On Demand — is it just “one damned thing after another?”

The struggles of on demand make that old Churchill chestnut seem appropriate.  Especially since they’ve made it to Business Week (here), which should be a buy signal according to my “Business Week Reverse Lock” theory.  It is a Sarah Lacy piece, so I figure that it has to be somewhat plugged-in to the Valley’s, ummm… wisdom.  And I [...]

Your Platform-as-a-Service Racing Form

Well, not really, but Charles has next best thing: a strong post Handicapping PaaS.  If you’re into noodling about the future of the on-demand “great game,” it is worth a close read. 
Go to the comments as well, some good back-and-forth as well as my take (comment five).

KM that works — ASAP for Implementation roadmap updates

A quick KM win anecdote and kudos to my team.  The director who leads our methodology and enablement team drove a simple, but effective, effort to incorporate the conversation from our internal social media into our external-facing methodologies.  A new set of accelerators - samples, templates, and white papers - was published based on frequency analysis of [...]

Updated ASAP for Implementation Roadmap — WBS features

Back to business after a few less-than-serious posts….  The latest ASAP for Implementation roadmap (overview page here, NOTE: requires registration to service.sap.com) was recently updated to include consistent alignment and presentation of WBS elements.  The latest version of the roadmap is the culmination of several years of effort to harmonize the ASAP methodology’s treatment of [...]

SAP ERP Upgrade Surge

Eric Samuels at the SAP Watch blog has an interview with Steve Strout, the new ASUG CEO (here).  This post focuses on the recent surge in upgrades in process or completed (the SAP press release is here).  A couple of key quotes:
First, it’s an extremely stable release. People are able to do a technical upgrade without [...]

SAP Bloggers

Got a chance to chat with Mike Prosceno, who heads up our social media efforts (his Accidentally On Purpose blog is here).   I’m looking forward to getting further involved as I can…can’t forget the day job, of course!
BTW, here are some of the other SAP folks blogging (apologies to those whom I’ve missed):

Craig Cmehil
James Farrar
John Burton
Manage By [...]

freerice.com (no, I haven’t started phishing or spamming…yet)

Pretty cool site combining vocabulary building and help for the World Food Programme.  www.freerice.com has a simple game that stretches one’s vocabulary skills.  Ten grains of rice per English vocabulary word you get right.  I got up to level 48 before “cracknel” (= biscuit) flummoxed me. 
Of course, many of the previous words were right up my [...]

Suddenly, SAP for Banking…

I like the title of this piece from Bank Technology News (here) on an SAP for Banking implementation just kicking off in Alberta, Canada. 
Not much to add other than to say that I’ve added four colleagues with bank or financials experience to my global team in the past 6 months and our banking hub grows apace. 
Hat [...]

Adding Predictive Analytics to SAP Business Objects

I spent a summer doing some consulting where I looked into visualization applications related to hardcore numerical analysis (e.g., FEA, CFD, etc.).  The power of the various software packages was stunning.
So it is neat to see that SAP has added some of this capability via BOBJ.  I didn’t realize that Business Objects already had an [...]

Enterprise SW value, complexity, and R&D

Dennis Howlett’s extended response (here) to Vinnie Mirchandani’s post demanding more simplicity — or begging Steve Jobs to find it — in enterprise apps (here).  Dennis effectively boils down Vinnie’s argument to this:
Why is it that despite all the interest in SaaS and Enterprise 2.0 that the industry offers so very little apparent bang per [...]