Mentors

Quarterly
Not to be missed:
My first SAP Mentor by Tammy Powlas (read on page 3)

TOPIC OF THIS ISSUE: How is it to host

Innovation without a Teched session
Speaking, presenting, hosting

Disruption a session, are all a great way of

saying getting up in front of your
peers. Yes, I am crazy enough
to want to get up in front of my
Article by Matthias Steiner peers. It is very scary, exciting,
exhilarating and fun!
I really don’t like speaking in
front of people. However, when
I spoke at Teched I knew that the
people were interested in what I
was presenting. They were not
the usual crowd of people bored
or only half paying attention to
me. They were there because
they wanted to be. There were
a ton of sessions going on. They
picked mine to go to. (Amazing)
Story by Michelle Crapo
continues on page 4

Influence SAP:
This time about
Picture by qisur (http://www.flickr.com/photos/qisur/) Idea Place
Everyone connected with SAP
This year I’ve found myself involved hip… pushing the limits! However in any way, be it user, be it de-
in a lot of meetings and events re- I strongly believe that in the enterpri- veloper, or be it manager, has
volving around innovation again (the se world innovation needs to applied once wondered about the ways
ultimate ones being the Innovation in in well-considered doses especially in to influence SAP to do ”things”
Berlin and Vegas), and let me tell you times like these where the entire eco- the way it would fit one´s needs
– innovation is a tricky beast! Espe- nomy is still recovering from a funda- better. This is what this article is
cially in the enterprise space - Sure, mental cr… aeh… – experience. about: introducing ways how to
everybody wants to be innovative… Continue reading on page 5 influence SAP.
Different people in different ro-
les (with different opportunities)
Mentors Quarterly: who, why, when and what see different ways of how to do
it. I would like to offer a compa-
Dear reader, rison of the ways today. I hope
what you are reading now is one of the attempts how to bring the SAP Men- this help people learn about the
tors activity closer to you. The team of the Mentors Quarterly will hopefully grow ways they didn´t know before.
and will deliver you the news about the mentors´ activities, thoughts and high- Only you know ifyou can benefit.
lights. I hope that the content of this issue will entertain you, educate you and Article by Otto Gold
more. I also hope you will read the next issue of "Quarterly" in future again. continues on page 2
Otto Gold, Editor in chief
 Influence SAP: This time about Idea Place
A comparison of ways how to influence SAP products and services
and an introduction of the most recent one
Continuation from page 1
Topics covered
To justify the motivation let me
Idea place does not cover all the products or services offered
provide an example: me, member of
by SAP nowadays. The most covered products are Business Ob-
the internet SCN Community, didn´t
jects products (170 ideas today) and SAP CRM. An important
know about the Influence Councils
part of the Idea place ideas are about IP itself and how to make
of the User groups (read further if
it better and also SAP Community Network.
you don´t know what the Councils
By the way SCN Community demand was one of the important
are). My fellow “mentorette” Tammy
reasons for starting Idea Place few months back. Since SCN was
Powlas didn´t know about the “new
started, the Community members suggest new features, chan-
ways” (the Idea place). That made
ges and improvements and IP became a common place for such
me realize that if the comparison
discussion.
could be useful for some of the Men-
tors, it could be also useful for other
readers. the Idea place is a bottom-up pilot – influence SAP. What are the others?
Not everybody working with SAP is a prototype, a proof of concept if pe- Today I would like to talk about the-
a member of SCN or a regular visi- ople will like and use this way how to se three: a) Idea place (IP) b) User
tor of SCN (where the Idea place is influence SAP products and services. groups Influence councils (IC) and
a part of the navigation). That is why It slowly gathers the attention and c) Customer engagement Initiative
I think Idea place could use some traffic to justify its existence. (CEI).
marketing targeting people outside It seems like people have found First of all it is obvious that the other
SCN. Because of the same reason the their way to Idea place, hundreds two ways are not open for everybody
other “ways” could use some marke- of ideas were already submitted and – if you are not a customer then you
ting among the SCN users. some of them have already been im- cannot use the CEI channel, if you´re
plemented. It means people like this not a member of a User group, you
What is Idea Place? transparent way of expressing their cannot use the IC channel either.
Idea place is a part of SCN websi- wishes and suggestions about SAP. The Idea Place is open for everybo-
te, where one can post his/her idea, Technical upgrade of the current Idea dy. In this regard IP wants to become
a suggestion, a change request or a place engine is expected and so we the most transparent channel of all,
possible bug to be corrected. Other can expect even more visiting users, I believe. Any registered SCN user
users can comment on the idea, vote submitted ideas and implemented without any special status or profile
pro or con the idea. SAP employees changes in the future. Then Idea pla- can take part. Also the whole ideati-
can recognize how many users sup- ce might get rid of the “beta” stage on process is publicly visible; one can
port the idea this way (and so how mark and enter its “teen ages”. interact with all other users and play
many people would it benefit if the a role. Everything is done publicly, di-
rectly, in real time.
suggestion gets implemented). Any What are the other
registered user can submit ideas, vote One does not have to go through
and/or comment. This is the theory.
ways how to influence the gathering process, consolidation
The practice is slightly different. Not SAP? of the gathered ideas and does not
because there is a catch in the inten- I promised to describe how Idea have to rely on somebody else´s who
ded ideation process. It is because place differs from other ways how to represents the consensus (which ob-
viously does not have to cover all the
Milestone reached suggested ideas, only the “approved”
It feels like not all the “internet numbers” about SAP are reli- ones). You cannot fight for your idea
able. A typical example is a number of SCN users. It is something from the beginning to the end, be it
above two million. Not all the users have ever logged in and some implementation or a denial.
did that only few times. When one compares this with a number There are also pros of the “old
of the contributors one comes to realize that a part of this num- ways”. If your idea makes it to the top
ber is a little “virtual”. (the IF part is important), it means it
When starting this article I was going to announce that a miles- attracted attention, support was ga-
tone of two thousand ideas was reached few weeks ago. At least thered for the idea the SAP sponsor
one can see ideas with ID above 2100 now. Unfortunately I was is aware of it.
not able to find any idea with ID below 1000. So let me announce Did I say SAP sponsor? You may
a milestone of more than 1000 ideas reached instead. have noticed that things do not hap-
pen in the real life unless there is so-
mebody who fights for them, care for
them, pushes them. And that´s who
the SAP sponsor is – the insider who My first SAP Mentor
takes care of the internal part of the
consideration process. A personal story by Tamara Powlas
You don´t have such person when
you submit your idea on Idea Place. I met my first "SAP men-
Your idea is just another input from tor", Diane Fanelli, who is
a Community member. You need to now SAP's Regional Vice
build the support for the Idea, per- President, Industry Bu-
suade other users and especially SAP siness Solutions, North
people, who follow the topic, that America, on my first SAP
your Idea makes sense, it will help implementation. I was the
as many users as possible, it brings SAP customer and Diane
some important added value. was the SAP Platinum con-
sultant and the driving for-
ce behind our implementa-
What to take home tion. I remember that she
This space is not sufficient for me to
always worked extremely
describe all the details, to pay attenti-
hard and marveled at how
on to all the important points you need
she handled many things
to know to take your part in the ide-
at once. How she remem-
ation process to a next level. That´s
bered to do so much wi-
why I would like to recommend you
thout any paper I will ne-
some reading to get a better picture.
ver remember. She was Diane Fanelli, Tammy Powlas' first
First of all: if you have not visited Idea
task-oriented but always mentor
Place yet, visit it right now. You can
told me her first priority
follow the SCN navigation link, you
was knowledge transfer.
can Google it down or just type ideas.
Since becoming a SAP Mentor, and more women SAP Mentors; Diane
sap.com into your favorite browser. To
reading the book "The New Polyma- has just returned from a 3 year tour
learn more about what is behind Idea
th: Profiles in Compound-Technolo- in Asia and has seen the potential
place, visit the SCN blog category Idea
gy Innovations” by Vinnie Mirchan- of women there.
place (you can find some blogs about
dani where he discusses why there According to Diane, a key compo-
IP by me and other people involved
are so few women in technology, nent is building confidence in wo-
and interested).
I have wanted to reach back to my men and not just through e-mail or
To learn more about the User group
first SAP mentor, Diane Fanelli. I as- a PowerPoint presentation but also
Influence councils search for the blogs
ked her if she would be willing to di- in business discussions with execu-
by the fellow Mentors Tobias Trapp
scuss why there are so few women tives. She said confidence is built
(DSUG) or Karin Tillotson (ASUG).
in technology today and what we once you become a domain expert -
The blogs by Karin called “Why I be-
could about it. not arrogant, but
lieve in the power of ASUG Influence
She explained to open to new ideas
Councils” share a nice experience with
me that she is cur- Confidence is built once and concepts as
ASUG Council and helped me unders-
rently mentoring you become a domain well. Confiden-
tand how do the Councils work.
4 other women
As for the CEI you get plenty of expert - not arrogant, ce is also shown
at SAP; she talks through the tone
search results using keywords: SAP
with them every but open to new ideas you portray in
Customer engagement program in
Google.
90 days, working and concepts as well business discussi-
with them to dis- ons and the com-
All three described ways work
cuss the differences between leader- mitments you follow through with
slightly different and are intended for
ship and management. Long-term your customers or employees.
different target audience. Because
and short term goals, SAP helps Diane has her own mentors who
I don´t have access to two of three
colleges and universities to try get she looks to not only for career pro-
of the described channels and have
students excited about technology spects but also to strike a balan-
only access to Idea Place, it is high-
work. She said SAP wants to get the ce as the key to success is having
ly probable that some of the points I
ranks diversified. a balance in life. As a SAP Mentor,
make are not objective and you may
She offered to help the SAP Men- I hope we can work more with the
think different. So take this article as
tors get connected with the Busine- SAP women executives like the gre-
an inspiration what are the ways and
ss Women's network inside SAP and at Diane Fanelli.
maybe as an impulse to learn more
help that network reach beyond Tammy Powlas
about the channels you have not
SAP. We discussed how we can get
used before.
Otto Gold
 How is it to host a TechEd session
First hand experience from Las Vegas by Michelle Crapo
Continuation from slowly programming by de- after the session. Some via SCN. It made sense to
page 1 veloping your own classes people called it the expert share them.
and methods. Move on to networking session. Me - I did get SCN points. That
This year my session en- interfaces and start to work I called it a meeting of the made me feel even better.
ded up on Tuesday. Yes, on understanding polymor- minds. After my formal The SCN points were a va-
Tuesday!!!! It was right phism. That was / is my presentation I hosted an lidation that presenting was
after Innovation weekend. sage advice. expert networking session helpful to the community at
I was worried about the ti- Back to presenting at Te- with tips and tricks. I lear- large.
ming. I didn’t know how chEd. I got so much be- ned even MORE tips and So now you know the
much time I would have to nefit for presenting that one tricks. Boy was that cool. benefits. How did I get to
prepare prior to the sessi- hour session. The biggest The people who came had speak at TechEd? Every
on. And of course, I  had benefit for me was that I some great ideas. year there is a “call for sub-
the last minute jitters.
I  thought, “BUT no one
will come”. However, my
next thought was “well if
no one comes, I get a free
pass to TechEd!”. There
would be no harm in that.
So Tuesday came along.
I watched the key note, and
enjoyed a session. Then it
was my turn. I presented.
It was about my favorite
subject ABAP! I love ABAP.
I also got to present about
how to dig for information,
and think about the future!
I got to talk with people
who were interested in lear-
ning! YES! I loved it. And
more importantly, I  found
the TechEd audience to be
very receptive. That made
it easy to get up and talk.
Presenting at TechEd brings one pretty much fun. Be it a formal session,
It became even easier as
the Expert lounge conversation or an informal talk in the evening.
the presentation progres-
sed. People would nod at
different times. So I knew was allowed to go to Te- My own goals or one of missions”. I usually submit
people were listening, and chEd. I received a free Te- the things on “my bucket” to both ASUG and SCN.
responding to what I had chEd lecture only admissi- list has always been pre- Both are advertised in SCN
to say. on. Speaking gave me even senting at TechEd. So that when they are open. I was
This is the first year, that I more networking opportu- was a large part of why I turned down consistent-
had a large crowd after the nities than just attending presented two years ago. I ly for a couple of years. I
session. We talked about TechEd. It was a great ice had a  great time. So this still kept submitting things.
many different things. The breaker. I don’t usually ap- year, I decided to try sub- I think I eventually wore
big question for many peop- proach people. It was gre- mitting some more sessi- them down. This year, all
le is how and when to learn at to have people stop and ons. I had fun that first but one of my submitted
ABAP Objects. My answers, talk with me. They usually time, I thought, maybe I sessions were turned down.
you ask? Start Now. The- started with – I think I was will again. And I did. Have I think luck has a bit to do
re are many different way. in your session. Or you look fun that is. with who was selected.
An  SAP training class is like that nut who… Yes, As a side benefit I liked I was very lucky this year!
always a great way to start. that was me. So - I got the idea of giving back to Presenting was fun, and
SCN offers free – yes free! – more business cards! the community. A lot, OK more than what I was ho-
e-learning. Start using SAP Another benefit is that most of the things, that ping it would be.
provided classes first. Start there was a mind dump I presented were learned Michelle Crapo
Innovation without Disruption
Continuation of the lead article from page 1
IT budgets have been
low lately and as such a lot
of corporations are still ye-
ars behind.
SAP has been promoting
the business process plat-
form and its continuous
service enablement throu-
gh Enhancement Packages
as “Innovation without di-
sruption.” While I certainly
understand where this is
coming from I really have
been struggling with the
theme. Aren’t the best in-
novations those who are di-
srupting an entire business
or market? A colleague of
mine (thanks Puru for pas-
sing the ball back!) argued
that the iPod was a great
invention. I have to admit Vishal Sikka telling the audience about the future of SAP at TechEd
that the iPod does not re-
ally score high on my list of
ments! I guess it is safe to sting assets to orchestrate cations, and that’s not just
mind-blowing innovations.
say that the installed base service calls and compose marketing, but referenci-
It’s just a mobile music pla-
of the SAP Business Suite new functionality. Of cour- ng to the mindset requi-
yer – the Walkman deserves
demands that the introdu- se, this new breed of soft- red do design and develop
most of the credit! Howe-
ction of new features and ware induces requirements such applications. Current
ver, the iStore eventually
functionality may NOT di- to their surroundings. They IT landscapes are rapidly
was one of the innovations
srupt the core processes rely on service provisioning, changing and evolving due
that really disrupted the
– in the onPremise space as without services – there to a variety of reasons such
music business resulting in
stability and reliability are would be nothing to build as outsourcing, acquisiti-
the fact, that we can now
the core assets. on. Consequently, Compo- ons, mergers, consolida-
conveniently download our
favorite music online – even sites go hand-in-hand with tion and new deployment
without DRM. The Composition a Service Oriented Archi- options(e.g. cloud compu-
Well, arguably the tecture (SOA), which re- ting, SaaS, etc.) As such,
conclusion is that, within Pattern quires some time (and go- Composite Applications are
an enterprise (and conse- By that rationale, major vernance) to build up and best advised to cater to this
quently for enterprise soft- innovation needs to hap- reveal its full potential. aspect by avoiding tight
ware vendors) there are pen outside of the core The good thing about SOA coupling to specific backend
areas to be innovative and platform. Throughout the though is that the rational systems. To achieve this lo-
others where a more con- last years SAP has been pu- applies of “think big, start ose-coupling an abstraction
servative pace may be the shing Composites (short for small!” or “Think globally, layer is required, that de-
better choice. Having the Composite Applications) as act locally!” It makes per- couples the business logic
business process platform the tool of choice for deve- fect sense to start with a of a Composite from both a
as a stable core and ap- loping highly dynamic and pilot project, later-on ex- domain model and techni-
plying moderate innovation innovative solutions based tending it to an entire LoB cal communication perspe-
cycles through EhPs makes on the existing systems and and so on. The more sys- ctive. But let’s face it… this
perfect sense here. Espe- the services provided in the tems gets service-enabled, abstraction comes with the
cially since there still are a target landscape. This side- the more systems one can price tag of added comple-
fair number of customers car concept aims to shift in- connect to each other in or- xity. Moreover, creating bu-
working on much older re- novation out of the platform der to rapidly develop new siness processes that span
leases – they rely on solid to break free from the long- business processes on top. across systems (or even
upgrade paths to catch up tail considerations. As such However, Composites are landscapes) and combine/
and protect their invest- Composites leverage exi- really a new kind of appli- chain multiple service calls

in a distributed transaction
requires proper design. [1]
Timeless
References/ Recommended Reading
[1] Sustainable Architectures for SOA – SAP TechEd live interview by Volker
Stiehl and Matthias Steiner
[2] SAP HANA Blogseries Part 1: What is SAP HANA and what is the „value“
of SAP HANA? by Ingo Hilgefort
[3] SAP’s Mobile Strategy: Really? by John Appleby
[4] Podcast: SAP Enterprise Mobility - Where Do We Go From Here? by Jon Reed
[5] SAP TechEd 2010 Lecture: Rich Internet Applications at SAP
[6] SAP Network Blog: Mapping one corner of the world - Two Patterns:
Consumption vs. Integration by Richard Hirsch
[7] Presentation: Developing Timeless Software

Software Last, but not least – mo-

But hey, go ahead and
build applications without
proper design and it may
do the trick – for a while!
Yet, yesterday’s innovation
is tomorrow’s commodity
and as such inflexible and
tightly-coupled applicati-
ons will result in … reduced
momentum (just to avoid
that over-used 3 letter ab-
breviation.)
So, yes… it may require a
steeper learning-curve and
a good fundamental un-
derstanding of all required
concepts to develop such
loosely-coupled applica-
tions. Yes, it may require
properly trained developers
to understand and handle
the added complexity. Yet,
having done so for a couple
of years I can tell you that
developing timeless soft-
ware is no rocket science
either. You simply need to
apply a few well-known pa-
radigms such as:
• Abstracting the
backend communication
and type system from your
business logic,
• Properly defined
service interfaces, imple-
mented as black-boxes with
extension points, which al-
low to constantly increase
the amount of services that
comprise the complete API
of your SOA landscape,
• Adding a distinct
set of service facades on
top of the business logic to
ease the consumption and/
or tailor it to specific scena-
rios or devices.
Weaving it all
together
This year, SAP has been
focusing on the three pillars
of in-memory, cloud and
mobility. Almost all of the
new and innovative produ-
cts that SAP has released or
demoed at SAP TechEd this
year are outside the core
platform. With NewDB and
HANA (High-performance
ANalytic Appliance) we re-
invent the concept of data
storage from the ground off
[2]. The amount of num-
ber crunching happening
within a second or two will
allow us to be even more
agile and pro-active as it
provides us with real-time
analytical data on what is
happening right now. Com-
posite Applications with a
distinct backend abstraction
layer should be fairly easy
to adjust in such a way that
they leverage these new
data sources and to integra-
te them into new business
processes.
With SAP Business ByDe-
sign & the corresponding
development kit SAP Busi-
ness ByDesign Studio, River
and SAP StreamWork SAP
has been setting course
for the cloud. As more and
more applications and busi-
ness processes move outsi-
de of the corporate firewalls
it again pays off to have
proper abstraction layers
that address the challenges
that come with ever-chan-
ging IT landscapes.
bility. It certainly is a hot
using the s-word here, but
this is really what it comes
topic these days [3]. Driven
from the consumer industry,
down to: in regards to en-
terprise software and inno-
smart phones have become vation, loose-coupling and
mainstream and people ex- componentization do not
pect the same level of con- add any complexity, they
venience and ease of use address it – from a long-ti-
in enterprise apps [4]. With me perspective.
Sybase as the latest addi-
tion to the SAP Family the
near future looks promising Outro
indeed. On the user experi- All of this may sound way
too positive and biased for
ence side we see the raise of
HTML5 as the new standard your taste, but I cannot help
it then. In all those years I
and project Phoenix certain-
ly seems to be right at the have worked for SAP I have
never been more enthusi-
pulse of time [5]. These UI
frameworks will simplify the astic about the future and
it’s going to be frickin’ ama-
development of applications
targeting a broad set of de- zing to see all these innova-
tions being applied in real
vices and with the last mis-
sing center piece – aka pro- life applications. I could not
agree more to what Vishal
ject Gateway – a foundation
will be set for a fast growing Sikka said at SAP TechED
Innovation Weekend:
amount of simple consump-
tion apps [6]. “Interesting times to live
in as a developer!”
It may get tiring by now,
but for the sake of the ar- PS: One last remark
about HANA… isn’t it even
gument I need to point
out one last time, that only a little scary to think about
this new real real-time
those applications, which
have been built based on computing - how much will
our own through-put incre-
the timeless software prin-
ciples will be able to quickly ase with the availability of
this insight we gain with
embrace these new techno-
logies [7]. I’d rather avoid instant analytics?
Matthias Steiner
Mentors Quarterly
Contributors for this issue
Tammy Powlas (tpowlas@fairfaxwater.org), Matthias Steiner
(matthias.steiner@sap.com), Thorsten Franz (t_franz@gmx.de),
Michelle Crapo (Michelle.Crapo@perrigo.com), Otto Gold (otto.
gold@kctdata.cz)
Special thanks: Martin Gillet who is the author of the TechEd
pictures we used in this issue
 Enter Title Here: Do not exceed space provided - Title automatically appears in page header

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