Jim Sinur

I have never been to TechEd before and I have not been to the new Phoenix Civic Center since a recent redo. Even though the PCC is in my home town, I have not had a reason to visit it until now. I was quite impressed with the expansion. It is certainly a top flight conference destination now and doesn’t have the “sin city” taint that some organizations try to avoid. It’s quite handsome as well

I plan on writing another blog tomorrow about SAP’s progress and vision on BPM and Business Rules because I have more sessions today to absorb, before I commit to something in writing. Today I will stick to the opening sessions and say there has been some progress in both BPM and rules. I will let you know how significant as soon as I gather all the facts I can.

The opening session, by Zia Yusuf cut to the strategy of SAP quickly. SAP plans on extending their clients investment in SAP by surrounding the SAP “best practices” with useful extensions to leverage the investment that clients have made. This was no surprise, but I secretly wish SAP would extend that strategy to include other needs of my clients. This is an inside out surround strategy.

Vishal Sikka worked hard to demonstrate that SAP had its finger on the major trends and were contemplating extensions with coolness. .There were demonstrations of cool layers over SAP transactions. There were cloud and Google extensions. There were new UIs, RFID and presences demonstrations. SAP wanted folks to know that they had the modern spin surrounding their solid best practices SAP accomplished it’s mission of how to make legacy look cool in a demo mode. Delivery is forth coming?

The coolness factor was bumped another notch when futurist and trend-meister, Ray Kurzweil, took stage with his jaw dropping “order of magnitude” trend charts for where information technology had been and where it would be going. Ray is convinced that we will see many “wow” factors as technology and software combine to extend life and make it better for all. It was very interesting and entertaining. Though Ray seemed to be mad at everyone who questioned his genius and predictions, he had many great points. . .

If you were not convinced that SAP was cool, at least they hung around with cool people like Ray. Maybe SAP might just be morphing into being and delivering cool? SAP has opened that door, now delivery is the proof of the pudding. Remember the management cockpit in the early 2000s? I’m still waiting.