One of the major successes in recent times in the SAP ecosystem has been the phenomenonal growth of its Software Developer Network (SDN). Many SIs had their own similar Lotus Notes or other networks - SAP SDN has made it open and pervasive throughout the global SAP ecosystem. The bigger the community the more rapid and better the feedback.
Shai Agassi described it thus at Sapphire (thanks to Ross Mayfield for transcribing)
"500,000 visitors per month. Aggregation of knowledge that is second to none. slashdot for SAP. SIs in India are hiring them 500 people at a time and saying for their first three months they are supposed to participate in SDN. Aggregation and knowledge and self-categorization has created an environment where you know the guy who is giving advice may have a point ranking that shows they don't have a life, but a lot of knowledge. We are contributing perhaps 20% of the content. Average time from Q&A is less than 30 minutes, I wish our support channels were that effective."
Sounds like an "Open Source" community around SAP. The difference is most of the participants are charging time to SAP clients - either metered on integration contracts or they are on annual maintenance contracts.
So, are customers getting lowered maintenance charges for unburdening the SAP support channel for a number of routine and not-so-routine queries? No, not yet.
Also, another point as I have made about IBM before - as it talks about its support of Linux and other Open source communities. Why are these communities not being leveraged beyond support into core product development and also in systems integration and related testing? Instead of paying their employers on a large project or outsourcing basis, why are we not using these SAP savvy resources on a more targeted task or deliverable basis?
As I wrote in Amazon, Accenture and Anthropology, such communities are opening up a whole new source of labor. What SDN has done so far has had little cost impact for customers. But taken to its logical extreme it could revolutionize SAP's own economics - and definitely those of its partners. Should they choose to pass that along to customers it would be SDN - Such Delightful News.
