.  Please be aware that this is definitely going to change  over the next couple of months.  However, it has most of the content  listed that will be in the first edition, but we’ll probably mess around  with the structure a bit as we go. 

     

    More  updates on the writing process to come.  Looking forward to your  thoughts on how to make this the best possible SAP HANA resource for the  entire SAP ecosystem.

    Next week we'll be launching the new Integrated Business Processes with ERP Systems textbook at the SAP Curriculum Congress 2011.  I wanted to give everyone a quick update on how we've progressed over the past 4 years to deliver this innovative new curriculum and acknowledge the many SCN members who have supported us along the way. 

     

    Right around the time that the BPX community was being formed in 2007, the CEO of Adobe asked me to chat with an old college buddy of his (Simha Magal) who taught ERP courses using SAP at an SAP University Alliances member school in Michigan.  I had worked on a couple books back then and Simha wanted to write a textbook that covered SAP ERP concepts from a process perspective, rather than the typical module approach, and with an academic angle rather than just a technical one.  Since this was very much aligned with SAP's BPX strategy, I agreed to help him out.  Funny how innocently things like this start out.

     

    SAP was working on building the BPX certification program, so we decided to model the textbook off of the approach of primary ERP process understanding leading to BPX capabilities to make sure that students would be learning the same concepts as their professional counterparts, but in a more academically-appropriate way.  Many students who take the ERP course aren't MIS or computer science majors, they're accounting, finance, marketing, and operations management majors.  We quickly realized that all of the key process-oriented ERP concepts were already covered in the prerequisite course to BPX, the SAP Education TERP10 certification academy , but the SAP materials weren't appropriate for a university classroom filled with 19 year olds who had never worked at a "real" job.  SAP assumes quite a bit of work experience and process knowledge prior to entering the TERP10 academy, so we would have to cover all the same concepts as TERP10, but put them into a much more student-friendly, academic format.

     

    Our primary goal for this book was to enable faculty to teach students the core ERP concepts through an integrated process perspective of business operations.  However, since our curriculum would cover all the concepts in the SAP Education TERP10 academy, we could actually prepare students to take the certification exam at the same time.  The first few faculty members we discussed this with were extremely enthusiastic about the approach since SAP customers and partners would be thrilled to hire new grads with such a broad understanding of SAP ERP and an official "SAP Certified Business Associate with SAP ERP 6.0" certification on their resume before they start work.

     

    Textbook Contents:

    1. Introduction to Business Processes

    2. Introduction to Enterprise Systems

    3. Introduction to Accounting

    4. The Procurement Process

    5. The Fulfillment Process

    6. The Production Process

    7. Inventory and Warehouse Management Processes

    8. The Material Planning Process

    9. Process Integration

    10. Enterprise Asset Management and Customer Service Processes

    11. Management Accounting Processes

    12. Human Capital Management Processes

    13. Life Cycle Data Management Proess

    14. Project Management

    15.  BI/Analytics

     

    With our framework in place and no clue how much work was ahead of us, we partnered with John Wiley and Sons to publish a 600 page textbook for SAP University Alliances schools around the planet.  Now we just had to write the damned thing :)

     

    "Innovation is a team sport" 

     

    Our biggest challenge was to ensure that we met two somewhat conflicting goals:  (1) to cover all the official TERP10 content well enough to pass the certification exam (which is a beastly test), and (2) explain concepts, techniques, and principles to ensure students' understanding of integrated business process and ERP concepts.   It was kind of like writing two letters simultaneously, one in Greek with your left hand and one in Latin with your right hand.  We wanted to cover SAP in sufficient depth, but did not want the book to be about "SAP training."

     

    To pull it off, we had to have the help of several people from SAP.  Most importantly, we had to have the subject matter experts for the TERP10 course review every single sentence in the book to ensure we were covering all of the TERP10 concepts and explaining things the "right" way.  We were incredibly lucky that Charla Pachucki jumped at the chance to be a "super reviewer" for the textbook since she actually created TERP10 and "owns" the content for SAP Education.  We gave her "redline" power and sent over the first draft of every chapter for her to brutalize.  Surprisingly, she turned around her reviews in record time and had only a few, very prescient observations that made all the difference in explaining key concepts.  Probably the greatest compliment we've ever received as authors was when Charla said that she learned a thing or two from our chapters :)

     

    At the same time, we had to make sure that the content was academically appropriate and that we had adequately explained the concepts, principles, and techniques.  For that, we pulled together a group of rock-star professors from SAP UA schools from around the globe and made them super-reviewers.  They would get the second draft of each chapter (after Charla had her shot at it) and would go thru them with an "academic" lens to make sure everything would work for the mind of a 19 year old.  In parallel, we had a team of student interns who were helping with the creation and configuration of the new GBI company & client (see Corey's blog series) who would review the chapters as they were executing the homework exercises.  We decided to push out the official release of the textbook by a full year so we could print up "beta" versions of the book for use in a handful of classrooms (mostly the super-reviewers) to get feedback from actual classroom use before we finalized everything.  Here’s some of the professors who helped us greatly with feedback on content: 

    Anthony Pittarese, East Tennessee State University, Stefan Weidner, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, Jane Fedorowicz, Bentley University, Paul Hawking, Victoria University, Rod Sager, Grand Valley State University, Robert Szymanski, Georgia Southern University, Donna Everett, Morehead State University, William Mackinnon, Clarkson University, Earl McKinney, Bowling Green State University, Jeff Mullins, University of Arkansas, Al Pilcher, Algonquin University, Pamela Schmidt, University of Arkansas, Felicitas Ju Huang Seah, National University of Singapore, Venkataramanan Shankararaman, Singapore Management University, Catherine Usoff, Bentley College, indiganavale Vijayaraman, University of Akron, William Wagner, Villanova University, Tom Wilder, California State University, Chico, Lou Thompson, University of Texas-Dallas, Ross Hightower, Texas A&M. 

     

    Along the way, we had a huge amount of support from the Regional Contact Information globally:  Don Bulmer, Bob Lobue, Heather Czech, Gail Corbitt, John Baxter, Heino Schrader, Crispian Tan, Martin Gollogly, Rich Blumberg and many others were wonderful in helping us connect with professors and get feedback at SAP UAP events.

     

    We literally could not have finished the book without the help of everyone mentioned, and a few hundred more people (especially the Wiley team).  Everyone involved was giving their maximum effort for one simple reason:  We want to make sure that the next generation of employees hired by SAP customers and partners have the best possible preparation and understanding of integrated business processes and SAP so that they provide immediate value when they start work.  Hopefully, with this textbook, we'll be helping SAP customers get much more value out of their SAP systems by ensuring that all the people using and implementing their SAP systems have a better understanding of how processes are supported by SAP ERP.

    Project Muse

    A couple of weeks ago in Sapphire Orlando, SAP introduced the world to a new user interface, code-named “Project Muse”. I thought I'd give the SDN'ers a quick overview of what it is. Basically, Muse is a new interface thru which SAP users can access any SAP application directly from their Macintosh, Linux or Windows client device, and in the future from integrated mobile devices.

    Project Muse is being built from the ground up as an open, standards-based architecture-- using Flash and Flex technologies from Adobe/Macromedia. Project Muse can be easily extended to deliver applications, composites and any other service-enabled software from SAP and its partners or from other solution providers (think: ubiquitous business user interface for all your enterprise systems). The new client adds the richness of desktop software to the deployment efficiency of Internet software, delivering on SAP's vision of simplifying the user experience and the software ownership experience.

    I've created a short (8 minutes) demo of Project Muse so you can get a good sense of what it's capable of. There's also a fact sheet that was distributed at the Sapphire launch.

    Overview:

    Muse consists of two basic elements: The “Frame” and the “Canvas” .

    The Frame contains standard menu items across the top, thumbnails of open sessions and transactions for easy navigation back and forth between screens. On the left side of the canvas, users have role-based functionality.

    image

    Underneath the top level navigation and left side navigation in the frame, users see the Canvas , which displays the actual screen or transaction where they're doing their work. The canvas is a native representation of whatever technology the source application provides its screens in. So, if the transaction you want to consume in Muse is only available in HTML, the user will have the Muse Frame in Flash and the Canvas in HTML. You can display almost any type of standard UI technology inside the canvas.

    Here's a few examples of what the “native” screens look like inside the Muse frame.

    Dynpro Screen

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    Adobe PDF

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    HTML

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    Guided Procedure

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    Active X (MSFT Office)

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    WebDynpro/Visual Composer/Flex Screen

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    A quick FAQ:

    Where did the idea for Project Muse come from? Its an extension of the work we've been doing over the past couple years with Adobe on Interactive Forms and with Macromedia on the Flex client for WebDynpro and Visual Composer. Its another step SAP is taking to simplify the end-to-end user experience in SAP environments. Check out wikipedia for a description of why we thought Muse was a cool project name for such an “inspirational” user interface.)

    Is this a replacement for SAP GUI? Yes and no. It is clearly designed as the next-generation user experience for “professional” SAP users, but that's not to say that SAP will be getting rid of SAP GUI any time soon. Over time, SAP customers will be able to roll out Muse clients at their own pace, gradually eliminating the need for SAP GUI for increasing numbers of SAP users. That doesn't mean you have to switch all your users to Muse or that SAP will de-support SAP GUI. With Muse, SAP users will still get all the functionality they have today in SAP GUI and all your SAP GUI screens will work perfectly inside Muse. SAP does think that long-term, most professional SAP users will prefer the extended capabilities of Muse over SAP GUI, but ultimately its the user's choice how they want to interact with SAP. Its highly probable that a user can do purchase orders all day in Muse, do Employee Self Service in the Portal, book time and expenses in Duet and approve workflows on a mobile device. All the processes are happening in the backend SAP systems, but the user can choose the UI they prefer to interact with the business process. SAP is also putting a great deal of effort into making sure that Muse is so intuitive and familiar to users who are highly proficient with SAP GUI today, that it should only be a matter of a few minutes of familiarization for somebody to transition to Muse. And for the IT department, moving to Muse is pretty easy since its just the front-end that's changing, nothing in the backend systems has to be changed or modified to enable Muse.

    How does Project Muse work with the SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Portal? The Portal is a fundamental part of Muse (just like in Duet)-- its behind the scenes doing a lot of work (roles, security, etc), but the end user doesn't see portal content thru a browser, its displayed in the Muse canvas instead. By using the Portal framework together with Muse, we can do all the types of “management” functions that are in the Portal most people know today, but we can take it much further because with Muse on the actual client device, and not running thru a web browser, we're not bound by some of the typical limitations of web-based interfaces. Muse is actually the best of both worlds: Robust “thick client” capabilities that seamlessly consume and interact with web-based “thin client” capabilities. iViews and other Portal content are easily consumed in the Muse canvas, so you don't have to rewrite anything to display Portal screens inside Muse or duplicate any of the backend portal framework capabilities to use Muse. Its built on the same infrastructure, so its an easy extension from all your existing NetWeaver landscape into the Muse world.

    What are the SAP prerequisites? mySAP ERP 2005 and SAP NetWeaver 2004s. Why? Because of the services-based nature of Muse, it can only function if it has a backend application and infrastructure that is capable of providing and consuming enterprise services (and a lot of other really technical reasons). Muse isn't just a better looking SAP GUI, its an entirely different usage experience for SAP applications-- so there's a different paradigm involved with how the user “consumes” SAP and other non-SAP apps thru Muse. Muse supports all existing SAP user interfaces including Adobe's Macromedia Flash, Adobe PDF, HTML, Web Dynpro, and Dynpro screens. Whatever screens you have in an ERP05 system today is where you will start with Muse. Over time, SAP will be providing updated and “beautified” screens for its more heavily used horizontal and industry transactions (in bundles throughout the next several quarters). Customers and partners can also use the same WebDynpro and Visual composer tools that SAP is using to update any custom screens that they've created.

    What are the desktop prerequisites? Muse will run on Adobe's new Apollo framework, which is basically a merger of Acrobat Reader and Flash Player technologies. Over 98% of computers in the world already have the basic prerequisites for running Muse. SAP and Adobe will be jointly engineering the deployment model for Muse on Apollo over the next few months—stay tuned for more info about that. Because of the close collaboration with Adobe, Muse will look, feel and behave exactly the same on whatever client OS being used. However-- since its able to consume web services, there are some very cool possibilities for OS-specific extensions.

    How does Project Muse work with all the other SAP interfaces? Muse is one of multiple ways for end users to access SAP business processes. SAP doesn't think there's only one way to consume SAP, so we're providing multiple ways for users to consume SAP the way that they would prefer. Kind of like Burger King: Get SAP “your way”. Here's a list of a few of the different ways that end users can get SAP functionality, even if SAP is “hidden” behind the “face” of another technology.

       
    • SAP® xApp™ Analytics leveraging Adobe's Macromedia® Flex® software
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    • Duet™ software for use with Microsoft® Office and SAP software
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    • Interactive Forms based on Adobe® software
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    • SAP NetWeaver® Portal
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    • Mobile and voice solutions

    When can a customer or partner get their hands on Project Muse? SAP aims to make the new user interface available to customers running mySAP™ Business Suite applications, delivering it with mySAP ERP 2005 in waves through a series of enhancement packages. The first customers and partners will get access to beta versions later in 2006 and it will be made widely available in 2007.

    Can Project Muse be extended or modified by SAP customers/partners? Absolutely. Since its based on ubiquitous Adobe technologies and is entirely services based, customers/partners can have a great deal of flexibility to modify the Muse interface to their needs. You'll be able to “skin” it with branding and integrate almost any services-based functionality from other enterprise or web systems.

    How much does Muse cost? SAP hasn't announced any pricing details and typically doesn't discuss that type of thing in public. What I can say is that Muse will be very cheap to acquire, deploy and administer in an enterprise due to the ubiquity of the Adobe products that are already installed on everybody's computers today. (really, how much time does the IT department spend managing Flash Player or Acrobat reader?)

    Well, I'm officially amazed. The response to the NW4Dummies book has been overwhelming. When we came up with this crazy idea for a down-to-earth, easy-to-understand book about NetWeaver, I never could have imagined the huge success it would have.

    I don't know if its a comment on the lack of good materials about NW today or the complexity of NW, but so many SAP customers and partners came up to us at Sapphire and were just gushing with praise for the book. Makes it hard to be humble :)

    In general, we wrote this book as a "what is it" manual, rather than a technical manual. I would suggest the techies on SDN read Part 3, which contains the Developer Studio, Composite Application Framework and Visual Composer chapters. Pretty interesting for all the propellerheads out there.

    Really, this book is for anyone who wants to get their hands around what exactly NetWeaver is, what it's capable of and a few good examples of what it looks like in action. Everyone from the CEO on down can get a lot out of the book, its not just for IT guys. You can get all the nitty-gritty technical details here on SDN, so just enjoy flipping thru the book and don't strain your brain too much. Its supposed to be the "fun and easy way to learn".

    To make it easier for you guys to get your hands on the book, SDN will post several of the more techie chapters on the homepage over the next few months.

    And for those of you who have read this far into my blog, I've got a special surprise for you. SDN has purchased a few copies that you can get for FREE. Go to www.netweaverbook.com and type in the discount code "specialoffer" to get a free copy. You just pay for shipping. So order a copy for your boss or the business guy, so he'll stop asking you all those stupid questions :)

    Egos aside, I really would like to hear everyone's opinion on the book-- good or bad. We're thinking of maybe doing a few more SAP-related books in the Dummies style, so your vote counts!



    Just wanted to let all the SDN members out there know that the SDN team will be staffing the SAP booth at the Intel Developer Forum this week in San Francisco. It will be a great opportunity to come by and meet the SDN team, as well as learn more about how SAP and Intel are collaborating to help you build more powerful and lower cost enterprise systems.

    Ruediger Karl will be talking about SAP's Mobile Infrastructure and some cool stuff we're doing in the mobile space. Wednesday February 18th at 11:20am-12noon,
    Room 2024 Moscone West.

    You can go for the full conference pass for all 3 days for $1500, or get a discount pass for partial attendance for $100.


    Stop by and see us @ the SAP, BOOTH 102

    Intel Developer Forum
    Moscone West Convention Center
    San Francisco, CA
    www.intel.com/idf/us


    PS. The first person who posts comments on this blog will get a free full-conference pass :)

    So here's a quick description of some of the activities going on at SAP TechEd in Las Vegas and Basel, Switzerland.

    The SAP Developer Network will be inescapable at both shows. The SAP TechEd teams have been incredibly helpful in promoting SDN since there's such a huge value to the TechEd attendees. You could look at it this way, SAP TechEd is the "real-world" technical community for SAP and SDN is the "virtual" technical community for SAP. So, there's a whole lot of synergies between the two groups.

    SDN will have the largest booth at both events and will be registering users throughout the conference. You'll be able to get a full rundown of the features and capabilities of SDN at the booth. You'll also get to meet the SDN team and provide us with direct feedback on the types of things you'd like to see in the future.

    SDN will also be spotlighted in the keynote at both shows, so you'll get to see me on stage, doing my little tapdance.

    If you're coming to TechEd, make sure and stop by the booth to say hi, we'd love to meet you in person. If you're not coming to TechEd, WHY NOT!! You'll miss the best chance all year to get up to speed on all the new stuff from SAP. You don't want to be the newbie on the discussion board asking the silly questions! :)
    OK-- So I'm the marketing guy for SDN, but the good news is that I'm the ONLY marketing guy for SDN. From the very beginning, SAP decided that SDN would be a "Marketing Free Zone" and that we'd insulate the techies on SDN from the standard marketing crap that gets churned out and that we'd only post valuable techie information on the site.

    So far, we've been able to keep to that direction. The challenge we face is "How do we tell people about all the cool stuff on SDN without "marketing" to them?" Obviously, the SAP TechEd events are filled with our core group of users and we're planning on some great stuff to let everyone know about SDN at the shows. But we're still trying to reach out to even more people than that. So here's your chance to tell those "idiots" in marketing how to do their jobs.

    Tell me how we should connect with all the "techies" out there in the SAP ecosystem. We're not selling anything, we're not charging money and we're offering a whole lot of value. So how should we communicate that to several hundred thousand people and get them excited about SDN?

    Part 2 will deal with the actual launch plan at TechEd in Vegas and Basel, so stay tuned. JW

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