One of the nicest things about going to an SAP event is an hour they organize with one of their executives. When I was at Gartner, we used to look forward to Hasso Plattner, unmuzzled at their annual Sapphires. More recently Henning Kagermann started a tradition of meeting with bloggers.
Leo Apotheker continued it, though the first meeting with him led to fireworks. The next one was much more cerebral.
This time we had a chance to meet Jim Hagemann Snabe,member of the Executive Board of SAP AG and head of Business Solutions & Technology organization, responsible for product development of large enterprise solutions, SME solutions, and the technology platform.
I thought it was a very good session. He handled questions effectively - why ECC 6.0 adoption was still only up to half of the R/3 customer base. His answer "how many other enterprise vendors can boast half their customer base is on a SOA enabled platform". Why did he not touch on sustainability in his morning talk? "Oversight - so much else to cover" Consultant certification "Looking at business process centric certification." Ecosystem management "Seriously looking at SAP consulting taking a much more active role" . Big challenges - each one of them - and there was a quiet humility with which Jim addressed them
Of course, the fact that Jim met us and Leo was not at the Summit let to all kinds of speculation about Leo's role in the company.
I, for one, accept SAP's explanation Leo was busy focusing on December 31 customer deals. I look forward to another session with Leo in the near future - hopefully another of the knock-down, drag-out kind:)
