Code don’t matter to customers.  They just want answers – and they want them quickly. Customization is “industrial heroin”. Speaking at the Mastering SAP Technologies show in Melbourne, Australia, Dennis Howlett gives a rundown of the changes in today’s enterprise software market and why this is so disruptive to developers who aren’t in step with these fundamental shifts. Dennis uses recent JD-OD videos shot to underscore his points.

At their best, the new apps solve serious business problems with re-imagined software that people actually love to use, and don’t choke on or ignore like they do “legacy” software. Given the scope and potential scale of how people are using BI, mobile and cloud, one might expect a plethora of developers poised to capitalize on the demand for new solutions.

Sad to say, that simply isn’t the case. Not if the lack of programmers Dennis encountered at the Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona are any indication. This leaves an “almost limitless opportunity” for developers to provide solutions that solve industry pain points and visualize new ways of doing business. Thus Dennis’ provocative talk, which we have for you here on replay in its entirety.

Editor’s note/warning: this is an extended play video (30 minutes). Check the time stamps below for details.

Show Notes

:23 Why no one cares about your code

1:53 “Customization is industrial heroin”

3:17 Next-gen BI visualizations show more relevant detail

4:47 Speaking the language of the business

5:45 Developer presence at MWC 13 was almost non-existent

7:14 Visualizations will “wipe out” people doing BW on HANA

9:57 Competition – like Workday – is picking up SAP and Oracle’s customers

11:11 Mobile money demo from Uganda of 10 guys changing the world – 30,000 subscribers in one month

13:46 Dennis urges people to look outside of their world and get in step with the changes

15:15 Dennis backs up his message with comments from Mico Yuk and Vishal Sikka

17:58 The right apps can save companies huge amounts

19:44 Get with the program because things are changing very rapidly

20:45 User experiences are now pulled into the beginnings of projects

22:33 Smart CIOs embrace the changes – their careers depend upon it

25:47 Audience question on customizations

Are reports of the death of Big BI greatly exaggerated – or not? Jon caught up with Mico Yuk on her home turf in Atlanta to follow up on a recent argument that Mico had with Dennis Howlett over the future of BI. Mico explains that she and Dennis basically agree that, with fiercer, nimbler competition from smaller vendors, the Big BI ship has sailed. The disagreement comes over how far the ship has made it from the dock.

Mico contends that the issue of data governance is the only thing keeping BI alive. Dennis believes that smaller vendors will soon find workable solutions to that issue, and that the Big BI suite players, such as SAP, IBM and Oracle, will need to drastically change their approach.

Mico goes on to say that business people have taken over BI from IT – and, in the process, devaluing IT to the point that its people need to re-brand themselves as data scientists. She contends that, by 2015, data scientists will assume the traditional BI role. And that suite BI vendors will need to move faster and come up with new approaches that outdistance the status quo.

But as Mico sees it, until the critical issue of data governance is settled, all bets are off. At least for now.

Show Notes

1:28 Business people, seeking instant solutions, are taking BI over from IT

2:39 The issue of data governance is keeping Big BI alive – for now.

3:19 Mico’s argument with Dennis: Data governance is missing link

3:45 BI from a finance/line of business perspective

4:09 Mico and Dennis agree a ship has sailed in BI, but disagree on how far

5:28 IT has become the victim of quicker BI solutions

7:02 BI managers giving way to data scientists

8:30 Mico predicts that by 2015, data scientists will replace the traditional BI role

9:15 Suite BI vendors need to move faster and beyond the status quo

In a globally-coordinated press event, SAP announced the release of Business Suite on HANA. After the press event and some blogger roundtables with executives, Jon sat down with Harold Reiter and John Appleby to discuss reactions and concerns in the “JD-OD wrap.”

The guys riff on topics such as: What have we learned about pricing so far, and while we’re at it, have we learned enough? Did SAP success in articulating a business value beyond speed? What are the customer benefits of Business Suite on HANA? And what was the overall media reaction the event?

Show Notes

:45 Media reactions

2:04 Engineering accomplishments and improvements

2:40 Okay, the speed is faster…but at what cost?

3:28 On database migration and additional benefits

4:20 Industry-based solutions aren’t here – yet

5:09 HANA can support global transactions, but what about cloud?

6:23 How much will the HANA database platform cost?

One of the standout videos from JD-OD Sapphire Now Madrid was this freewheeling debate on SAP’s cloud strategy with analysts Brian Sommer and Esteban Kolsky. This recording was live streamed at the end of Wednesday, November 14 (AKA “strike day”).

Due to the strike, there were no keynotes on Wednesday morning. This discussion took place with one day (and one keynote) still to be heard. Brian and Esteban are never short of strong opinions and they uttered quite a few of them on this shoot.

For Sapphire Now Madrid, JD-OD did live streamed daily wraps for each day of the conference. The recordings of these wraps have been posted on JD-OD in edited format. At the end of day one (Tuesday, November 12). Dennis was battling a nasty head cold and was behind the Tricaster controls (though he did make an appearance on the final conference wrap shoots Thursday).

For this taping, Jon was joined by JD-OD stalwart Harald Reiter, as well as Dick Hirsch and James Appleby. That’s right – James Appleby – John’s more mature older brother (sorry John, couldn’t resist) and the CEO of Bluefin Solutions.

During the shoot, the guys break down the McDermott and Snabe keynotes and kick around the questions they want answered during the week.

We already posted a JD-OD video interview with Vishal Sikka, SAP Executive Board Member, fresh off of his SAP TechEd Las Vegas keynote and subsequent press conference. The first video covered Vishal’s vision on how HANA can change industries.

For this shoot (which was actually the first part of the conversation) Sikka talks to Dennis about what developers need to be thinking about. With his keynote announcements of the GA of NetWeaver Cloud and HANA on AWS, it was the right time for Sikka to reflect on his own roots as a developer in light of today’s enterprise challenges. As SAP talks about open platforms, it raises the bar on what developers will expect from SAP in terms of tools, access, and community. Sikka weighs in.

Show Notes

:40 Vishal on three things developers need to grapple with – #1: “we must do whatever we can for the end user”. Translation: better designs.

2:30 #2: In the enterprise software world, “disrupting landscapes is not an option.” We need do develop without increasing complexity.

3:05 #3: We need open, real-time platforms.

3:30 “Bring your own language” – what are the implications?

5:50 What is SAP doing to make it easier for developers to share code and shop talk in a community setting?

Fresh off of his SAP TechEd Las Vegas keynote and subsequent press conference, Vishal Sikka, SAP Executive Board Member, stopped by the JD-OD studio to talk about all things HANA (and beyond). The end result? Two video shoots with Dennis on the impact on HANA, this one on Vishal’s favorite topic: the potential of HANA to solve vexing real world problems.

Vishal talks about two industry examples, health care and banking, and how SAP is going beyond what many would expect, including writing human genome sequences inside of HANA and collaborating with organizations from Japan to Germany to improve data processing times that could have a powerful impact on cancer treatment.

Show Notes

:30 HANA’s potential to improve cancer treatment: it can take 30 days or more to process human genome sequences. How SAP is collaborating with organizations across the global to tackle these problems.

3:10 2nd example: banking. 80 percent of indians don’t have a bank account – they need a digital identity. If HANA can help power the processing of millions of small banking transactions via SMS, that will have  a big result.

4:45 HANA startups are also addressing real world problems, and it’s not just a commercial motivation

6:00 Vishal: I will be disappointed if we don’t have 10 inspirational apps affecting 10 industries by next year at this time

6:20 What keeps Vishal up at night? Two things: the state of education and complexity. The launch of the HANA Academy is a response to a changing learning environment where conventional training and certification is not necessarily enough. Complexity: it’s difficult to mask complexity from the user in simple designs, but it has to be done.

Long video warning – this runs 25 mins 20 secs (audio-only player and download below)

Late last week, Den recorded a conversation with Narinder Singh, co-founder Appirio in which Den asked four basic questions:

1. What does it take to make the transition from on-premise to cloud consulting/implementation successful?
2. What do you say to those who know the need for transition?
3. How has the cloud changed the way you approach individual business implementations?
4. What kind of talent do you need to attract to build a successful practice?

By way of follow up, Den and Jon Reed recorded the above video, noting what we see in the consulting ecosystems of large enterprise software vendors. Reference is made to SAP but this could be equally true for Oracle, Infor, Microsoft and others.

Show notes:

0:50 – Introducing the themes

1:49 – What popped out for Jon?

2:37 – How prepared are some of our colleagues?

3:52 – What does the learning curve look like?

5:42 – Cloud takes decisions away from IT

7:02 – The attention span problem

8:19 – What about the talent aspect?

9:45 – Comments from the Tweetstream

11:44 – To what extent do the functional consultants have what it takes?

13:03 – Example of a business led implementation

14:25 – What about customisations?

16:17 – How are SIs revenues impacted

18:52 – Is there an advantage from building a cloud practice from the gound up?

20:11 – Introducing the factory model of implementation

21:59 – What of the future? Have we seen the ‘firm of the future?’

23:23 – Love child?

24:13 – Quick close – more questions than answers

Bonus points: here’s the Narinder Singh video that started this discussion:

Audio player for Den/Jon discussion:

Download audio file

SAPPHIRE Now may be a business-focused event, but the biggest news story might have been the free HANA developer licenses. For more background on the news, the JD-OD team caught up with Aiaz Kazi, Craig Cmehil, Juergen Schmerder and Thomas Grassl in two separate video shoots. In the Aiaz Kazi shoot (embedded above), Jon and John Appleby get the nutshell view on what these announcements mean for SAP developers. In the second shoot, Jon has a longer discussion with Craig, Juergen and Thomas that gives more context to the announcements and also covers what’s coming next for cloud, mobile and Gateway developers.

Editor’s note: developers interested in getting started should check out developers.sap.com

Show Notes, Video #1

 :30 HANA on the Amazon cloud – licenses are free, developers pay only Amazon

1:17 How easy it the sign up process for developers – really?

2:35 Developers matter in today’s IT:  “We’re going back to our developer roots”

Video #2:  More developer news and context

Show Notes, Video #2:

:30 Why does developer engagement matter to SAP now more than it has in the past?

1:50 How did the free HANA developer licenses come about?

2:40 “Low cost to develop HANA applications”

4:05 IP and liability issues – “solved”

5:20 What’s next? CodeJam

7:15 The CodeJam Tel Aviv event – engaging non-SAP developers with Gateway

8:00 What’s next with mobility, cloud, and Gateway

SAPPHIRE Now was relatively slow from a hard news standpoint – unless you count the post-SAPPHIRE Ariba acquisition announcement. But not so for SAP BI, where there was plenty of news to digest, from the Visual Intelligence product news to the Predictive Analysis non-announcement.  Plus SAP was fresh off of its recent “Statement of Direction” (SOD) regarding its Dashboards and HTML 5 strategy.

To break down the news and understand customer reactions, Jon sat down with Mico Yuk the day after SAPPHIRE Now. In this two part video shoot, Jon and Mico get into a frank discussion about whether SAP is innovating in BI and where the question marks are in terms of pricing, roadmap, and product confusion.

Video for part one is embedded above.

Show Notes, Video #1:

:46 Does Mico like SAP Visual Intelligence?

1:20 Why do SAP customers need SAP Visual Intelligence?

2:23 How Visual Intelligence compares to competitors products

3:05 Where was “Predictive Analysis”?

4:50 What was the customer reaction to the BI announces?

6:15 The latest on “Project Zen”

8:00 HTML5 versus MoBI – the latest confusion

9:30 “The roadmap keeps changing”

10:50 SAP BI confusion versus customer confidence

Video Part 2:

Show Notes, Video #2:

:30  StreamWork-BI collaboration and pricing questions

3:00 Tensions between monetization and adoption

3:30 Is SAP Innovating in BI?

4:45 Looking toward the fall shows

5:10 The new SAP BI leadership

After each day of SAPPHIRE Now 2012, “the guys” aka “the fantastic five” aka “insert your nickname  here” gathered to review the day’s news, meetings, and event chatter.  The five (Dennis, Jon, John Appleby, Vijay Vijayasankar, and Harald Reiter) were grouped by SAP blogger relations into a series of candid executive meetings with SAP Executive Board members so there was always plenty to riff on. The “wrap shoots” were not the most scripted shoots you’ll see, but they did capture the energy of the event and the questions raised, if not always answered.

The Day 1 Video Wrap  is embedded above.

Day 1 Show Notes:

:45 McDermott keynote reactions – customer and business-over-tech focus,  but no big announces

2:40 Customers talking ERP – where is ERP on the show floor?

5:15 Conference expectations – awaiting cloud messaging

Day 2 Video Wrap:

Day 2 Show Notes

:45 Day 2 meeting reactions – some chaotic messaging

1:24 BW on HANA – will SAP enable partners to help deliver on the vision?

3:20 Cloud reactions – do we have clarity?

5:16 Lars brings cloud experience and will shake things up

Day 3 Video Wrap:

Day 3 Show Notes:

:40 Developer news a bright spot, ByDesign still “cloudy”

2:15 SAP listening – developer change was community-driven

3:00 HANA is fast – so what else?

4:07 Unplugging HANA in the keynote – SAP responded

4:48 Final thoughts on mobility, Hasso’s keynote, and heading towards TechEd

On April 10, 2012, SAP updated its database and mobility strategies with a series of product announcements, already analyzed in a post by Dennis that Jon contributed to. But what the news mean to the aspiring SAP developer who has often found themselves  on the outside looking in?

The day after the announcement, Jon Reed sat down with Sanjay Poonen,  corporate officer at SAP now running go to market for mobility , to discuss what the announcements, including the new mobility partnerships, mean to SAP developers. Poonen also frankly addresses the problems SAP has had engaging SAP developers and what SAP plans to do about it. We have been promised another update at Sapphire Now Orlando to assess the progress, particularly around the notoriously sticky wicket of NetWeaver developer licenses, so stay tuned.

Editor’s note:  Dennis also filmed a video with SAP Mentors Graham Robinson and John Moy at Mastering SAP Technologies Australia that digs into their reactions after meeting with Sanjay Poonen there.

Show Notes

:40 “changes are coming”

2:44 How can SAP make the creation of mobility apps more “frictionless”?

4:12 One million SAP developers?

5:19 SAP’s new mobility development partnerships: opening up the platform

6:15 How can SAP solve the NetWeaver license conundrum?

7:20 Will this topic tie into the cloudy themes of Sapphire Now?

8:17 Mobility development it at a different pace – “we will get this right”

By the time we tracked him down at the SAP Influencer Summit, SAP Mentor Dick Hirsch had already written the most extensive analysis of SAP and Success Factors from a cloud architecture perspective.  SAP was legally bound to keep their silence on SuccessFactors at the Summit, but we were not.

So on the Thursday morning after the show, we sat down with Dick in JD-OD Park Plaza headquarters for a special JD-OD shoot to talk about his blog and what he learned at the show. The result was a free flowing conversation about possible SAP-SuccessFactors cloud architectures, as well as the technical and cultural challenges that lie ahead.

Show Notes

:45 How will SAP and SuccessFactor’s cloud architectures fit together?

2:10 SAP’s made progress on its PaaS architecture – will SuccessFactors wreak havoc on it?

3:22 How will SuccessFactors fit into SAP culturally and technically?

4:33 SaaS vendors approach partner development differently

6:06 SAP’s struggle to simplify its PaaS messaging

7:18 Why SAP blew up “core versus edge”

8:20 Predicting the post-acquisition outcomes

9:20 Did Dick change his views on this while at the Summit?

11:00 Grading SAP’s marketing around PaaS

12:20 “SAP couldn’t talk about SuccessFactors this week – but we did.”

Halfway through SAP Summit Day Two (“cloud day”), the usual suspects (Vijay, John, Jon and Den) gathered for a gut check on the ongoing conversations they’ve been pressing on developer engagement.  The guys lay out the issues SAP must tackle to move from “jam culture” to “app culture”, debating SAP’s coolness factor and ability to pull in outside developers.

Before they close, the four talk SuccessFactors and why it doesn’t solve these developer issues. There is also some discussion on cloud day, but a more complete discussion of day two is coming in a wrap video with Dick Hirsch (to be posted soon).

Show Notes

:40 What progress has made with developers?

1:55 Is 2012 the year of the developer for SAP, or is it 2013?

3:20 Breaking down the SAP developer issues

5:00 Is developing for SAP cool or uncool?

6:55 There’s a big difference between “jam culture” and “apps store culture”

8:30 Will large organizations buy from small development shops?

10:15 Developers are willing to share the risk – but they need access

10:50 Are SAP executives listening?

12:05 Don’t assume that SuccessFactors solves the problem

13:30 SAP needs middleware

After day one of the influencer summit, the usual suspects (Jon, Den, John and Vijay) gathered to make sense of day one and to talk about what would (and wouldn’t) say on day two, “cloud day.” The guys review the Snabe keynote and the points of controversy (such as SAP proclaiming the goal of being the #2 database vendor by 2015). They read between the lines on some cloud news, such as the future of Career OnDemand and ByDesign, and Dennis weighs in on the impact of the newly-announced Tibco partnership.

Show Notes

:40 Day one takeways

2:40 Is “the new SAP” gaining momentum?

3:15 The latest on Career OnDemand, ByDesign, and Business One

5:00 Can HANA revitalize the Business Suite?

6:18 Will a “bottom up” SME focus impact SAP’s approach to smaller development shops?

8:00  Dennis’ take on the Tibco partnership

9:45 “cloud day” predictions