Ever wondered how an end user’s life can be made easier by helping them “discover” solutions deployed for use in the enterprise. How the life of an end user could be made easier by almost allowing them to do a natural language query about the information systems and business processes supported by solutions available in the enterprise. Why is there a need to find systems via cryptic three letter keywords still the norm when it comes to enterprise software and not a guided procedure like offering that leads to self discovery till you hit the wall of access privilege to the said discovered system?
Would it not be wonderful if the future SAP Solution Manager offering can provide this sort of functionality for end users along with capturing information about the state of the lifecycle of a particular solution deployment? With the changing nature of the workforce where highly computer aware and not just computer literate people entering the workforce in the future, a generation that is as familiar with the computer as they are with the air they breathe and the food they eat. Would it not be challenging for a solution provider like SAP to keep end users interested and coming back if this kind of functionality were supported by key solution offerings like SAP Solution Manager. It is not time that the solution manager offering emerged from its garb as an IT oriented offering to become a more end user focused offering as well.
The future infrastructure that manages solutions landscapes across a multitude of solution provisioning formats namely on premise, on demand, private cloud and public web needs to have this functionality of being able to even announce solution offerings to the end user and allowing for access to the same based on its understanding of the end user profile of work.
I feel that the future of enterprise offerings is to come out of the control framework of the IT department and make the end user empowered to articulate the specific needs from the solution a la iTunes for the enterprise as being spoken about by key SAP executives. iTunes allows the end user to be in control of articulating choice from among a multitude of offerings addressing the same subject and so also for enterprise problem solutions offered by information systems like SAP offerings. A solution like the SAP Solution Manager would be key in powering an iTunes like store format offering for an enterprise to enable end users to articulate choice when it comes to leveraging solutions make a day in their enterprise avatars easier.