During this year's Influencer Summit, the days were jam-packed with content. Those who needed a smoke or restroom break really had their work cut out for them. It wasn't easy to work even a short video shoot into the schedule, but I was determined to do it. I think these on-site videos, even if they are seat-of-the-pants, give a flavor for the event for those who weren't able to attend.
One such opportunity was grabbing a moment with Rainer Zinow, SVP, On-Demand Strategy for SAP. We hunted down a quiet space - an empty lunch room looked promising until the crashing of silverware picked up. So we grabbed a corner of a hallway to talk about two important topics: SAP's new OnDemand platform and the SAP Business ByDesign 2.6 release coming out in January 2011.
The hallway corner didn't end up being the quiet spot I was hoping, so I did some text summaries of the videos as well. In this blog, I'll include the videos and then some text bullets to hit some high points for you. Rainer is one of the best at SAP in breaking down the OnDemand and ByD developments, and there are a number of them to wrap our heads around.
In this first video, Rainer shares the highlights of his talk on SAP's new Platform as a Service (PaaS) strategy. He explains how SAP's "core" (ByDesign) and "edge" ("River") platforms have been united on one platform:
A few key points from the video:
- What SAP disclosed for the first time at the Influencer Summit is the overall platform strategy - everything SAP is doing is built on NetWeaver 8.0, which is optimized specifically for on-demand use cases.
- SAP has two "OnDemand workhorses" - one, based on Business ByDesign's architecture, is built to meet all the requirements when it comes to heavy transaction processing, using a big part of SAP's existing ABAP infrastructure. The second part, often called "River," is for lightweight Java extensions.
- The two OnDemand options share an integrated lifecycle management system, with a unified repository on top of that. The goal is to reduce TCO but making sure the bits and pieces fit together.
(For more on SAP's OnDemand strategy, see the "Jargon Buster" piece I wrote for ERP Executive, "Answering the Questions about SAP's OnDemand Strategy).
The second short video I did with Rainer covers some highlights of the Business ByDesign 2.6 release. He also shared a bit on version 3.0 (slated for summer 2011 release) and weighed in on recent ByDesign pricing controversies:
A couple video highlights:
- In addition to the much-anticipated SDK, version 2.6 also includes many functional enhancements. These changes were the result of analyzing every implementation project to date and documenting all of the ByD project activities. SAP's mission: 80 percent of these activities should be doable by the key ByD users without any programming.
- Version 2.6 adds ByD availability 3 new countries, Austria, Switzerland, Canada. With 3.0: Mexico and Australia. 3.0 development is well underway and a long list of customer requirements are being incorporated.
If you're looking for more on the Summit, I did a monster take for PAC, "Making Sense of the SAP Influencer Summit 2010," which will take up a decent chunk of your lunch break to read but has a lot of detail on SAP's strategy and challenges ahead. I have also posted on SCN my Video Blog: Interview with Vishal Sikka at the SAP Influencer Summit and some notes on that conversation, as well as a slide that illustrates some of the points Rainer referred to in this shoot.
