This was my 5th year attending SAP‘s gala SAPPHIRE event. You can see from my previous blog posts, a recurring theme in all of them is SAP’s cold shoulder toward all things social.
2008: What I-know-I-don’t-know about E2.0 and SAP from Sapphire ’08
“Enterprise 2.0 is just not a burning issue on the minds of top SAP execs… SAP execs mirror the same sentiment as our executive clients: they have serious businesses to run– not a lot of time for the giddy consumery stuff. SAP software fuels the nitty gritty of hard-core business processes for most of the largest enterprises in the world. Where blogging (for example) fits into getting a raw material through the factory floor to a finished product, booked in inventory and ready to move through a supply chain is just not obvious to me right now. So the likelihood of an Enterprise 2.0 bolt-on to SAP is just as slim as it is naive.”
“So, once again, SAP invited me to its annual SAPPHIRE and ASUG event. I find myself wondering if SAP will get return on their investment in me once again. The answer is, probably not… The reality is SAP and its global customer base are just not ready for the socialization of the enterprise. It’s just not a topic that commands attention at this massive event (despite my valiant efforts to bring it up in every executive briefing). The majority of conversations at SAPPHIRE revolve around common themes such as decision-making, analysis, data, spreadsheets, databases, reports, statistics, and business processes. In other words, the real work that goes on in real businesses.”
“For me, SAPPHIRE presents a unique opportunity to re-calibrate and diffuse the hype chamber that self-perpetuates around the 2.0 phenomenon. SAPPHIRE is the 2.0 Rehab that I voluntarily commit myself to every year for one week. Only at SAPPHIRE do I get an opportunity to see the world the way my Council members do– that the 2.0/social business hoopla is enjoyed and shared by a small minority of corporate professionals. Through the eyes of SAP customers and the SAP eco-system, I gain unique insight into the tremendous task ahead which involves a host of issues, not the least of which is tying 2.0 transformation to the enterprise business processes that run the world’s most successful businesses.”
This year, in 2012, it looks like things might be taking a new turn. At least the lip service is on message. Readers of this blog should know SAP recently hired the #e20 community’s good friend Sameer Patel to assume the position of Social Czar at SAP. Patel has his work cut out for him, however. The two social platforms that qualify as social at SAP are StreamWork and SuccessFactor’s Jam (formerly CubeTree). Two platforms that, frankly, don’t see much social traction in large enterprise. Neither one ever comes up in a landscape conversation of social collaboration software, and turning up examples of hard core users has been pretty slim among those of us who keep an eye on this category. CubeTree, in fact, was never a player. With Patel’s new position, SAP recently moved “social” into its cloud group where it will support all SAP suites and concentrations (CRM, for example) in a new social platform that will be structured to support the business horizontally and seamlessly across on-premise and cloud offerings. The group is building what they’re calling, “Project Robus.” (Latin for resolve or purpose.)
What’s probably most significant about Project Robus is that all development is being led by SuccessFactor’s co-founder and technical cloud guru, Aaron Au. Au is the lead architect and will run engineering for the project. The operating vision behind the socialization of SAP’s massive ENSW footprint hinges squarely on integrating social with business process. As Patel describes it, “This is core infrastructure. It’s like application servers and middleware.” The orientation is on business activities first, and social features second. In other words, use cases will drive how and when social interacts with a business process. All social presentations within the SAP product suite will touch the Robus platform. My blogger colleague Alan Lepofsky describes it as “social plumbing.”
The pressure to deliver social is on SuccessFactors CEO Lars Dalgaard who is the Board executive advocate for social. Dalgaard is breathing new life and new ideas into the software behemoth. He appears to have much support from co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Snabe, as most cloud and social questions asked at the scheduled media/analyst interview were turned over to Dalgaard. There is evidence in the market that SAP has finally embraced the principles of a more collaborative, social business world (see Jim Snabe’s opinion piece in the Financial Times, “Social Networking and the Future of Business“).
I want to believe SAP will pull this off, but there is a small part of me that wants to scream, “You’re doing it wrong!” It’s as if SAP is looking for a software solution to a human opportunity. Focusing on the unstructured data and time spent between workflows is anathema to SAP’s heritage and corporate culture. And even if the executive and management ranks see the opportunity, the rank and file are going to be puzzled. We were sitting at dinner with a number of SAP mentors and I asked if any of them were using StreamWork. All heads shook no. One mentor said he wouldn’t even bother logging on. My enterprise blogger friends roll their eyes when I talk about how social is about reinventing the way we work. But they’re not seeing the changes I’m seeing in large organizations that are successful with social reinvention. Luckily, I’m not the only one talking about this. The enterprise is ready for a different way to work.
But, like Kermit, it’s the lovers, the dreamers, and me. Those of us who are under Social Business’ spell are true believers. I hope Lars Dalgaard and the SAP executive team can execute on the human potential of social, but I’m still a bit skeptical.
See Dalgaard’s “dream” app. Here’s to hoping they pull it off.
