During the 40 minute video, we dug into some potent SAP virtualization topics, including:

- Does SAP virtualization matter?
- Why is SAP virtualization always an afterthought when SAP presents on its cloud strategies?
- Should the LVM tool be free? Is the pricing fair for smaller companies?
- How Tom got in some controversy with his LVM pricing blog and how SAP responded
- What are the key skills SAP Basis people need to be relevant in a virtualized SAP environment?
- Has SCN become more balanced towards Basis topics since the #sapadmin movement?
- What conferences are the guys going to? (SAP virtualization week, etc.)
- Why is SAP’s "Project Titanium" eagerly anticipated and why the slow rollout?
- Also relevant: fellow SAP Mentor Tammy Powlas‘ blog post on ASUG LVM webinar

(Note that you can also download an optimized audio file of our SAP virtualization discussion if you prefer to listen to the audio version instead. The audio version will also be added ot the JonERP iTunes podcast feed)

A few quick video notes: I am finding Google Hangouts to have the best overall sound and video quality of the options I have tried of late, which include Skype video (not as reliable for more than 2 parties on video), and Adobe Connect, which I used for the SCN SAP culture change videocast. Adobe Connect worked well for video but the audio quality was not as good. Hangouts have the most audio and video potential but it does require manual adjustment during the recording to make sure the right speaker is featured, something which I failed to do on this first video but will get right in the future. That’s why Chris is the feature speaker the whole time, because I screwed that part up while obsessing over other aspects of the taping. At least the Boobboo fanboys and fangirls will be happy.

Video Highlights

:45 Why is SAP virtualization so often an afterthought?

2:00 Can you virtualize productive SAP instances yet? Martin: Linux in the cloud supported by SAP. I do know of a couple of cases where people are doing this. We don’t have that much in the way of public cloud computing in the Australia, due to data jurisdiction issues. Graham Robinson has a workflow management system that runs on ABAP in the cloud, so cloud-based SAP can be done, but there are a number of issues, including data jurisdiction.

5:00 Tom: I agree with what Chris was saying, cloud is overshadowing SAP virtualization. Virtualization has been around for a long time, whereas "cloud" is more of the sexy topic now.

6:15 Should SAP make Landscape Virtualization Management free? Chris: I have a small difference of opinion with Tom on this point. I believe that LVM is reasonable to charge for, though I think customization dashboards should all be free. There’s two ways to look at it: if LVM is just an evolution of ACC, it should be free, but when you get into more robust system management functionality that LVM has, I believe that’s fair to charge for. VMware or Cisco, charge for more advanced functionality.

Martin: Some companies are already using Redwood or VMWare for a lot of these functions, and they would rather use those than an SAP tool, because those responsible for the infrastructure are already familiar with an existing set of tools. Chris: The ability to turn around and say, "I want to bring down nine application servers, scheduling that coordinated shut down," that in itself is worth an awful lot to a Basis administrator.

9:30 Tom: I’m not saying LVM should be free, but you should be able to make the case for reducing TCO. SAP is looking at how they can make that case, the key for LVM is to listen to customers and improve the tool, and make sure small customers can use it also.

10:30 Will customers who paid for ACC be frustrated to pay for LVM?  Chris: the functions that came with ACC are free in LVM as well, but for other features, such as customizable dashboards, there is a charge.

12:30 Martin: my view is that for a large organization, like Australia Post, with 90 or so SAP instances, SAP virtualization is a no-brainer. But if you have only 3 SAP instances, you don’t need it. Tom: I think it’s really up to the customer to get the most value out of the tool, and be careful what you’re buying. There are a lot of features in a lot of these tools. If you’re only going to use 25 percent, of the functions,  you might not get the same benefit - be careful and look into it.

14:45 Tom: there are some big company names in LVM rampup (LVM went into rampup late last year). Chris: for me, this year, it’s finally time to for SAP to do something with Project Titanium. They keep dangling it in front of us. I actually want to see it, it’s been around d for 18 months now, and I haven’t seen a new version of it is 6 months, and I want to check it out. For medium to long term management of Amazon instances, this is a no-brainer. The fact that SAP hasn’t had much to show with Titanium beyond slideware is disappointing.

18:00 Virtualization trade offs. Once you get to the point of scaling out to 20 Amazon servers, you’re almost better off running a small server yourself and having a Ruby or Perl script to managerit yourself, create a small Unix box and do it that way.

22:45 Tom’s controversial LVM blog post: did it lead to a good dialogue? Tom: it came out of something that was miscommunicated towards me. SAP is making an effort to make it better, to make a case for small customers as well for LVM, which was a major point of the blog post.  It .wasn’t about the functionality, price was the issue I was trying to address. Chris: SAP is actually listening - before, they would have sat and seethed, now you get a phone call from someone like Jonathan Becher. That’s the new SAP. Tom: I actually met some key players from SAP at TechEd, and we did we have a good talk on SAP LVM there.

26:30 Tom: I can see how LVM can work for the large enterprise, but how will the pricing work for the small enterprise customer? SAP LVM has a lot of functionality, but if you’re a small customer, if you’re not going to scale out to the same degree, your investment doesn’t make as much sense. You may get a reduction in TCO if you use everything, but if you use a small part of LVM, not so much. Chris: one option for smaller companies could be a shared services model, where you would actually get HP or IBM or CAP to implement the LVM for you. Martin: it goes back full circle, the SMEs will find it easier to work with Microsoft, that knows a bit about VM and can do this. .

29:30 Is SAP LVM a big skills transition for the Basis person? Martin: I started with R/3 last century, it was R/3 2.1 in those days, and you were either a Windows or Unix person. Now you have to know business management, virtualization to the guts of the hardware. You have to become deeper and broader. It’s your job to be able to analyze the response time down to a bad running program, bad network time, etc. There’s a new set of tools to learn. Jon: basically what you are saying is that if someone on your team asks you, "How is my system’s elasticity?" You don’t want to have a blank look on your face.

35:15 Is SCN becoming more balanced towards Basis conversations rather than mostly developer talk? Tom: with the #SAPadmin movement, we have developed some traction and interest around SAP admins on SCN. I think we have a better balance now.

37:30 The guys discsuss their spring conference plans relating to SAP virtualization, including SAP virtualization week. 

41:00 Chatty wrap-up.

Since that piece, Google Reader neutered its sharing capabilities in a small-minded nod to Google Plus, which Bob Warfield skewered in a classic post. For those who enjoyed following my newsfeed, that means there are some changes afoot. The good news is that Google Reader is still effective for "pulling" content in from a variety of sources. Just about anything you can RSS you can still get into Google Reader. The cumbersome news is that sharing is a bit more complicated. After a consult with fellow enterprise news curator Dennis Moore, I went with a new setup that is working well for me:

1. Consume my newsfeeds, essential bloggers and keyword searches with Google Reader as always.

2. Regularly prioritize and adjust my incoming Reader feeds based on the relevance and insight of the content I am subscribed to.

3. Share the best of that content on the Twitter @jonerpnewsfeed account (typically 9 to 12 content pieces a day in a couple of posting sessions). That part hasn’t changed. The process of getting to @jonerpnewsfeed has.

4. The very best of the content that I consider impactful, I personally tweet via @jonerp (usually about 3 pieces a day, whether the person who wrote it is someone I like or someone I can’t stand. Doesn’t matter. If the piece carries weight, I push it).

a. Since Google Reader doesn’t allow "sharing" anymore, I use the "send to" option, and send the content to my jonerp links on Delicious.

b. The jonerp Delicious account containts the posts along with brief commentary notes, keyword tags, and the author’s Twitter handle when I know it. (You can subscribe to the Delicious version of the "jonerpnewsfeed RSS"):

http://delicious.com/v2/rss/jonerp

c. The Delicious jonerp RSS feed is then fed through dlvr.it, which adds the #ensw (enterprise software) hashtag, shortens the URLs and posts no more than three news stories at any one time to the @jonerpnewsfeed in order to control the pace of article tweets.

d. There is the problem of the occasional great article that does not make its way into my Reader because I am not subscribed to the feed. In some cases, I solve this by subscribing to the feed in question, but in other cases, that doesn’t work (for example, an RSS feed for a huge site like CNN I don’t want in my Reader). I used to be able to use Google Chrome’s "share" plug in for that, now I use the Delicious Firefox plug in, and I share those articles to the jonerp Delicious page and the process carries on from there.

There’s no real loss to this revised process, except that I lose the benefit of having a comprehensive article store in Google Reader searchable by keyword, since some of the articles never make it into Reader if I share them directly to Delicious when I’m not subscribed to the feed. The upside is that Delicious has a very nice search and the jonerp shared article base is now public for those hearty souls who want to browse the tags and articles.

I thought you might be interested in a few refinements I have made to my Reader setup in the months since I published the piece. (my YouTube video series on the Power of Pull for SAP professionals goes into how I originally set this all up):

- I have found that there is some crucial content that I need access to that I can’t RSS, for example backchannel email threads from groups I belong to like the SAP Mentors and Enterprise Irregulars. There is also the occasional specialty newsletter that simply has no RSS option. While you can subscribe to that type of stuff in your regular email client and filter it into folders, I have found that having a separate gmail account simply for tracking incoming content is really useful. I have that tab open next to my Reader and so that’s all my "pulled content" in one place. This is one more step towards reducing my main email account to the bare minimum of essential private correspondence - no newsletters go into my main email anymore.

- I still have my Reader carefully prioritized into the topics I need to be on top of. The top priority is the stuff that might contain items that will rock my world, so I need to be checking them frequently, at least once a day if not moreso.

- The point of such prioritization is that on busy days, or weeks, I need to be able to focus only on the folders where the most important content is. The less relevant topics can pile up with articles until I have the chance to sort through them.

- There is no way to order your feed folders on Google Reader except by alphabetizing, but that’s enough as long as you’re willing to be clever in your folder labelling.

- Unlike those who have given up on their newsreaders because they can’t keep up with them, I don’t mind falling behind on certain topics, it’s a great chance to revisit them later and see if I paid any kind of time delay price by waiting on any of them. If I did, I move that blogger or feed up higher in my Reader. Or if that blogger has taken to posting shoddy stream-of-consciousness whatever, I’ll move them further down the Reader.

- I have found that subscribing to a handful of select peeps in the SAP field across time zones in Twitter is a nifty way to get a read on what the issues of the day are. I pick one or two folks in each major time zone and subscribe to all of their tweets. When needed, I can quickly scroll through them and get a feel for the issues of the day. The point here is to get a feel for the issues, then I can hop onto Twitter and/or Hootsuite and join the conversation, or, if there’s no pressing topics in play, plow on with my projects and deadlines.

- Subscribing to an individuals’ tweets is an RSS hack now, and the format constantly changes so I’m reluctant to post it here. Contact me personally if you want the latest iteration that is working for me.

- You can now subscribe to a Google Plus public feed, though not through Google officially, it’s a third party hack as well. I have a Google Plus folder that is not a high priority folder, but it’s an additional area I can check. I subscribe to a select group of folks who I perceive as adding unique things to G+ rather than frantically cross-posting, and who are saying things there they don’t already post on Twitter.

- For my own content, I still run a Yahoo pipe that pulls all my content into one JonERP Feedburner feed you can subscribe to via RSS or email. That feed will give you everything from the eight or so places I post (including Enterprise Irregulars), with the exception of JD-OD.com. You get the shows we put out on my JonERP Feedburner feed, but to get all the JD-OD.com video content you’ll need to subscribe to the relevant feeds on JD-OD.com. The iTunes podcast feed is still there for the JonERP audio podcasts.

While Google’s neutering of its Reader functionality was a sad sign of the times, I’m glad that such free tools are still available to create our own "information portals" rather than settling for the increasingly hectic, marketing-bloated and generic interfaces we see on Twitter and Facebook. I’m can’t hide my increasing disdain for the herd mentality I see on these sites. The idea that "liking" the things that fly across activity streams makes the world a better place is, to me, almost an apocalyptic idea. Increasingly, Facebook resembles a high school cafeteria and I’m skirting clear of it in favor of the smokey fringes and deriving the same value from mining the edges that I did back in high school. 

I don’t reject these web sites as much as I push myself to unplug from them long enough for the deeper kind of listening that, in my world anyway, is the price of the ticket if we want to truly advance conversations instead of preening for Klout with a fistful of likes.  My hope is that the creative work that results from the cycle I have chosen (listen -> curate -> share -> -> reflect -> create) makes a good argument for the less trodden path. Or at least you can learn from my misadventures.

Video highlights

:50 Vijayan’s current role as General Manager of operations at ERP Logic. He’s also responsible for the ByD practice at ERP Logic India.

1:30 How Vijayan got started with the ByDesign SDK.  He worked with SAP Labs from 2003-2011. In 2008, he got involved working on the adapter to generate the web services for ByD. For a partner to develop any add-ons, web services are a very important part, so he moved into SDK development with SAP in 2008.

2:40 What are the key skills needed to succeed with the scripting language? How much ABAP experience, if any, is needed?  You may be surprised, but we don’t need an ABAP knowledge, you have to know object oriented concepts and .Net syntax, you don’t need to know any ABAP.

3:10 What kind of Microsoft background is useful? It’s nice to have .Net technology, but it’s a basic object-oriented program. OO knowledge and analytical thinking is the key. C# is also helpful, but not necessary. Object-oriented background is the key.

3:50 ByDesign is now officially on ByDesign 3.0 - what are the capabilities of the SDK as of this release? For the 3.0 SDK, SAP wasnted to target the last mile to enable the partners to work on ByDesign and add any functionality needed by the end customer. So they came up with new technology called “one off solutions.” That’s the biggest advantage to 3.0. There are also some new useability features in UI to help the partners develop better UIs.

6:28 What kinds of apps would be most appropriate for partners to work on building right now with the SDK? What apps would be viable to work on for a good value to customers now? (mashups versus heavier duty industry functionality, etc) It depends on the customer, it could be a simple mashup or a more complete app, but finding the gaps in the solution is the key. Last mile solutions might make the most sense to focus on right now. Each and every business has a different set of requirements. If the partner needs to get a deal done, they may need to do custom development for that customer. The one-off solution is very important in this model.

8:20 Is a one-off solution worthwhile for partners? It’s always possible to convert an add-on to a scaleable solution, so from a resource point of view, there isn’t much different between a one-off solution and an add-on.

9:10 Is the SDK robust enough for an industry solution? Vijayan: Yes it is possible, we haven’t tried that yet but we think it’s possible from 3.0 going forward.

9:40 What features is Vijayan looking ahead to in the future with the SDK that aren’t there now (multi-language support, etc)? Vijayan: As a partner, what I would like to have in the SDK is the debugging functionality. We also want the SDK to be not only a web service provider, but a web service consumer.

10:30 Why pulling in web services into future functionality can be valuable to developers, as opposed to relying on middleware. Vijayan’s example: a QuickBooks API into ByD via a web service could be valuable, there are workarounds now but direct integration would do the trick.

12:10 What kind of documentation is available now for the scripting language and for mobile development? Vijayan: the ByDesign documentation is fantastic. We have end to end documentation for all the SDK components. Mobile development isn’t part of the SDK, it’s part of the existing UI via Silverlight, and the documentation is there for that as well.

13:26 What type of training is needed on the SDK? How much did it cover the ByD standard functionality? I traveled to Palo Alto to train SDK developers. The key is to know the basic ByDesign functionality, what a business object is, what an analytics report means. They need to spend a couple of days understanding that. For a skilled domain expert with a good object oriented background and maybe some C #, two days for a week max might be sufficient.

14:50 What advice would you have for SAP developers who want to learn more about the SDK? Vijayan: If they are already ByDesign partners, go through the SDK documentation. Currently, the SDK is not rolled out to the public. It’s only available to some of the partners right now, some of the solution partners. It’s not available for everyone to try it out. But in the meantime, even if you don’t have access to the SDK, dig into the ByDesign functionality and architecture.

16:17 Where would you like to be in one/two years time with ERP Logic and the ByD SDK? Vijayan: With ERP Logic, we are trying to identify the functional gaps in ByDesign and develop an add-on solution. But in the meantime, we have gotten a lot of customer requests for one-off solutions which we are now evaluating.

17:10 Vijayan will be attending SAP TechEd Bangalore. Jon’s advice to SAP: get Vijayan an SAP TechEd Bangalore SDK session!

17:50 What advice would you have for SAP on getting more partners involved with the SDK and getting developers more excited about the SDK as we head into TechEd? Vijayan: SAP should continue in restricted mode for the next couple of releases it should be robust enough to handle industry verticals, one-off solutions, and add-ons, and when it’s robust enough for all those things, it should roll out it for all the solutions partners.

I’d like to thank Vijayan for his time for this interview. This was a good step forward in understanding the capabilities of the ByDesign SDK and sharing it publicly. Hopefully there is much more to come.

I’ll embed the video here. Below, you can see a bunch of summary comments, additional links, and other consumption options:

Dennis Howlett, my video partner/JD-OD.com video wizard, is working on some shortened versions of this video shoot for posting on JD-OD.com. You can see part one here. The audio-only optimized sound file will be posted on the JonERP iTunes feed shortly. You can also download the SAP mobility audio file (right-click).

To get more flavor for the views expressed in the view, be sure to track John’s blog and Kevin’s as well. Both contribute to the mobility section on SCN from time to time as well.

As usual with JonERP podcasts, I have put together some detailed summary notes if you want to skim the highlights here.

Video Podcast Highlights

:50 John’s lingering mobility questions: The nice thing about Sapphire was that it laid out a strategy and a roadmap that we hadn’t seen publicly prior to that. But there were questions: when is this product ready for primetime and implementation? What is the gap between roadmap strategy and implementation? How are the mobility projects going to converge on an overall platform? And how are SAP going to monetize mobility, and will customers buy a platform from SAP since they are used to buying solutions?

2:30 Kevin: Mobility is a top three IT priority, but there is a huge difference between everybody wanting mobility at the line of business and corporate IT knowing what to do across the enterprise. Across the enterprise these guys are still frozen. Everyone is implementing mobility at the line of business, but corporate IT is still struggling with it. It’s going to take a lot of apps on the Sybase Unwired Platform, but before that, I think people are going to be frozen.

3:54 John: We’re starting to see a shift. We’re building out 14 potential mobility use cases for one of SAP’s largest customers, trying to align the apps strategy with what they will build themselves. That is being driven by corporate IT, and I think that’s because of the high level of demand from Line of Business that you described Kevin.

4:40 Jon to the guys: So are customers clear on what SAP’s roadmap is? I’m clearer on the apps coming from SAP then I am on the roadmap. I’m still not clear on SUP 2.0 versus what’s coming in SUP 2.1, how Gateway fits in, etc? John: Yes I think customers are confused, but there is clarity in SAP’s messaging that isn’t hitting the market, and that’s where local SAP offices come into play. To really understand an organizations’ mobility strategy, you have to understand the line of business demand and make it coherent. Kevin: they have to have a LOB strategy before middleware makes sense at all; they have to get the aggregate demand from the business units figured out. From there, they can reverse engineer the middleware needs to support the demand. Afaria in mobile device security and data security is a no-brainer, everyone believes they need Afaria or some equivalent, it’s where SUP fits in that gets confusing. John: There isn’t a clear understanding of Afaria’s capabilities here in the UK. They understand the need for more devices, but then, along with that comes the need for better device management.

7:55 Kevin: As you said and I said earlier, device management is a no-brainer, but what do you do beyond that with synchronization, etc. Companies seem to understand security more than the other mobile middleware issues. John: line of business demand for mobility can be very strong, including "we’re going with or without you." And IT says, we’ve got security, governance, and synchronization concerns." So they need a cohesive sense of line of business demand. Kevin: in the SAP mobility vendor ecosystem with partners, we’re hearing different numbers - we’re hearing 19 mobile apps, or 40, or 100 new SAP or Sybase apps coming out. In my discussions with the ISV community, I’ve seen many of these ISVs stepping back because they’ve heard about 100 apps coming out and they aren’t sure where to fill the gaps or add value, and they don’t want to end up competing with SAP. I’ve talked to several mobility ISVs taking a pause.

10:33 Jon to Kevin: so isn’t that a serious problem, if SAP has said partners will build 80-90 percent of the apps, how does that get resolved? John: in the past, with industry solutions, this was very similar. SAP will build out the apps, and then partners will build around that, and then in some cases be acquired. Kevin: It depends on what SAP wants to do. If they really want the ISV and the ecosystem to be aggressively building out apps now, they need to be a lot more clear on what they are going to develop and what they are not. Jon: Last time I heard there were 2 apps, on SUP 2.0. Built by SAP, and then numbers around 20-30 in the apps store including partners. EcoHub is the current apps store for mobility apps. Kevin: "Enterprise Apps Store" is a dominant term in the discussion with SAP. They believe it’s an infrastructure and framework for thousands of apps down the road, which will include a store. They are really making a big deal of about building a platform to support these apps.

14:00 Jon to Kevin: SUP 2.0 this is in ramp-up now, with SUP 2.1 coming in September. John: SUP 2.0 is coming out in GA anytime now. At Sapphire, we heard a September timeline to go into ramp-up with 2.1, and that’s the Gateway supported release. My sense is that SUP 2.1 is the real "coming of age." Kevin: At Sapphire, Nick Brown told us a few apps are coming out now, and then 16 more with the HTML5 wrapper in 2.1. Most of the apps we saw at Sapphire were built on the 2.1 platform. John: From an apps perspective, we’re looking at next Sapphire for when we’ll hopefully have a big batch of apps on this new platform.

16:19 Jon to the guys: So what’s your take on Gateway and its impact on mobility, or is it more HTML5 and general SUP 2.1 stuff? John: Gateway here and HTML5 go hand in hand with SUP. If you want to build an online value app from a live system, the Gateway/HTML5 combo will be golden. With more heavy duty apps, SUP will come into play with deeper user experience, complex enterprise apps with offline capabilities. Kevin: In Australia, there is a big emphasis on the need to do offline and online synchronization. There are still connectivity issues in many countries, so if you need apps from a global perspective that work in all areas, all those areas require rich clients that can operate offline/online. Startups in the states blow that off sometimes, but I believe you absolutely need that. John: that’s not going to go away in the short term or even in the mid-term. Plus there are data replication choices with the SUP platform. There are two options, one is data replication from a database table into the mobile device, and we also have the MBO option, to use existing SAP functions to push it out to the device. If you’re using the MBO, you still need the NetWeaver Mobile platform, so that’s not going away anytime soon.

19:43 Kevin to John: So what’s happening with NetWeaver Mobile - what’s happening and how is it going to be absorbed into SUP? John: It may not be so easy to just compile NetWeaver Mobile into the SUP platform and compile it. The NetWeaver Mobile orchestration engine handles some complexity. They are focusing on HTML5, Odata support with Gateway, and apps, and they are not focusing as much on NetWeaver Mobile in the meantime, and that makes sense. Kevin to John: so is there a viable alternative to SUP? John: Well there are other vendors with point solutions and platforms, but within the SAP space, the SUP platform is the main option. Our projects on SUP are going along. The issue is: how do you afford the platform?

22:15: Jon: Let’s look ahead to TechEd and engaging developers: should SAP go the Apple route? Should they give the platform away? Kevin: They charge for NetWeaver and they are going to need to charge for this. I started using the predecessor to Sybase Unwired Platform in 2004 and we did 200 mobility solutions back then and it was worth the OEM license. Whatever model they use, there is a great deal of value. But the challenge is, outside of an application, people don’t see a value in mobile middleware. I would suggest SAP ties the fees they need for SUP into an actual app. John: I’m going even stronger than that. The demand now is from the line of business and the consumption model for consumers have changed, they are used to paying dollars per app or dollars per month. I think that SAP can’t afford to think they will monetize the platform. That’s not how they monetize the Business Suite either, they do it by user. To try to charge by the platform goes against how SAP traditionally has sold. I truly believe they should create the apps store, create it quick, and start charging dollars per apps per month. Kevin: and if they can be clear that there are opportunities for ISVs, they should be clear on what those are. John: ISVs will wilingly pay like Apple charges in exchange for validation.

26:22 Jon to the guys: What will make a successful TechEd from a mobility angle? John: TechEd is all about developer enablement. They want deep dives and hands on. Kevin: I share those views and at the same time, I’d say we need answers. If you can lay out an answer and say here’s the use case, and here’s the working models so you are getting them in a position so they can executive and implement. If you simply say there are a thousand ways you can do it, that doesn’t help. But if you give them a few viable options they can bring back to their companies, they can make a buying decision and start executing. This way, you’re directing people down a guided path. Jon: I would go one step further. I think SAP is making a bit more time on the glamorous long term vision. Here’s the practical use cases that add value right now, here’s what partners can do, here’s the customer options for buying currently.

30:00 Kevin: On my blog, I said that Sybase has to be very clear on what they will support. They can’t be fuzzy. You can’t say Afaria supports Microsoft if you don’t support Windows Phone 7. You can’t say you support all Android devices, they need to narrow it down to what is supported now. This helps the buyer to make a clear decision. It helps the companies who are actually implementing. John: I’ve seen some roadmap slides that have Playbook on them, why even invest in a platform  that was dead before it was born?

31:50 Jon: It will be interesting to see how Sybase presents itself to bloggers, analysts, and customers. We had some good dialogue with Sybase at Sapphire, I hope it continues. Kevin: I’m seeing a lot of progress. Our good natured ribbing or criticism should not be mistaken for lack of progress, there has been quite a lot of it. John: SUP 2.0 is a platform in which we are delivering projects, and that’s a big change from 1.5. Jon: There seems to be a coordinated effort across all SAP releases and how mobility developments with Sybase are trickling into all the platforms in a coordinated way, and BusinessObjects integrated into SUP in the next six months, that’s what we’re looking for.

35:00 Jon: I think SAP will argue is that it’s not easy to manage the landscape. I think SAP will argue that landscape management and integration to back end ERP data is the key added value. Kevin: I’d like to see more on Sybase 365 and how it fits into everything, outside the western economies you see a huge demand for SMS based business apps, and how do some of the Sybase apps like Afaria work in the cloud? How does that fit into the model as well? John: For me, it’s everything we discussed. For TechEd, it’s all about getting the developers to use the  product. Getting clear on the roadmap. That level of honesty within the unwired platform will reap huge benefits. Getting 2.1 out and getting the apps out is key. Jon ends with a TechEd teaser.

Here’s the video:

Download the optimized audio file

Audio and Video timestamps:

0:00 Opening banter and wisecracks - John shows off his Sybase mug, riffing on Sting Tweetfest re: customizing his songs for SAP. As in, dedicating "Can’t Stand Losing You" to  those who are "looking for OSS Notes gone wrong."

2:50 Why is the HANA in-memory story so important? SAP is talking about huge sales pipelines for HANA. Are they going to be able to sell at these levels for a product that is not released yet? What do we need to see at Sapphire Now, and what can SAP do to get across a convincing HANA story that is not overhyped? Will there be a focus on speed and big revenues or will the discussion hone in on customer use cases? What about HANA’s analytical apps? Will they address a customer need and spur adoption? What about speed? is that the right messaging focus for HANA?

9:50 What’s at stake for SAP with mobility at Sapphire Now 2011? What’s the latest with Project Gateway and HTML 5? What does Sybase Unwired Platform 1.5 look like? What kind of mobility announcements and platform developments will be shared at SAPPHIRE? How can SAP energize the mobility ecosystem that has been disrupted by the Sybase acquisition? And why does John give SAP a rough time about the lack of Sybase executives and product leads at SAP shows this year?

15:30 BI 4.0 - will it be announced in GA (General Availability) at Sapphire Now 2011? What’s the impact of BI 4.0? Is it as significant as SAP says? What about the hype over the Semantic Layer and "self-service" BI, empowering business users? Will the Semantic Layer liberate business users?

19:20 On-demand - "SAP is betting its future on ByDesign" - Appleby. Does this effect the future of the Business Suite as well? Will we see customers on stage given the number of live ByD customers? What about the "ByD for subsidiaries" push - will that happen at SAPPHIRE NOW? Sales OnDemand - will John Appleby kick tires with the application at Sapphire Now? Will the "design thinking" and socialized, role-based focus take hold with SAP’s other Line of Business On-Demand Apps?

25:20 Tips for making the most ouf Sapphire Now on the ground - including demo pods to visit, such as SAP’s internal IT team demonstrating their latest internal use cases.

After I published my blog, there were some significant posts about the event, particularly around HANA and in-memory. Tony De Thomasis, one of six bloggers (and four SAP Mentors) who attended the show, published a useful BW-HANA roadmap assessment. At the Run Better SAP Boston event a few weeks later, Dennis Howlett and I shared videos which touched on HANA including our "bike shed" show debrief special, and a classic face-off between SAP Mentor Vijay Vijayasankar of IBM and Executive Board Member Vishal Sikka about HANA versus Watson.

On our March "SAP Mentor Monthly," several SAP Mentors, including Mico Yuk, myself and Thomasis, discussed the BI 4.0 event. Ingo Hilgefort added more commentary. (see the live stream replay). Barney Beal of TechTarget/SearchSAP.com posted an event wrap of the Boston Run Better SAP event that included information from SAP on the impact of HANA from an SAP skills perspective. The "HANA skills topic" is one you can count on me returning to in future JonERP blogs and podcasts. The Business Intelligence blog category on SCN has a bunch more info. And if you like to look under the BusinessObjects and BI hood and get a little grease on your fingers, the Diversified Semantic Layers guys are issuing some fun and informative podcasts. Without further ado, here’s the original post:

For me, last week was about trains, Marriotts, and rapid-fire SAP events. One biggie was the BI 4.0 launch in New York City. The launch was embedded into the Run Better SAP event that took place in New York City on February 23. I attended SAP’s blogger track for the event, which spanned two days and included additional deep dives, customer interviews, and influencer sessions that produced their own sets of highlights and lowlights. Prior to arriving, I heard the usual skepticism from fellow “influencers” about whether the 4.0 event was really a newsworthy SAP event.

To me, this conversation about technical evolution always circles back to skills development - without the right skills, how can you support a (gulp) "intelligent enterprise?". I asked Bussmann that question, and Howlett filmed Bussmann’s response and the follow up questions. The conversation pointed towards skills trends all SAP professionals should be paying attention to. Not to mention implications for certification that the Certification Five will certainly be tracking.

Check out the nine minute video, and then scroll down for some notes and analysis:

I’ve been told this video talk was not so easy to follow if you weren’t on site for the build up to this part of the conversation, so here’s some summary notes:

:00 Bussmann’s response: After I joined SAP last year, we looked at our application delivery model - it was not scaleable. Then there is the matter of changing technology due to key acquisitions, including Bob J and Sybase. These impact how we look at job profiles on the value chain. So we asked ourselves, what could we do to scale these skills transformations,  partnering with our consulting organization and third parties?

:56 Bussmann: What we realized is that process knowledge, business domain expertise and solution architecture were absolutely critical functions that we needed to keep in-house, and drive more talent towards. The SAP business units are looking at us as advisors, not only for technical implementations, but from a functionality and process perspective. The solutions we provide must be technically sound, but it also must fit the overall architecture.

1:27 What we’re doing right now is organizing our maintenance and support on three skill levels. We are moving more domain expertise into maintenance and support, and we’re also working with third parties. Our third and highest level of support skills is still 50 percent in-house, because those are the teams that share  what they have learned with our development organization. If I were a customer, I would be more aggressive than 50 percent, but in our situation, that third level provides direct feedback to our development teams.

On the build side, I make sure we get the right resources into the build organization: domain business analysts, solution architects, project managers and enterprise architects. The technical consultant is less in focus - that type of skill set is becoming a commodity…we’ve been moving people into business-related activities. We started the project with a tight operating model, looking at the skill sets needed, how they are distributed across job categories, and how we move people into new roles? We are now moving into upskilling, investing in people by job categories, by domain, by process. This is not a fast process - it will happen over 12 months, it won’t happen overnight.

4:15 Howlett: Can this be externalized into the SI community? Does this lead us into a form of training and certification that can be brought to the marketplace?

Bussmann: Yes - we want to certify our solution architects, our business analysts, our enterprise architects, to confirm they are on the right skill levels.

5:04 Howlett: can this type of skills movement you are making be packaged and scaled?

5:16 Bussmann: Our field service organization is embracing that - to enhance the categories like technical consulting and application consulting, that’s where SAP is heading, but we need a delivery model. To bring this to the external market is a different question. I’ve been in the sourcing business for over 10 years - coming to SAP, I realized we have to change the way we operate. I can’t hire 200-300 people to cover the entire process, it takes too long, it’s too expensive. Focusing on key skills categories and makin sure the right people are certified is the way to do it.

6:34 Howlett: Are you sharing this with SAP Education?

Bussmann: We are working with SAP Education - what we have developed is an overall accepted model in SAP, but to recommend it for external customers - I don’t think we are there yet. To be honest, we have lots of intensive discussions internally on this topic now.

7:07 Bussmann: I see two views coming together, one is that we want to keep all the roles and skills together, and I’m saying no, we have to focus on core expertise, scale it and standardize. HR is supporting that. I can tell you that it’s an interesting internal discussion, but to share it with our customers is a different issue.

8:00 Reed: I would encourage you to keep the ultimate vision of bringing this to to customers - It’s not easy to certify what you’re talking about, it’s much more than technical skills. If you can take a leadership role in that area, it would have a major impact on how certification is perceived.

8:34 Bussmann: What I’m hearing today is almost a confirmation of how we should structure our internal workflows. The sourcing and delivery model we are using can work.

Analysis: My take

1. For SAP: Bussmann is leading SAP’s IT group through a skills tranformation that is on track with where SAP skills should be headed:

- As core SAP (and IT) skills become commoditized, they are outsourced to partners for cost savings.
- The focal point is on the techno-functional skills convergence we see in new job roles like enterprise architects and solution architects. New roles blur traditional lines between "developer," "admin" and "functional" and focus instead on delivering business value from IT, incorporating business intelligence, mobility trends, in-memory technology, and next generation UI know-how. These are the new collaborative "rock stars"/team builders/architects that are not outsourced but are cultivated internally as the vital bridge between business and IT. They are multilingual if that word can be applied in a technical and business sense.
- The hardest part of this transformation is figuring out how to "scale" these skills transitions, since SAP professionals have individual skills strengths/weaknesses that make broad upskilling difficult. Nor are these emerging skills combinations easy to scale or multiply.

2. For SAP Certification: Bussmann’s upskilling strategy has big implications for SIs and SAP’s services partners. Even more challenging than internal skills transitions will be providing guidance to partners and enforcing a new level of accountability. The way to do this is via SAP certification, through partner certification, individual certification, or both. Bussmann’s team can have a major impact on where SAP certification needs to go - if these internal models for moving beyond basic technical competencies into "problem-solving architects" can be firmed into a meaningful skills roadmap for partners to apply and individual SAP professionals to aspire to.

3. For SAP Professionals: Bussmann’s team’s approach to skills transformation confirms much of the advice on enhancing your SAP skills that is recommended on JonERP.com. For individuals, there may not be an  immediate opportunity to participate in an organizational skills transformation. Don’t wait for that - begin your SAP skills transitions now. Several lessons from Bussman’s talk:

- We are all "consultants." Doesn’t matter if your work is customer-facing or not. The best consultants understand product roadmaps and not just a small focused expertise. The best SAP consultants are moving from "specialists to  "advisors." Advisors are less concerned with showcasing their virtouso technical talents and more concerned with leaving project teams more informed and motivated than they found them. Those internal SAP pros that become "advisors" are more essential to projects and less vulnerable to outsourcing and skills commodization.

- We all need skills roadmaps. It’s not enough to be a developer or an admin or a functional specialist. We need to be thinking in terms of a continual evolution, with advanced roles like "Solution Architect," "Process Expert," and "Hands-on Project lead" pointing the way.

(If the video didn’t play properly for you, you can see that and many more worthwhile TechEd videos on Dennis Howlett’s YouTube channel).

First: on the Certification Five front, we’ll be updating on our dialogue with SAP on improving SAP certification, as well as sharing more results from our SAP certification survey. In Berlin and in Vegas, there will be a C5 session in the Expert Networking Lounge. We’re hoping to broadcast those virtually as well, or at least tape them for replay. Martin Gillet has already posted a blog with our Certification Five TechEd schedule so check that out for details.

I’m going to do my usual Expert Networking Lounge sessions, though this year they limited the sessions from three to two, so I had to make a tough call and eliminate my BPX skills chat. Hopefully in the future I’ll be able to revive that one given that TechEd is the perfect place to grapple with the technical/functional SAP overlaps. That’s the gap where so many project struggles live, and in view, filling that gap is not only part of what TechEd should be about, but where many of us should be headed in terms of our SAP skills development. But this year, that session got the axe. The SAP TechEd web site doesn’t seem lo list the session descriptions, so you can see these here.

Tuesday, October 18th, 1:30 pm:

EXP266: SAP Social Networking Chat: Career Success Through Community Building

“This session was inspired by two things: first, the impact I have seen on the careers of those SAP professionals who have adopted social networking tools in their professional/personal lives, and the sense that SAP career success is changing to include more of an emphasis on "how have I served the community" versus a "broadcasting" mindset towards floating resumes. The challenges of finding the right SAP career path are not as simple as getting a Twitter account. The conversation goes much deeper, to more soulful (and strategic) questions about passion for your work, ultimate professional goals, being a part of a meaningful (and sustainable) work culture, and how to move towards those goals in a way that impacts the community rather than the traditional ‘tunnel vision’ approach to career planning. At any rate, we can talk about it, call "B.S." on the hype around this stuff, and share lessons learned.”

One excellent thing about this session: my fellow SAP Mentor Vijay Vijayasankar will be co-hosting it with me. Vijay has compelling views on SAP skills development and is always good for thoughtful insights and an incisive comment that helps to make the discussion stick.

Thursday, October 20th, 1:30 pm:

EXP 267: SAP Tech Skills Chat: Career Strategies in the Outsourcing Age

“Perhaps no one in the SAP community is more passionate about their work than the true "SAP techie." Yet the SAP technical career path is frought with concerns about the global sourcing of technical skills. Once our skills become commodities, we are vulnerable to outsourcing, which reduces the rate on the skills pay, decreases available openings, and creates cookie cutter work roles. But it’s not time to bail out! There are highly rewarding SAP technical career paths out there. Let’s talk about those individuals who are making their mark on the technical side of SAP and find out what we can learn from them in terms of their career progression, a knack for staying ahead of the curve and having real impact on their projects - impact that makes them integral rather than commodities. A chance to share concerns, rate frustrations, and put our heads together on success tactics.”

Note that if you’re logged into the SAP TechEd Agena Builder, you can add these (or any other) Expert Networking Lounge sessions to your schedule and make sure they don’t conflict with other scheduled workshops you’ve signed up for. I’m hoping that this session will also include the Enterprise Geeks as it did last year. In fact, both of my sessions occur right after the Enterprise Geeks live podcast recording in the same location. Last year, this session had an impact on me because after we completed the taping, a couple listeners walked up to me and told me that they had just had their jobs outsourced. There’s no easy way to advise people who are in that situation. The hope of a talk like this is that we can improve our chances in the long haul by making smart moves.

So that’s SAP TechEd. Of course, I’ll be tweeting live, and you can track the SAP TechEd Twitter stream to see some of my reactions to the keynotes and to meetings that I do with SAP Mentors, bloggers, and SAP product leads. Hopefully there will be some live video.

Speaking of video, if you want to get more of my takes on SAP skills, you may want to track my JonERP YouTube channel as I rarely get the time to post the videos in blog posts here.

Recently I organized my YouTube Channel into playlists so it would be easier to watch the ones that are relevant rather than sifting through.

Breaking into SAP
SAP Consulting Excellence
SAP Event Coverage
JonERP Guest Interviews
SAP Solutions Firms - Keys to Market Success
Social Media for SAP Pros
The Power of Pull - SAP News Tracking

With video, there are always experiments and things that work better than others. I’ve been working on a couple of videos on breaking into SAP and building on that break through “SAP consulting excellence.” These videos were inspired by the writings of new SAP Mentor Otto Gold as well as conversations I have had with Jim Stewart of SAPcookbook.com. Jim has shot a number of his own videos on breaking into SAP also.

Most of the videos I post are shot in one take, but I do toss videos that I think are not my best work content-wise. On this particular topic, I tossed a few of them. Then I did a couple alternate takes that worked out pretty well.

Since IT Toolbox was launching their video channel, I contributed one to their channel. This version of the video focused a bit more on SAP consulting excellence. The video quality was only so-so, I think because my HD flipcam overheated. But my “how to” videos are really more for the audio at any rate:

Then I shot a different version of this video for my site, focusing a bit more on breaking into SAP:

Each video covers some misconceptions about the SAP job market. Videos like this capture different moods – the IT toolbox video seems to capture me in a more combative mood, questioning anyone who doesn’t respect the importance of so-called “soft skills.” The second video is more the “friendly advisor” vibe. There is some overlap between them but I think they each have a useful angle. Some of the information in the video references an “SAP job mistakes” blog I did previously on making more than one job change at the same time. I used different examples of soft skills in both videos. I think the definition I offered in the Toolbox.com video was a bit more hard hitting, despite the grainy video look, but at any rate, they both provide something to chew on.

I hope this content was helpful and you can expect a lot more coming from TechEd and beyond. I just noticed that Tony De Thomasis posted the latest podcast (#4) in our ongoing “SolBros” Solution Manager podcast series, so if you’re interested in SolMan, check that out also.

With that out of the way, on to the topic at hand: Why SAP TechEd is relevant to business users. This is the time of year where I hear from business users that they aren’t interested in TechEd or aren’t trying to get approval. This attitude baffles me. SAP TechEd is not only highly relevant to business users, in my view it’s SAP’s best event of the year. Instead of using empty superlatives, I shot a video rant that goes into the specifics of my argument on TechEd’s business relevance. I am hopeful that this content will also help individuals build their business case for SAP TechEd attendance. I even donned a tie for the video so you know I went the extra mile on this one. And no, SAP didn’t ask me to shoot this video. In fact sometimes SAP itself plays down the business relevance of TechEd.

 Note: if you are having trouble viewing this video embedded, you can also see this SAP TechEd Business Case video or any of my other videos on my JonERP YouTube channel.

A few points of emphasis from my rant:

1. SAP technology and business is converging. Geeks and suits are morphing and fluid identities. Process-driven ERP (6.0) requires us to understand process orientation and end-to-end business, but also how to map those scenarios into SAP solutions. Knowing what you can do and what you can’t is critical.

2. SAP TechEd does have tracks with plenty of business content - the Business Intelligence and BPM tracks in particular. It’s hard to imagine an outstanding SAP professional going forward who does not have some grasp of BI and BPM trends. The BPM additions to SAP’s ASAP methodology are one key point.

3. SAP TechEd is the most soulful SAP event of the year because it’s driven by the community. The Community Clubhouse is the heart of TechEd and excellent expert networking discussions and informal talks go down there. Better SAP networks translate into better SAP teams (not to mention a better SAP career). Time spent building those relationships results in an invaluable "learning network." Plus, it’s pretty damn fun. When SAP starts to get fun, that’s when you truly start to distance yourself from those who view SAP as a job they want to get away from each day as soon as they can.

If you want some more ammunition to build your business case for SAP TechEd attendance, check out the longer piece I did last year, "Making the BPX Business Case for SAP TechEd 2009," which draws on interviews I did with SAP’s Marco ten Vaanholt.

Here’s some highlights from that piece on building your BPX/business user case for SAP TechEd attendance:

A. Make sure that the project team is clear that TechEd is not just for "techies." To get across the range of sessions available, share links of the relevant session tracks.

B. Explain how your role can be enhanced by TechEd attendance. For example, one person I talked to is involved in working as a liaison to a technical team that uses SAP’s Composition Environment (CE). So, attending a few CE-related classes should help this person work better with CE colleagues. This person’s company is also debating how to restructure some of their SAP activities around business processes. Classes on BPM will bring a more informed perspective on these issues. Solution Manager sessions may also help bring the element of managing live business processes into the knowledge mix.

C. Propose a reporting structure that will allow you to return to your company after the conference and share the lessons learned. This could include: tutorials with other team members and/or management-level presentations of what you have learned. You should go to TechEd armed with a list of agreed-upon topics so that you can ensure that the information you bring back meet’s your team’s expectations.

D. Remind your team that companies (even competitors) freely share valuable information at such conferences, including the ups and downs of implementing products that may be on your "short list" of projects on the horizon.

E. Point out that SAP sends leaders in its product management group to these sessions - valuable contacts you will be able to call upon after returning. (Example: one person I talked to about attending TechEd has some PLM-related responsibilities. A contact at SAP verified that some of the key PLM product leaders inside SAP will be at TechEd).

Finally, as I wrote in the piece from last year, don’t fear the geeks - especially of the "Enterprise" variety. There’s a ton to learn from deep dives with the technical virtuosos. Marco’s take as an SAP executive has relevance:

"We’ve talked a lot about the qualities of a BPXer; one of them is to have one foot in business and one foot in IT. The other role is a marriage counselor between business and IT… It’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with more of the technical implications, which will then allow you to upskill yourself, as well as being more valuable in some of these conversations that you might have with your IT staff…In my personal experience, I come more from the business side. But throughout my career, I’ve tried to understand the technical aspects and it has helped me tremendously. When I get into conversations with our enterprise architects, specifically on SCN collaboration tools, I understand their perspective much faster. This allows us to create projects faster and agree on a step by step approach faster as well."

If you have further questions on this, post them in the blog comments and I’ll do my best to address them. Hope to see you at TechEd.

A bit of context for the motivations here: Sapphire in particular is SAP’s chance to clarify its own position, product line, and messaging with its users. But users may very well have different priorities in mind. It’s important to make your voice heard and keep SAP in line with the top items on your real-world list.

An esteemed group of colleagues is helping to gather the information for the survey, including Enterprise Irregulars Michael Cote, Larry Dignan, Michael Krigsman, and Vinnie Mirchandani; SAP Mentor Dennis Howlett and Thomas Wailgum from CIO magazine. It will be interesting to find out how the issues in our poll stack up with SAP’s agenda at Sapphire.

Here’s some of the topics covered in the poll:

• Confidence in the leadership team
• SAP Innovation
• Upgrade sentiments
• Cloud and ByD
• Certification of ecosystem partners
• SAP Sybase
• NetWeaver Adoption
• In Memory
• Third party maintenance.

Thanks in advance for your participation. You can look forward to more updates in all forms (podcast, videos, blogs) on what I learn at ASUG/Sapphire 2010. I’ve already picked up on some interesting skills trends in the Enterprise Architect/techno-functional perspective. OK, have to head back into my deep dive session.

We’ll fill readers in on the poll results after the show. If you’re heading to Orlando or Frankfurt, safe travels!

"Sapphire user sentiment survey."

Have you ever wanted to see if a band of individuals united around a common cause could have an impact, move a mountain, get an institution much larger than you to change its tune? I know I have – I’ve been rockheaded enough to try it many times over my career, with admittedly varying degrees of success. The most recent such attempt, involving SAP certification, is a story that goes back about nine months, from the first meeting of a group that has come to be known as “the certification five.”

SAP certification is a hugely popular topic for JonERP.com readers, so this post is a chance to say your piece. Right now, on the SAP Community Network, you can read a blog post where the certification five lay out our viewpoints on SAP certification. There is also a link in that post to our complete 55 page white paper, which goes into detail on our positions and also includes feedback from SAP’s Sue Martin, providing SAP Education’s responses to our current stances. If you have an opinion on SAP certification, and I know many of you have a strong one, please hop over to our SCN blog post and comment there.

The comments you leave on our SCN post will have an impact on the discussions we continue to have on this topic, which will likely continue at the Sapphire events in May. So, whether you agree with our positions or have an altogether different one, please say your piece on SCN! Our project is intended to represent the views of the SAP community. Of course, with a topic as multi-faceted as SAP certification, this is not an easy thing to accomplish.

So who are the “certification five” anyway? And what do we hope to accomplish?

We are (with links to Twitter handles):

Dennis Howlett - an experienced industry blogger and consultant on social computing projects, not to mention a huge influence on my work.

Leonardo de Araujo - SAP Logistics Functional and Technical Consultant with 12+ years experience.

Martin Gillet - HCM genius, SAP Trainer, and frequent SAP Insider contributor.

Michael Koch – independent SAP consultant with deep technical and functional SAP experience.

Then there’s me, but if you’re on JonERP.com you need no further introduction there.

In the white paper, we describe ourselves as follows: “The ‘certification five’ are a project team of five SAP Mentors who have undertaken a dialogue with SAP Education in an effort to bring SAP certification in line with the expectations of SAP customers and SAP professionals who seek a standard of professional excellence."

Michael Koch, just posted a neat blog on his pixelbase site which talks about the diversity of our backgrounds and how that lends strength to our collaboration. Basically, we are five SAP Mentors who shared a passion we can’t shake for improving SAP certification. Unable to shake the obsession, our best option was clearly to band together and try to do something about it.

Joking aside, I think all of us take our SAP Mentor roles to mean that it’s not enough to take potshots at other people’s efforts – we must be a part of creating a newer and better SAP. The “quality isn’t job one” picture on the SCN post, by artist and edge marketing master Hugh MacLeod, makes this point vividly.

Why should I read a 55 page white paper?

The white paper is unique in its conversational format. Essentially, the five of us toiled, hashed and spit-polished our viewpoints over months, and then presented it to the rest of the SAP Mentors and SAP Education for input. The end result? A document that details our positions and includes SAP’s take on our views throughout the paper.

What are the current problems you see with SAP certification?

For the blog post, we made a point of narrowing our issues with SAP to five key issues:

• Certification is perceived to bring little value to the hiring process and is not as trusted in the industry as it should be
• Certification is slowly improving, but needs sweeping overhaul
• The 3-tiered certification is still not available
• Multiple choice question exams are currently the only method used to validate knowledge
• Current certification does not recognize the process-oriented approach that ERP 6.0 is promoting

You may have other bullet points that are not on this list – that’s exactly why your involvement is requested. Action that achieves executive buy-in requires this kind of difficult narrowing down. Another bullet not on the list that’s personally important to me is documenting customer priorities around certification and SAP hiring more systematically. I hope to update that down the line.

And what action steps do the certification five recommend?

After similar toil and narrowing, we came down to these as our top items:

• Tie certification more closely to relevant field experience and problem solving skills, especially at the professional level
• Establish a certification ‘influence council’ of customers, partners, and community leaders
• Provide a timetable for the now-postponed Master level certification
• Help customers by educating them on how to evaluate and hire SAP professionals
• Increase LOD offerings and strengthen online exam preparation

Obviously this is a “boil down” list that masks a lot of complexity. But progress often comes down to picking your spots. These are a few of ours.

Right now, SAP certification is not all it could be. But we believe in the potential of SAP certification to give SAP professionals a high bar to aspire to and customers a clear benchmark to hire from. As such, as Dennis Howlett would say, it’s a win/win/win. What can a small team of five accomplish? We don’t know. But there’s one thing we do know: it’s not really a team of five, it’s a much larger group who have impacted our thinking and spurred us to action, and that’s where you come in.
 

My agenda during our video interviews was as follows: I wanted to get Matthias’ take on why we need an SAP pricing book in the first place. What makes this functionality important, and why does he think a book can help? What inspired him to write it? Since Matthias has weathered many economic cycles over his consulting career, I also wanted to get his keys to success as an independent SAP pricing consultant. Last but not least, I wanted to hear his tips on how SAP hiring managers can hire good SAP pricing consultants. Resumes have a way of looking the same - what makes a good SAP pricing professional stand out?

Video number one gets into why Matthias wrote the Ultimate SAP Pricing Guide:

In this video, Matthias talks about why he wished he would have had a book like this when he started out. There was really no practical guide that contained this kind of information. SAP pricing was always too complicated. In his book, Matthias broke out all the pieces of SAP pricing into basic steps, from master data to condition types to how products are priced. We also hear about the reaction of Matthias’ colleagues to the book. Matthias explains why SAP projects need to understand the components of pricing (discounts, freight charges, rebates), and how they fit together. Matthias also shares what it was like to write the book and his advice for others who might aspire to putting their SAP know-how in book form.

Video number two explores the role of the SAP pricing consultant:

During this video, Matthias explains how an SAP pricing design should be structured. The first step is always to understand the SAP customer’s pricing structure, such as discounts, prices, and rebates. Once you understand the whole pricing design, you can now build the components in the configuration. Don’t start configuring and work backwards. I also asked Matthias what skill level could benefit from the SAP pricing guide. He explains why the book’s structure makes it useful for both junior and senior level SAP pricing folks. It was fun to ask Matthias his keys to success over twenty years of consulting.

It comes as no surprise to learn that Matthias credits his longevity not to configuration skills, but to his ability to talk to customers. He has been able to advice customers on how to optimize their SAP pricing systems, take advantage of unused functionality in the configuration, and improve performance by tactics such as streamlining SAP master data. Matthias cites an example of how he eliminated master data to improve system performance and reduce the amount of manual work for customer service. "Great SAP consultants don’t just configure tables - they solve real business problems for customers." Matthias closes with an important point about undertaking SAP configuration in a way that is more transparent to customers.

Video number three looks at how SAP hiring managers should evaluate SAP pricing talent:

In this third video, Matthias starts by sharing SAP pricing mistakes to avoid: one mistake is applying legacy rules to the SAP context, including the unwise attempt to do one-to-one condition record conversion. Matthias then offered up tips on hiring a good SAP pricing consultant: first, make sure that the resume has more content than listing experience configuring the IMG. Look for examples on the resume of how the consultant optimized system performance in SAP pricing, or how they customized SAP pricing to meet customers’ needs.

Matthias explains that The Ultimate SAP Pricing Guide is structured to walk the reader through SAP pricing basics, then on to master data, and finally how to apply the master data for customer system configuration. Step by step instructions include the base structure of a conditions table, which is established before the books moves into condition types and SAP pricing procedures. As he says, "everyone could pick up the book and configure an SAP pricing system." 

I suspect many readers of this blog have thought about undertaking their own SAP book project. Perhaps you have already done so, and know about the intense push that is required to get information into a useful book form. It’s hardly as simple as compiling blogs into a collected volume. Matthias put vision and a serious amount of elbow grease into this book. Yes, we both lost some sleep over it, but once we decided to call the book "The Ultimate SAP Pricing Guide" we knew that readers would expect a real "Ultimate" guide. A "halfway decent" guide to SAP pricing was not going to cut it.

We plan to post some sample content from the book on JonERP.com, and perhaps share some new material and tips from Matthias from time to time. There is also a podcast we will share which gets into more keys to successful careers in SAP pricing and tips for project teams. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this video, and if you want to get some more takes on the book, there are a few reader reviews of The Ultimate SAP Pricing Guide to check out. In the meantime, I would like to thank Matthias for the commitment to excellence he showed throughout this publishing process.

One of the problems with writing SAP career content is that "one size does not fit all." Each SAP career path needs to be fleshed out. Sometimes the best way to do that is through a collaboration with another expert. Enter SAP Mentor Tony de Thomasis of the Australia Post. Tony saw my two part video series on "SAP Career Planning" I had posted on SCN - videos that capture some of the themes of the white paper series. Tony then took those videos a step further with a fabulous Prezi on the career path for Basis-NetWeaver pros. I then raised the stakes of collaboration again, by taping four commentary tracks through Tony’s Prezi slides. You can see these in this blog post.

Before I get to the videos, I want to say that Basis is one of the most neglected areas in terms of SAP career content. Even on SDN, there are way more conversations and forums on development than Basis. This is too bad, as the Basis/NetWeaver Admin role is a vital one to most projects. There is a great story here about what has happened inside Australia Post after Tony has shared his Prezi - I hope to collaborate with him soon on telling that story. Hopefully more companies will realize that empowering employees with an imaginative and clear SAP career path is not a luxurious project for another economic time, but a key to morale and team building now.

So, on to commentary track number one:

In this first video, which addresses SAP skills acquisition for the Basis administrator, my commentary covers the impact of the economy on SAP career planning, and why pro-active moves will define those who find success in this Darwinian career environment versus those who don’t. I also comment on the skills acquisition options laid out in part one, including NetWeaver CE and BPM, one that I bring up.

In part two of Tony’s Prezi, which continues on the topic of SAP skills acquisition, I touch on trends that matter to Basis professionals, including Compliance/GRC, sustainability, and virtualization. The second half of this commentary moves into consulting and so-called "soft skills." I make the case for why all SAP professionals need consulting skills, and why being the techno-functional "glue" between project teams can ensure your value as an on-site SAP professional and make you less prone to skills commoditization and outsourcing.

Part three of the commentary series touches on social network involvement, and cutting through the hype to find the right path or outlet. I talk about why posting blogs is especially valuable due to the "feedback loop" that results, and make the point about the affordability of many options for self-education - so there are no excuses. I also include a comment on the merits of SAP certification. I wasn’t sure I had reached the last slide as part three of the commentary ends.

Interestingly enough, my final part four commentary might be my favorite - even though I was at the end of the slide show when I taped it. Strong line on here about why just resting on our laurels isn’t going to cut it in this economy - "stronger measures" are required. Part four gave me a chance to share my views on the content as a whole, and why it’s so important to find an SAP career path that combines skills marketability with a passionate, or even soulful, angle. I talk about why the answers to your SAP career dilemmas lie not with an expert like me, but what’s inside yourself. We have to move beyond the "day job" mentality.

I also touch on the pros and cons of different cultural environments, and how we have to be realistic that some companies are more progressive about social networking and online SAP community work than others. That’s a reality, and we do ourselves a disservice by not acknowledging that each company has a different political environment that we must negotiate.

I hope that the Basis/NetWeaver focus of these videos did not deter "non-Basis" SAP professionals from watching it, as I think Tony’s slides have some good content for everyone.

On the other hand, if you are a Basis or NetWeaver administrator, and you want more content along these lines, my previous blog post on "How Do You Shift from Basis Administrator to NetWeaver Engineer" may also be of interest. In closing, I’d like to thank Tony again for the inspiration his work has provided.

The Sapience show almost completely overlapped with SAP’s annual "SAP Influencers Summit" taking place in Boston at the same time. I was not able to get to the bottom of whether this was an intentional scheduling conflict or not, but I spoke with a number of analysts who were interested in Sapience but not able to attend. This lent an aura of mystery to the show and also led to misperceptions after the fact. As for me, I was only able to get there for the final afternoon, which limited my ability to make a broad assessment of the conference, but I was able to take in the grand finale, the NetSuite versus Business by Design "shoot out."

I’m not sure whether it’s worth my time to debate whether or not the Sapience event was "anti-SAP" or not (see Vinnie Mirchandani’s blog for more on this "debate" - Vinnie was also one of three "jury panelists" in the shoot out). It’s certainly not the most important question we should be asking. I will say this: I definitely ran into some people at the conference, including presenters, who did not necessarily have SAP’s best interests at heart. There is a huge difference between developing a nifty add on to SAP, as the Simplement team demonstrated to me in the analytics space during an impromptu demo, versus putting forth a complete SaaS-based ERP solution, in the case of NetSuite, that in some cases would actually replace SAP.

I see NetSuite’s "rip and replace" opportunity in SAP as currently limited to companies running older versions of SAP R/3 (like 4.6) who perhaps bought a package too complex in functionality for what they needed in the first place, but that could change over time. In fact, only a couple of days after the conference, news came out that The New Release, a DVD kiosk operator, was going to take out its R/3 system in favor of NetSuite. Spinning Sapience as an innocuous event where SAP customers could learn how to get more value out of SAP doesn’t jibe with NetSuite’s significant presence there (including a conference sponsorship). I saw some of that spin after the show and it didn’t strike me as truthful.

Having said that, I come from the vantage point that the ERP market has suffered from a lack of significant competition in recent years. The real victim has been the customer. Oracle has been largely responsible for this trend, due to its acquisition of independent ERP players like PeopleSoft and JD Edwards. These moves were probably smart for Oracle shareholders, but they weren’t good for the ERP market as a whole. Lack of competition leads to lazy thinking and tone-deaf attitudes towards "captive audience" customers. But just like anti-trust actions failed to bring down Microsoft until game-changing competitors like Google came along, the "SaaS uprising" is providing the same kind of market correction to the on-premise ERP vendors. I believe such disruption is healthy.

As such, the opportunity to spend time with a range of solution providers at Sapience, from cloud-based "SAP help desk" solutions such as cumulusIQ, to Rimini Street’s SAP maintenance alternatives, to my client Panaya’s SaaS-based SAP upgrade and support pack solutions, can only be useful for SAP customers. You could argue that all such "alternatives" present some degree of threat to SAP, but in the long view, SAP benefits from a robust ecosystem. While some of these competitive lessons are painful, SAP’s responsiveness to its own customers is clearly increasing as a result.

That’s good news for everyone. SAP should assess the kinds of vendors who presented as Sapience, determine which ones are worthy of a long term partnership, and which ones point to weaknesses in SAP’s own product line or pricing that need to be corrected. I have always felt that how the dominant player in a community responds to dissent tells us a lot about who they are. Crushing dissent in the political space leads to fascism. In business, the attempt to eliminate dissent usually leads to commercial failure, whereas reckoning with that dissent in a constructive manner leads to reinvention.

As for the NetSuite and Business by Design "shootout", I read some Twitter buzz that implied it was a "rigged" event. (NetSuite did win the shootout according to the jury panel). As an attendee, I was concerned that the faceoff would be presented as completely one-sided. But that was not the case. I thought the Business by Design presenter made a concerted effort to emphasize the strengths of the product. Yes, not having SAP representatives in the room did impact the Q and A which took place after the face off, but the head-to-head was far more objective than I expected. I suspect that was due in large part to Vinnie Mirchandani and Ray Wang, who may be critics of SAP but who are not fans of a rush to judgment.

Update: Dennis Howlett, who also attended the event and who I view as a fair judge of SAP’s pros and cons, did feel that the "shootout" was slanted in NetSuite’s favor. After reading his post, I found myself agreeing with his points (such as NetSuite’s sponsorship of the conference and the fact that the ByD system on display was a public test system being accessed by thousands). I suppose part of my reaction was based on the fact that I was expecting something a lot more biased towards NetSuite than what I saw. Also, I trusted Wang and Mirchandani, two of the shootout "jury members," to provide a fair analysis, which I believe they largely did during the "verdict" segment Dennis posted on video.

As for my own take on how the two products stacked up, while NetSuite’s OneWorld seemed better in terms of overall ease of use, functional capabilities and UI presentation, ByD came off pretty effectively as well. NetSuite won the competition in my eyes, but it was far from a devastating victory, even less so taking into account some of the impressive previews of upcoming ByD functionality I had just seen at the Influencer Summit. In some cases, the aspects of ByD that made it look clunky (such as extra workflow approval steps) might play to ByD’s advantage for some customers where additional approval steps and/or workflow complexity is part of what they are looking to address.

Having said that, the press release issued by Strategy Partners (the conference organizers) after the event reads like a press release for NetSuite. The tone of this press release was unfortunate because it left the reader with the impression that the unanimous verdict for NetSuite doomed SAP as a "legacy" on-premise vendor. It also implied an event where ByD got resoundingly beaten by NetSuite, and that’s not what I observed. Reading the Strategy Partners press release, you don’t get the impression that ByD is going to be a factor in the SaaS ERP space, whereas I believe it will be, though I’d mark 2011 as the year we see that impact. I wish I could say "you read it here first," but many other analysts see ByD as making its presence felt soon, including Michael Krigsman and Dennis Howlett, who knows far more about the SaaS space than I do. SAP’s pending success in ByD is not going to solve all its problems, but making it to market first (in NetSuite’s case) does not ensure dominance.

There’s another issue raised by the press release Strategy Partners put out. Going forward, I believe they have some marketing decisions to make, at least in the United States, in terms of the tone they are setting to attract SAP customers to future events. In Europe, the SAP user groups have much more of an activist mentality than ASUG, which was made vividly clear during the initial Enterprise Support push back.

I just don’t see SAP customers in the states flocking to an SAP event that has the presence of vendors who would love to see SAP go down, via "rip and replace" or what have you. There’s a huge difference in conference positioning (and tone) between "we help you get the most out of your SAP investment" and "we help you determine the alternatives to SAP." While the latter might attract more blogger controversy and buzz, I don’t believe most SAP customers in the U.S. are in a "rip and replace" mentality right now.

Of course, if SAP doesn’t increase its attention to those in the 4.6 install base who have put off their upgrades, then the receptiveness to such a strong "time to reconsider SAP" message could change. I know that internally SAP is well aware of this dynamic; I’m one of many who have expressed it directly to SAP executives myself.

In my view, the conference organizers attempted to straddle these two messages this time around. For the future, I’d advise to either focus on a more SAP-friendly "get the most out of your SAP investment" show, which will draw much bigger numbers but have less "blogger sex appeal," or focus more intently on "helping customers move on from SAP/create an exit plan," which might not make for a highly attended trade show, but could certainly lead to a viable consulting business serving those customers who are truly disaffected. Attempts to juggle these two messages will foster confusion over the purpose of the conference, and in my opinion, put a damper on attendance, at least in the U.S. Whatever the organizers choose to do going forward, their presence is a healthy one. Those attendees I spoke with all felt it was well worth their time.

How SAP responds to the challenges posed by a conference like Sapience will in large part determine its fate in the decade to come. I trust the serious players inside of SAP are spending less time obsessing about the presence of such a conference and more time responding to the customer sentiment that helped to spawn it.

Oh, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the conference organizers who gave me free access to this event, in particular Helmuth Gumbel, were extremely gracious to me and refreshing in their candor. Helmuth gets extra regard in my eyes for being aware of the SAP Mentor Initiative and welcoming an SAP Mentor presence at his show (two counting Dennis!). The unofficial SAP Mentor motto is "open thinking," and to me, that meant driving from the Influencer Summit to the Sapience 2009 wrap.
 

When I posted this on the SAP Community Network, I said, about the video, "In this unforgiving yet low key rant, Jon Reed of JonERP.com presents, for Twitter users, ‘how not to behave’ on Twitter if you want to use it for business - either for your employer or yourself." That’s a pretty good summary of what you’re about to see. Oh, and if you want to track me on Twitter and ask me quesions in real time, find me at @jonerp.

If you have any Twitter "dont’s" you’d like to share after watching this video, feel free to post it in the blog comments here. There’s one thing I maybe didn’t make perfectly clear in this video either, which is the issue of replies. So, for clarity: if you want to promote someone’s work, starting your Tweet with @username is not the best way to do it, because the only people that will see this reply are those who follow both you and the person you are replying to.

This can be confusing because if you go to my Twitter profile for example, and look at my JonERP timeline, you will see the replies I have made to other people on my timeline - including people you may or may not follow. All my replies are there. However: if you do choose to follow me, when my new Tweets come out, you will ONLY see the replies to those you are following also. I believe this is the source of the confusion on this feature. It used to be that you could configure Twitter to show you all the replies of the people you are following, but no more.

The lesson to be derived is this: if you want to promote someone or thank them for a good piece of content or a good piece of advice, don’t start the Tweet with an @username reply. I get around this in a number of ways - for example, I might just begin a Tweet with "Hey @username - I really liked your…." This ensures that all my followers will see the Tweet in question and know that I respect this particular user.

Also, I don’t personally like the new auto-ReTweet that much. In moderation it’s ok, but I don’t really like seeing weird people in my timeline I don’t follow personally. But more importantly, I like some context with my ReTweets. I like it when people add their own little tweak or comment to a ReTweet. Note also that if you do a manual RT (the old fashioned way), it’s easier for the person you are ReTweeting to see that you are ReTweeting them because it shows up in their replies. There’s a couple different formats I’ve seen for adding context to a ReTweet. One is to put your own comment first. The other is to put your own comment at the end.

I like the format of putting your comment at the end. Two reasons: first, we are accustomed to reading forward, not backward, so why not put the concept you are riffing on first? Second, putting your own comment first, to me, goes against the spirit of the ReTweet, which is not to showcase your own view but someone else’s. I do follow some folks who put their own takes first, but I must say it tends to grate on me. But hey, at least it’s a manual ReTweet!

Here’s the contrast. Putting your comment first (the format that grates on me)

Like I said, experience matters. RT @jonerp remember that SAP certification is most effective when combined with hands-on project work.

The one thing about this format is that it’s more efficient, as you don’t have to use any extra characters. To ReTweet the way I prefer, you have to use some characters to mark your text from the original Tweet. For quite a long time now, I’ve been using @dahowlett’s simple >>> format.

Here’s an example of that format, same content as above:

RT @jonerp remember that SAP certification is most effective when combined with hands-on project work. >>> like I said, experience matters.

Notice how conceptually this flows better. I put the person I want to ReTweet as the focal point, and my snide comment or reaction comes after. Some people have fancier symbols than >>>, whatever your smartphone can handle easily seems to be the key for many.

I’m also not crazy about those who work in a lot of article feed blasts into their Tweetstream. I like following people who use a filter and send only the best information out. In my case, for example, I only Tweet the very best blogs or news items on my Twitter stream. I do, however, have a separate "JonERP News Feed" where I share a broader range of breaking ERP and Enterprise 2.0 stories as I am tagging them. This is still a selective feed, but more than I would want to impose on my followers unless they were choosing to opt into it. For more on why I did that, read my blog post on why I decided to share my annotated Google Reader ERP news feed.

There’s a great SAP community on Twitter, for more on that, check out my previous blog on "How Do You Track SAP Conversations in Real Time on Twitter?"

From the Mentors side, I can tell you that as I see it, one major goal is to ensure that the SAP certification of the future has more direct relevance to hiring managers and is more closely tied to the bona fides of real world project experience. That’s a strong message we’ve gotten from the SAP community, and we’re trying to translate that into specific practical suggestions that can be implemented. We’ll see more about what kind of success we are having with that in 2010, but for now, these two videos I taped with Sue Martin at SAP TechEd 2009 Phoenix will give you an inside view.

Sue (or as the Mentors sometimes call her, the "Certification Queen,") was graciously willing to shoot an adhoc video with me on the convention floor, right outside the Community Clubhouse, where we talked informally about the changes underway within SAP Education. We discussed the perception of SAP certification as largely unchanged through the years and why that is no longer true.

So here’s the first video, which focused primarily on the changes in SAP Certification the last few years and the new three tiered Certification levels:

In the second video, we move more into the adventurous (and sometimes contentious, but ultimately productive) dialogue the SAP Mentors have been having with Sue Martin about SAP Education. I give Sue a lot of credit for her willingness to throw herself into the fray with the Mentors. Here is the second video, which gets into this in more detail.

As you will see from these videos, this "Mentors-to-SAP" conversation we are having is a fascinating chance to incorporate collaborative community projects into SAP’s own formalized certification plans. There is also some information in the second video on the Master level certification and how input from stakeholders is being incorporated from the get go. Finally, you can hear about how SAP certification will be integrated more closely into SCN, including with the Career Center.

I should note that prior to this low tech video shoot, Sue Martin and I were on SAP TechEd Live on the big video stage, hosted by SAP Mentor "Chief Herder" Mark Finnern. You can see that video on the SAP TechEd live replays (choose the Wednesday the 14th option). As for my videos, there is some background noise, but I hope that the quality of the conversation is worth the viewing.

Ann has said before that the "end of the silo functional consultant" is coming. And not many know that SAP is going through a plan to change all of its "application consultants" to "process consultants." In my view, that’s why BPM matters - not in a distant future, but right now. And there’s no one better to speak to this than Ann, who I consider to be a vitally important thought leader inside of SAP. Ann has played an instrumental role in the development of SAP’s BPM methodology, as well as the BPX curriculum design.

During this video, Ann, the co-author of Business Process Management: the SAP Roadmap, answers five key questions:

Vishal Sikka mentioned BPM prominently in his keynote, but what about the hype factor? Is BPM for real, and if so, why?

What is the latest on NetWeaver BPM, formerly "Galaxy"?

Why is the "silo functional consultant" an endangered species, and how are skills being retooled in BPM inside and outside of SAP?

SAP now has a formal BPX certification - what is offered in that curriculum?

How can project teams (and individuals) get started with SAP BPM? (Book, web site wiki)?

I hope you enjoy the video, and thanks to Ann for taking the time to share her views with JonERP readers.

We were given a three minute limit on the videos - I went just over. It was not an easy job to make my case for SAP Mentors and then to provide a relevant business context in such a short time. Obviously being a part of the initiative I am biased, but I believe there is a real story here and one that in my view deserves more exposure, and has real relevance to customers and partners looking to build more effective communities that can help them to better anticipate trends and take pro-active approaches to issues related to service, product design, public relations, brand reputation, etc.

Of course, SCN is hardly just about Mentors. SCN welcomes a range of contributors with different time commitments. Craig Cmehil has done a good job of outlining what I refer to in the video as SCN’s "Spheres of Influence." That means there are many roles to play here and many valued contributors. The sum of all this is what I personally consider to be SAP’s greatest competitive strength currently. I didn’t have a lot of time to shoot the video, but I hope some of this came across.

Oh, and if you’re curious to see what my hair looked like under that hat, I do reveal that disaster in another video on the YouTube channel, but I’m not going to tell you which one, you’ll have to hunt it out.

If you have an appetite for more videos on breaking into SAP, Jim Stewart of SAPCookbook.com has a number of them on his YouTube channel. One in particular that I like is his own story on breaking into SRM (Supplier Relationship Management).

Breaking into SAP is not easy these days, but there is a lot to gain by studying the best techniques and also understanding what you are up against. Once you grasp that, you can come up with a winning approach to overcoming those obstacles - in any economy. For SAP, that means really charting a "path of relevance" between your existing skills and those you are looking to acquire. I have written about these topics in detail in my blog entries that touch on Breaking into SAP. If you only read two other posts of mine from that category, read those "biggest mistakes SAP job seekers make" blog entries. 

Jim Stewart and I agree fundamentally on this concept: taking a creative and entrepreneurial approach to your career is far more effective, in this economy, than crossing your fingers or clinging to your existing position.

A couple of basics for those who want the practical stuff:

Google Reader forced the issue by making it so easy to do this, and also by providing a "note" feature that allows me to add my own annotated comment on each story I share. When possible, I often share the Twitter ID of the story author as well. This is the "best of"/most relevant stories only - so far I’ve been sharing (and annotating) about five a day.

There are several ways to track my Google Reader shared feed, which is the other nifty thing about it:

There is a Google Reader ERP news page where the stories I selected (and my annoted notes) are spit out — you can bookmark that page or follow it within Google Reader yourself.

There is an RSS feed generated by that reader that will give you the stories (and my notes also).

Each story I share is also Tweeted to a new Twitter feed, JonERPnewsfeed. The Tweeted version of these stories does not contain my annotated note - there’s no room for that in 144 spaces.

If there are any FriendFeed junkies out there, the stories are also part of my JonERP FriendFeed timeline, including the notes. I’m not sure how long FriendFeed has before Facebook does something wacky with it but it’s there.

And yes, I could bombard my friends on Facebook with this feed also, but my motto is "keep a healthy distance from Facebook and things go better."

Oh, and the most recent stories from the feed (as well as a snippet from my comment) are currently featured on the right hand side of all the "Career Blog" pages on JonERP.com in a widget installed by good friend and Joomla wiz Kimo Lee of Azurelink.  You can see it on the right hand side of this page if your scroll down.

That’s a pretty exhaustive list of things that happen to these articles once they are "shared" - and to do this, you don’t have to add a note to each story, but I’ve been doing that most of the time. That’s it - the item is shared and out to all those places.

So that’s how to follow the feed. Now for the pros and cons of RSS versus Twitter.

I decided that for Twitter purposes, I did NOT want these news items to get mixed into my JonERP Twitter feed. My followers have come to expect a high level of personalization in everything I Tweet. Even when I link to a news story, I always include something in the Tweet about why that story matters to me. I don’t auto-Tweet anything - ever - and I don’t want to change that now.

As an aside, should you decide to follow the jonerpnewsfeed as well as my "classic" jonerp Twitter address, you will receive a few redundant news links, but not too many. I’m noticing that I only Tweet about one of every five pieces I select from the Google Reader shared items feed to my @jonerp followers. Part of that is a function of time - not to mention a focus on the real conversational aspects of Twitter - which means not pushing too many news items. The conversations take center stage on @jonerp, only the best "blogpicks" make it through, and I’ve taken to calling them "picks" to get across that selectivity.

I think filtered information has value in this news/opinion deluge we contend with. In this case the filtering is:

1. I only subscribe in Google Reader to the bloggers that have really proven their merit in the areas they monitor.

2. From those subscriptions, (and multiple redundant keyword searches so as not to miss news items), a select group of the best (or most newsworthy) pieces are shared in my Google Reader shared feed.

3. Only the very best of those stories (around 10 percent), are personally Tweeted from my jonerp Twitter ID.

So why RSS? I hear people say all the time, "I don’t need RSS now that I’m using Twitter." It’s true that Twitter can reduce dependency on RSS, in particular for breaking news stories where the Twitter buzz is hard to miss. With Twittter, you can get away with letting that RSS reader go slack when deadlines are bearing down and turn to Twitter for the quick fix.

For example, if you’re following all the SAP Mentors, I doubt you’ll miss a single big news story in SAP from all the chatter you will see on the timeline - as long as you check out Twitter every day or track some prior Tweets in a Twitter app like Seesmic Desktop. And if you follow my list of the best independent IT analysts on Twitter, you’re not likely to miss any big story in the enterprise space, whether it touches on ERP or not.

But Twitter is not enough. Being a live stream, you’re going to miss some things in an area you care about (tracking the #sap hashtag won’t do it as SAP is often used without the hashtag, and tracking the general SAP keyword use is too much - tons of job postings, mentions of tree sap, lots of "I’m such a sap.").  Some analysts have multiple blogs in different locations, and they can be prolific as heck too. You’re going to miss some of their best entries if you don’t have a way to track them. And the beauty of Google Reader is that any feeds you follow are keyword searchable from the point you started tracking them.

Chances are, unless a story is heavily ReTweeted, you might miss it. And beware: Twitter is not a meritocracy of content. Not all the stories that are ReTweeted are worthy of it, and some very solid piece slip through unnoticed. I have a friend in the publishing world who finds his most often ReTweeted blog entries tend to be the more superficial ones, and the more substantial efforts can go by unnoticed. Some of this is because people have a tendency to quickly ReTweet something without giving thought to its relevance. Fact: great pieces don’t always catch onto the Tweetstream, and without an RSS net, you’ll miss them. RSS ain’t perfect, but at least you won’t miss the stories from those that influence your work the most.

On the other hand, if you have some trust in a colleague who is willing to scour the RSS feeds for you (perhaps that fool is me), then following a few shared RSS news item feeds might take you a long way. I do recommend this much: unless you are an analyst like me who is expected to know the nook and cranny of every story, only follow the handful of folks that are deeply relevant on RSS. Adding too much content to an RSS reader is the first step towards self-defeating RSS behavior. And an abandoned RSS reader brings no value whatever. My criteria for adding something to RSS is: "Is this absolutely essential to my day to day work?" In those areas that are not as essential, I let Twitter monitor those for me (by paying attention to what my followers like) and therefore reduce the amount of blogger feeds I need to follow.

Also: beware of monster RSS feeds that pull in all the content from a very active site. For example, I used to follow the entire SAP SCN blog feed, but I have shifted gears and now subscribe to many (but not all) of the topic feeds and author feeds. Part of the benefit here: I prioritize and organize individual feeds within Google Reader. When I’m in a rush, it’s a lot more useful to have all my SAP BPX stories in the same folder than to have a massive feed with all kinds of SAP stories mashed together in one feed.

Of course, RSS is not necessarily the only way to do this - you can accomplish some of the same on a social bookmarking site like delicious, and even use the "like" votes on such sites to track the most viewed stories (though beware of relying solely on popularity contests for your content, you’re going to miss some important contrarian voices that way). Those social sites are nicely set up to share feeds just like I’ve done with Google Reader.

But RSS is uniquely powerful. For example, I have a folder in my Google Reader for all the mentions of my name or my company name in a variety of contexts, including Google Alerts. I have custom SAP stock alert feeds and custom ERP keyword feeds from newswires. And here’s another great one: I have keyword alerts setup for all my main clients. This allows me to quickly alert them to any mentions of their name on Twitter or anywhere else on the web, and in some cases, to form a follow up plan to connect with the blogger (or Tweeter) in question.

I should note that some bloggers share their "links du jour" as a blog entry. This is most useful when there is commentary for each link, doesn’t do much for me without some narrative from the blogger. Michael Cote of RedMonk does a very nice job with this. Tom Raftery of GreenMonk does this effectively also. I would find that type of blogging a bit much - I like the Google Reader shared feed page because I can quickly offer a comment, post the story, and move on.

Oh, and you may have noticed that in my JonERP News Feed on Twitter, I include the hashtag #news on each item I share, a tactic I lifted from others who auto-post news items. I couldn’t go with the #SAP hashtag for this autofeed because some stories are not SAP related, and there is the occasional Enterprise 2.0 or social media or web business piece. The use of that #news hashtag does put the items in front of those who track news, and results in additional views of those stories when they post. The bio on that Twitter news page lets folks know it’s just a feed, and all the Tweets list my @jonerp Twitter ID so that anyone who wants can follow the real interactive account as well as (or instead of) the ERP news feed.

Sum: best way to find the value of these tools is to toss out the crusted-over conventions of how they are supposed to work best and hone them for yourself, through trial and error. If any of my experiments are helpful, then great. And if any of these newsfeeds I’m sharing now help you to track the market in a manageable way, excellent. Perhaps you will find a better way, and pretty soon I’ll be borrowing from your approach.