I missed the SAP TechEd gathering in Las Vegas this week, but was entertained by a very active stream of tweets emanating from the venue. More recently, this post from ITWorld-Canada caught my eye because it represents a dramatic change in image for one of the more locked down software providers known to enterprise IT departments. Under the headline “SAP has ‘bet on an open ecosystem’: exec”, reporter Kathleen Lau delivers her account of an interview with SAP’s senior vice-president for the global ecosystem and partner group, Singh Mecker.

The statement represents Mecker’s commitment to “leveraging the innovation and knowledge of the community” and helping to see that customers are not locked in “from the metal to the UI.” This is but one more set of evidence that “Big Code” (meaning the major enterprise software providers) are recognizing that it is going to be the sort of widget-driven, componentized and often cloud-based world where taking a “recombinant approach” that enables customers and partners to splice together their own custom solutions that combine (and leverage) selected elements in the old code base in ways that conform to and integrate new technologies, features and architectures.

Mecker’s comments reflect the fact that SAP “gets it”, but the proof will be in the execution and acceptance by developer partners. According to the article, the company has established a Code Exchange within its Developer Network to encourage the sharing or IP among partners, integrators and customers. As part of a three-pronged strategy to encourage innovation in the areas of “mobile, in-memory and cloud” domains, it will be creating special “micro-communities” sometime next year. Obviously, it has a long way to go.

Categories: Articles

Tags: Cloud Computing, Collaboration, Recombinant Communications, SAP