On a flight last week, the captain announced “our flight path will take us over Winslow, AZ”. That prompted the gentleman next to me to blurt out about flat-bed Fords. For the next couple of hours we talked the Eagles, scenes from the Godfather and a bunch of other trivial pursuit which made my middle seat tolerable.
He also recommended I watch a documentary on the Eagles, which I did on Netflix over the weekend. Of course, you enjoy the Felder/Walsh solos at the end of Hotel California and Henley’s durable voice over so many decades, but I was repeatedly struck by Glenn Frey’s way with words. What inspired lyrics for Life in the Fast Lane, Lyin’ Eyes and so many other hits.
Or maybe I especially focused on Frey because words have been acutely on my mind as I work on the S4HANA supplement. Additionally, in the last few days, I have received two specific pieces of input on word choices in SAP Nation.
I used the words “Freeze and Shrink” in the book to describe the move to third party maintenance by several SAP customers. Shrink was appropriate because they are getting support for much cheaper. But Freeze was probably too strong – many customers download a later release as part of their maintenance and upgrade later after they have moved to third party maintenance. Many also continue to buy surround modules from SAP – “innovating around the edges”, while getting the core maintenance for less.
I was also asked if the “Committed” category of customers in the book should not have been termed “Default”? Are these customers passionately committed to SAP or are they staying with it because they do not see viable alternatives? I suspect many are committed, but not voluntarily
Indeed, it reminded me of a SAP customer comment a few years ago when he described his predicament
“You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave”
I will need to work in some of Frey’s work into my S4HANA sequel.
