I remember Dr. Hasso Plattner (former SAP CEO) and Bill Gates together on stage at a SAP user conference, Sapphire in the mid 90s. I remember it for 2 reasons. Hasso and Bill did a somewhat silly (for billionaires) two-step. One would appear as the other disappeared back stage – they did this 3-4 times. Every time Bill came out the entire press camera corps got up and clicked away. Every time Hasso came out, they sat down. I was angry for Hasso – this was his party! The media generally fawns over consumer technologies (Apple, Sony, Google etc) and generally ignores corporate technology (BEA, SAS) – (though, check out Rich Karlgaard’s tough-love column today in WSJ on Steve Jobs of Apple).
The other thing I remember from that event was wondering why Microsoft Office and SAP R/3, both a decade old at that point and dominant applications in most corporations had not been tightly integrated.
Last week, after just about another decade SAP and Microsoft announced Project Mendocino at Sapphire in Copenhagen to finally (or again?) integrate Office and SAP functionality. Bruce Richardson, an AMR analyst I really like, filed this report for CIO magazine.
Sorry, Bruce – I would not have skipped your panel at MR’s conference for this (though for the Danish beer, I might have!). Much more interesting would have been if Microsoft and SAP had announced plans for markets they compete against each other – say in mid-market ERP/CRM markets or in “applistructure”
Mendocino County in California is well known for its wines. mySAP and MS Office are two well aged products – glad their parents have finally agreed to integrate the two in meaningful ways. Hopefully, not priced at vintage rates, though.
