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	<title>SAP Web 2.0 &#187; Web 2.0 in SAP</title>
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	<description>SAP meets Web 2.0 = Enterprise 2.0</description>
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		<title>SAP and Web 2.0 in a Nutshell, Summarized and Explained</title>
		<link>http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2010/03/sap-and-web-20-in-a-nutshell-summarized-and-explained/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2010/03/sap-and-web-20-in-a-nutshell-summarized-and-explained/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:37:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Timo Elliott</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[All]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web 2.0 by SAP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web 2.0 in SAP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web 2.0 with SAP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SAP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Summary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web 2.0]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/?p=933</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A high-level overview of Web 2.0 technology by, with, and at SAP, with links to other resources.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img style="display: inline; border: 0px;" title="sap-and-web-2.0-banner" src="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/sapweb20/2010/03/sapandweb20banner1.jpg" border="0" alt="sap-and-web-2.0-banner" width="690" height="310" /></p>
<p>I believe SAP is an under-appreciated leader in the Web 2.0 space, and this blog attempts to explain why. First, I should first point out that there are three distinct categories you can talk about SAP interacting with Web 2.0 technology:</p>
<ul>
<li>Web 2.0 <strong>by</strong> SAP – Web 2.0 products and services SAP provides to customers</li>
<li>Web 2.0 <strong>with</strong> SAP – how SAP uses Web 2.0 techniques to interact with our customers and partners</li>
<li>Web 2.0 <strong>at</strong> SAP – how SAP uses Web 2.0 technology within SAP</li>
</ul>
<p>Let’s look at each of these in turn:</p>
<h3>Web 2.0 by SAP</h3>
<p>The term Web 2.0 means different things to different people, but generally people use it to encompass one or more of the following categories:</p>
<h4>Easy, Powerful Interfaces</h4>
<p><em><span style="color: #808080;">Web 2.0 products have simple, interactive, attractive, and intuitive interfaces that let people access information and carry out tasks without training.</span></em></p>
<p>SAP is a strong believer in design thinking across all aspects of the product solutions. Technology examples include:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.sap.com/solutions/sapbusinessobjects/large/business-intelligence/search-navigation/explorer/explorer-accelerated/index.epx" target="_blank">SAP BusinessObjects Explorer Accelerated</a>, that lets you browse through billions of rows of corporate data as easily as you browse the web, using innovative memory-resident analytics coupled with an interface that automatically proposes appropriate analyses.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.sap.com/solutions/sapbusinessobjects/sme/reporting-dashboarding/index.epx" target="_blank">SAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius</a>, providing attractive, interactive dashboards that can be seamlessly integrated into everyday business activities. For example, a presenter can show the effect of changes to forecasted variables in real time, directly within a PowerPoint presentation.</li>
</ul>
<h4>On-Demand, Mobile, and Cloud Computing</h4>
<p><em><span style="color: #808080;">Web 2.0 applications are available on-demand, with a variety of different devices, with an internet-based platform that scales smoothly as demand grows.</span></em></p>
<p>SAP has a <a href="http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/elearn?rid=/library/uuid/207449d0-bb7d-2c10-f5ab-9bfa3705f090&amp;overridelayout=true">clear on-demand and cloud strategy</a>:</p>
<ul>
<li>John Wookey and Peter Lorenz have <a href="http://www.sap.com/community/showdetail.epx?ItemID=20174" target="_blank">outlined a clear on-demand strategy</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.sap.com/sme/solutions/businessmanagement/businessbydesign/index.epx">SAP Business ByDesign</a> is now achieving <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/projectfailures/?p=3689">wide recognition</a> as a well-designed, flexible, on-demand business application, and its intuitive user interface now enables users to customize their own KPI dashboards and integrate third-party Web services such as GoYellow, Google Maps, or Map24.</li>
<li>The <a href="http://ondemand.com">SAP BusinessObjects on-demand platform</a> has long been the clear leader in business intelligence as a service, letting organizations cleanse, store, analyze and share information effectively without having to install any hardware or software.</li>
<li>SAP partners provide on-demand extensions to existing in-house functionality.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Collaboration</h4>
<p><em><span style="color: #808080;">Web 2.0 tools let people work together to achieve common goals, frequently crossing traditional fault lines such as country, culture, or company boundaries.</span></em></p>
<p>SAP believes that collaboration tools should be aligned with business process. Example of technology include:</p>
<ul>
<li>The SAP Netweaver Portal provides discussion forums, lets users comment on, rank, and tag content, and integrate SAP content seamlessly into other platforms such as Microsoft Sharepoint.</li>
<li>Collaboration can be analyzed and optimized, like any other business activity. Jive software, the leading independent vendor of Enterprise 2.0 solutions, provides SAP BusinessObjects’ on-demand analytics <a href="http://www.jivesoftware.com/products/technology/modules/analytics" target="_blank">as an integrated part of their product offer</a>.</li>
<li>Data from SAP systems can be used to <a href="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2009/09/integrating-sap-and-google-wave-and-the-context-based-future-of-business-user-applications/" target="_blank">augment conversations on platforms such as Google Wave</a>.</li>
<li>The <a href="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2009/10/sap%E2%80%99s-gravity-prototype-business-collaboration-using-google-wave/" target="_blank">SAP Gravity prototype</a> lets users of Google Wave bring together technical and business experts to collaborate on business process</li>
<li>The new SAP BusinessObjects <a href="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2009/11/sap%E2%80%99s-12sprints-collaborative-decision-making-prototype/" target="_blank">12sprints prototype</a> supports directed, collaborative decision-making.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Social Networking</h4>
<p><em><span style="color: #808080;">Web 2.0 tools let people make connections and share status updates.</span></em></p>
<p>SAP gives organizations the tools they need to monitor and optimize social networking inside and outside organizations.</p>
<ul>
<li>SAP’s <a href="http://www.sap.com/solutions/sapbusinessobjects/large/information-management/data-integration/textanalysis/index.epx" target="_blank">text analytics</a> provide organizations with the ability to do “sentiment analysis” across social media, and automatically integrate</li>
<li>SAP’s <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=12216" target="_blank">CRM solutions</a> provide a seamless customer experience across networking platforms <a href="http://ecohub.sdn.sap.com/irj/ecohub/solutions/Twittercustomerservice?refer=EcoHub_NL" target="_blank">such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn</a>.</li>
<li>The <a href="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2009/03/sap-enterprise-social-networking-prototype/" target="_blank">Social Network Analyzer prototype</a> lets organizations bring together and analyze the relationships that are created between employees, and between the company and its customers. It makes it easy to mine the the wealth of data stored in existing corporate systems, such as the organizational hierarchy from a human capital management system, informal organizational information stored in email distribution lists and project systems, the sales relationships from the customer relationship management system, inquiries made through the support platform or web site, etc.</li>
<li>Twitter is fast becoming a platform for crowd-sourced data gathering. SAP prototypes allow people to <a href="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2009/11/sap%E2%80%99s-first-official-iphone-application/" target="_blank">avoid traffic in Australia</a> and <a href="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/powerpoint_twitter_tools/" target="_blank">make presentations an interactive, collaborative experience</a> by showing the “backchannel” twitter feed directly within the presenter’s slides, and allowing voting via twitter.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Mashups</h4>
<p><em><span style="color: #808080;">Web 2.0 tools are open and easily integrated with other solutions.</span></em></p>
<p>SAP is the clear leader in real-life business process, and realizes that it’s essential to bridge systems and combine information from multiple sources</p>
<ul>
<li>SAP is a <a href="http://www.sap.com/platform/soa/index.epx" target="_blank">leading proponent of services-oriented architectures</a>, that allow organizations to easily and seamless provide an end-to-end business process across multiple different application architectures.</li>
<li>For individuals, the <a href="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2010/01/sap-innovation-enterprise-mashup-prototype-rooftop-marketplace/" target="_blank">SAP rooftop marketplace prototype</a> lets business people easily integrate information from multiple different sources and applications using open interfaces.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Web 2.0 with SAP</h3>
<h4>SAP Community Network</h4>
<p>The SAP <a href="http://scn.sap.com" target="_blank">community network</a> site (SCN) is <a href="http://www.siteiq.net/" target="_blank">rated as the best in the industry</a>. It gives the SAP ecosystem of customers, partners, solution providers and employees a platform to share questions and expertise. A wide range of different business, solution, and technical areas are covered, and it is . A full set of Web 2.0 tools are provided for members, including discussion <a href="http://forums.sdn.sap.com/index.jspa" target="_blank">forums</a>, <a href="http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs" target="_blank">blogs</a> (over 5,000 contributors, of whom only 30% work for SAP), <a href="http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/elearn" target="_blank">e-learning</a>, <a href="http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/WHP/Home" target="_blank">wikis</a>, and <a href="http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/crphelp" target="_blank">reputation and recognition programs</a>, and there are <a href="http://www.sap.com/global/templates/press.epx?pressid=12027" target="_blank">tight links with other platforms such as LinkedIn</a> and the <a href="http://www.sap.com/index.epx#/social/index.epx" target="_blank">SAP Social Media page</a><br />
The site has dedicated spaces for the <a href="http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn">developer network</a>, the <a href="http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/bpx">business process expert</a> (BPX) community, a <a href="http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc">Business Objects community</a>, a <a href="http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/uac">university alliance community</a>, a community <a href="http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/careers">career center</a>, an interactive documentation space called <a href="https://cw.sdn.sap.com/cw/community/docupedia">docupedia</a>, an <a href="http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/innocentive">Innocentive</a> innovation challenge program, <a href="http://ecohub.sdn.sap.com/">EcoHub</a>, a community-driven online marketplace, and a soon-to-be-launched code exchange area.</p>
<p>SCN has over 2 million members, who post around 6,000 messages a day in over 200 different discussion forums, and over 250 blog posts each month. People from 229 countries and territories visited the site over 28 million times in 2009, and viewed over 200 million pages.</p>
<p>The growing involvement in these communities helps SAP get closer to customers, partners and stakeholders for product and service innovation. For example, SAP product marketing managers use the BPX community to share product information and best practices for product use and get product feedback. And SAP customers share their own best practices with their peers and get unbiased advice.</p>
<p>SAP’s <a href="http://cw.sap.com" target="_blank">Community Workspace</a> platform provides customers and employees with the ability to set up invitation-only collaboration forums to discuss common interests, such as “business process in the Oil and Gas Industry”. Over 60,000 people from over 2,000 different customers participate in over 3,500 different forums, visiting the site more than 260,000 times each month.</p>
<h4>SAP Influencer Program</h4>
<p>SAP provides what <a href="http://www.barbarafrench.net/2009/12/11/sap-influencer-summit-an-example-of-real-time-influencer-relations/" target="_blank">many consider the gold standard program for industry analysts, journalists, and bloggers</a>. The program involves regular meetings and virtual events, and a hosted platform for quick answers to questions. It is famous for providing exceptionally open access to senior executives, company directions, and product plans, and for openly accepting and <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=1638" target="_blank">integrating regular critics of the company</a>.</p>
<h4>SAP BusinessObjects Innovation Center</h4>
<p>SAP is taking an increasingly Web 2.0 approach to innovation. Modeled on the <a href="http://labs.google.com" target="_blank">Google Labs</a>, the <a href="http://innovation-center.sap.com" target="_blank">SAP BusinessObjects innovation center</a> lets customers trial early prototypes and give feedback, long before traditional product development lifecycles. The center receives thousands of pieces of feedback each week that are used to adapt and improve products.</p>
<h3>Web 2.0 at SAP</h3>
<p>All SAP employees have access to full collection of Web 2.0 tools through the internal corporate portal, including blogging, wikis, discussion forums, collaboration areas, and microblogging.</p>
<p>SAP was one of the earliest members of <a href="http://www.20adoptioncouncil.com/" target="_blank">the 2.0 Adoption Council</a>, a group dedicated to collecting and sharing best practice use of Web 2.0 to improve employee productivity and collaboration. Employees are encouraged to participate in external social media, and have been provided with <a href="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2009/07/sap-social-media-guidelines-2009/" target="_blank">a clear set of social media guidelines</a>.</p>
<h3>SAP and Web 2.0</h3>
<p>In the end, it’s all about bringing together the best of SAP and the best of Web 2.0</p>
<p><img style="display: inline; border-width: 0px;" title="sap-vs-web-20" src="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/sapweb20/2010/03/sapvsweb20.png" border="0" alt="sap-vs-web-20" width="690" height="446" /></p>
<p>For more information about any of these topics, please browse the other posts on this blog.</p>
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		<item>
		<title>E2.0 Conference Panel: Is Enterprise 2.0 a Crock?</title>
		<link>http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2009/11/e20-conference-panel-is-enterprise-20-a-crock/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2009/11/e20-conference-panel-is-enterprise-20-a-crock/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:47:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Timo Elliott</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[All]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web 2.0 in SAP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[#e2conf]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Enterprise 2.0]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Panel]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2009/11/e20-conference-panel-is-enterprise-20-a-crock/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Is Enterprise 2.0 a Crock? The panel of members of the 20 Adoption Council take questions from David Berlind at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>At the Enterprise 2.0 conference in San Francisco today, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/david_berlinds_tech_radar/index.html" target="_blank">David Berlind</a> hosted a session called “is Enterprise 2.0 a Crock”, drawing inspiration from Dennis Howlett’s <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=1228" target="_blank">Enterprise 2.0 – What a Crock</a> post, and Andrew McAfee’s riposte: <a href="http://andrewmcafee.org/2009/09/e20-is-a-crock-discuss/" target="_blank">Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss</a>.</p>
<p><img style="border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" title="IMG_5314" src="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/sapweb20/2009/11/img-5314.jpg" border="0" alt="IMG_5314" width="690" height="310" /></p>
<p>The panelists were all members of the <a href="http://www.20adoptioncouncil.com" target="_blank">2.0 Adoption Council</a> (from left to right in the photo above) Greg Lowe of Alcatel-Lucent, Megan Murray of Booz Allen Hamilton, Bryce Williams of Eli-Lilley, Jamie Pappas of EMC, Bruce Galinsky of MetLife, and Claire Flanagan of CSC.</p>
<p>Here’s a resume of the panel’s responses to David’s questions (captured on the fly, so typically not verbatim quotes)</p>
<p>David: How has Enterprise 2.0 been transforming your organizations?</p>
<p>Greg: We’re in the process of changing from a waterfall organization to something more agile. But right now, we don’t have the processes and tools in place to support that. Our work in the enterprise 2.0 space is to break down the silos and let people come up with new ways of working, and reducing duplicate efforts.</p>
<p>David: But shouldn’t you have done this before anyway? What’s different?</p>
<p>Greg: It’s true that change agency is nothing new – but now we have tools and technologies to support these people. We’re a 70,000 person organization, and it’s now easier to find and work with other change agents.</p>
<p>Claire: These tools are making it easier to solve the business problems.</p>
<p>Bruce: At Met-Life, it’s an enabling set of technologies. It allows people to allow new things and work in different areas. We couldn’t do that before, we were pigeon-holed, and we couldn’t share what we were doing.</p>
<p>Claire: It’s not an incremental technology. I came from knowledge management, and you used to have to go to those tools. These new technologies are letting people do something directly in their workstream, which I think is much more important.</p>
<p>David: How does the technology transform the workforce? What does that even mean?</p>
<p><img style="border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" title="IMG_5316" src="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/sapweb20/2009/11/img-5316.jpg" border="0" alt="IMG_5316" width="690" height="290" /></p>
<p>Megan: The workforce is already being transformed. We expect more as employees: more input, and more recognition, and we want to collaborate. That’s already happening &#8212; these technologies are just allowing us to do these things better, faster. As organizations, we’re trying to be as open and agile as possible about what these technologies can do.</p>
<p>David: Doesn’t a big cultural shift have to take place to use these tools?</p>
<p>Bryce: At Eli Lilley, we were interested in working more closely with our customers, using Web 2.0 technology, but there was a lot of trepidation and regulatory concerns. So we’re building our social competencies internally, using Enterprise 2.0 to lead to web 2.0 and more engagement with our customers.</p>
<p>David: Should it be top-down, or bottom-up?</p>
<p>Jamie: At EMC, we started bottom-up, with folks that wanted to start evangelism. But we also needed to find executive sponsors. One of the fallacies we see is that it’s a cure-all, fix-all type of transformation. It’s just an enabler, but you need advocates across the organization.</p>
<p>Bruce: It’s a tool like any other. We need to do our jobs quicker, and we can’t do that unless we’re collaborating more quickly.</p>
<p>David: How does it relate to business process?</p>
<p>Claire: I think it’s about business process and the changing nature of our workforce. We have lots of people who are working in home offices and client offices across the globe. It’s hard for them to get the answers they need. These tools are like a virtual office for them. The technology is an enabler for collapsing time-zone and distance problems.</p>
<p>David: How does it relate to people?</p>
<p>Megan: Regardless of the technology, there’s always people involved. The wide variety of tools we have can be used smartly – surveys instead of somebody hosting a forum, etc.</p>
<p>David: Does E2.0 bring anything other than community? Have we hit the wall?</p>
<p>Megan: I think it’s baby steps. Compared to 2006, it’s leaps and bounds. Many more opportunities now.</p>
<p>David: What about governance and compliance?</p>
<p>Bryce: We can’t not do it – we’re such a group of ambitious knowledge workers. There are some employees who say “I can do this in the external world, and I’m creative, so I’m going to find a way to do it”. The danger is that company data goes outside the fire wall. We need to herd the cats and help provide people with the right tools.</p>
<p>David: It’s about opening things up, but that works against governance, lots of information has to remain private – how do you handle that?</p>
<p>Megan: We’re working on participatory governance. We have all the basic stuff in place. But in addition to that, we’re talking about getting participation from the groups that have skin in the game. So if we have an HR problem, there’s an HR community that can handle it.</p>
<p><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" title="IMG_5314" src="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/sapweb20/2009/11/img-53141.jpg" border="0" alt="IMG_5314" width="690" height="366" /></p>
<p>Jamie: I think organizations have to stop not trusting their employees. You can take two approaches – you can lock everything down, or we can say “your responsible people, here are the policies”, and approach things as they happen.</p>
<p>Bruce: If people are malicious, they will do something no matter what. We should watch and look.</p>
<p>David: But there’s a real material risk!</p>
<p>Bruce and Jamie: But there is that same risk right now…</p>
<p>David: But the tools make it easier, harder to lock down…</p>
<p>Jamie: People have common sense, they really do.</p>
<p>Megan: It’s about accountability and visibility. &#8220;I can&#8217;t stop you from being stupid, but I can highlight it when you are stupid.&#8217;&#8221; There’s a lot of power in empowering people.</p>
<p>David: What about technology “religious wars?”</p>
<p>Jamie: It’s not about the technology, it’s about the people. We use the 80/20 rule – is it intuitive and easy to use? If so, we can springboard off of that.</p>
<p>Greg: The European view very different from the US view. They’re ahead in open source. That kind of creates a different market.</p>
<p>David: But this isn’t new?</p>
<p>Greg: No, but the conversations are a lot more open now.</p>
<p>Megan: There’s a generational bias. Some people are naturally “revolutionary”, and scare the people in charge – and we get caught in the crossfire.</p>
<p>Bruce: We have some areas that use Microsoft, some that use IBM, and some areas that are going to do their own thing no matter what. If there happen to be two tools, oh well – there are certain things you can fight, and other things you can’t.</p>
<p>David: What about ROI?</p>
<p>Greg: How do you tie better collaboration to the bottom line? We can save time finding answers, etc. and you can do some correlation, and that’s your cost savings or productivity increase.</p>
<p>Megan: We use one story: we had many huge email threads, with everybody on copy. Somebody took the longest thread, put in some values for how long it would take to pay attention to each email compared to a wiki, etc. and worked out that it “cost” up to $250,000… And if something as small and insignificant as a “reply all” can have a big dollar amount, what about the big stuff?</p>
<p>Audience question: I think one of the opportunities is “better decisions”. They can be made in lots of different ways &#8212; through consensus, etc. and this technology can help do it better – any thoughts?</p>
<p>Jamie: We’ve been doing some cost-cutting at EMC, and that’s always very painful if it’s top-down. So our management asked “what would you do?”. We had lots of suggestions: sensors in conference rooms, changes to cell phone policies, etc. And when these things come from employee suggestions, people are a lot more vested. And we’ve had other changes that weren’t popular, but now there’s at least a forum for people to communicate their reactions. In some cases, the executives have said “yes, that was a bad move, next time we’re going to do it differently” – and that’s very empowering.</p>
<p>David: Within TechWeb, we had a public conversation about how to improve our virtual events. We have tons of groups running their own events. We’ve been able to prevent the wrong decisions – repeating the mistakes that others have already made.</p>
<p>Audience question – You’re clearly not IT people &#8212; you’re too enlightened! I think Enterprise 2.0 has its roots in the new interfaces of Web 2.0. I know lots of “real” IT people would say the interface is not the important part, it’s the underlying systems. How important is user interface, do you think?</p>
<p>Bryce: The power comes from the critical mass of participation, and if what we’re trying to do is in lots of different locations, or hard to use, people just go back to their overflowing inbox. So yes, the user interface is very important.</p>
<p>Claire: I think you hit on something very important. If you don’t select the right tool, something that’s easy to get started with, the users are going to vote with their feet and do something else. Our job, when we look at these tools, is to keep this in mind. There are lots of factors: technical, compliance, cost factors, but usability is very important. One of the things we wanted to try in our pilot was whether or not the technology was “addictive”</p>
<p>David: So should the users help choose?</p>
<p>Megan: We’re using a scrum methodology, and we’re actively involving the users, so yes!</p>
<p>Bruce: We have an innovation center, and the employees help us make the deployments better. We started with the IT department, in fact.</p>
<p>Greg: It’s a little like having an internet startup. You need to engage people, make it “sticky”</p>
<p>Claire: We started with a wiki a few years ago. It was a great first step, but people had to use wiki notation, etc – so this actually became a barrier to full-scale collaboration. So we wanted something that made this easier. We could only get so far with the previous tool, because it was too hard to use.</p>
<p>Jamie: It’s not about “IT push”. It has to have the users invested in it.</p>
<p>Question from audience: You said managers have to trust employees more – any practical suggestions on how to do this?</p>
<p>Jamie: We deliberately didn’t “over engineer” – we opened things up internally, and nothing bad has happened, no users or content had needed to be removed. We tend to assume that you have to lock it down before bad things happen. But you can educate instead of prohibit.</p>
<p>Bruce: And you get more trust if you show trust</p>
<p>Bryce: There was lots of talk about different approaches to this at the beginning. One person ended up setting up his own microblogging platform on a server under his desk, and had thousands of users. It made it’s own business case, and he’s been able to show that there was no problem with content.</p>
<p>David: Web 2.0  is also about machine interfaces, mash-ups etc. Are you seeing that?</p>
<p><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" title="IMG_5318" src="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/sapweb20/2009/11/img-5318.jpg" border="0" alt="IMG_5318" width="690" height="460" /></p>
<p>Megan: In our environment, not a lot, yet. All the information we use coming from our systems.</p>
<p>Question from the audience: Referring to the original article that generated this discussion, I think the author wasn’t impressed with the soft process improvements. His point was that at a macro business level, they’re just incremental. Can I take up his question: Is anyone able to share any real hard business process changes? product development, innovation, etc?</p>
<p>Claire: As a consulting organization, we’ve been able to document how our proposal processes have changed, to find experts and close deals much faster.</p>
<p>Jamie: Our competitive group has adopted our tool as the one place that they communicate everything, so that has transformed how our sales force gets information – that’s the first place they go now. Also, we have an annual innovation conference, and we’ve been able to open up submissions to the whole organization, which has been a huge win, both for content and engagement.</p>
<p>Bruce: We have to create an IT factbook on a regular basis, and it was a painful manual process. Now we have a wiki and letting the relevant people fill it out.</p>
<p>Claire: We have a group set up for excel tips and tricks – and this was very successful, an incredible network of people, and that translates into an everyday process. When you think about hard dollars, they’re there.</p>
<p>Megan: It’s speed to resolution. We’re expanding, and we want to become a more dispersed company, and we need the tools to support that.</p>
<p>Other articles:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/11/is-enterprise-20-a-crock.php">http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/11/is-enterprise-20-a-crock.php</a></li>
</ul>
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		<title>SAP and The 2.0 Adoption Council</title>
		<link>http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2009/09/sap-and-the-20-adoption-council/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2009/09/sap-and-the-20-adoption-council/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:37:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Timo Elliott</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[All]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web 2.0 in SAP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Adoption Council]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Enterprise 2.0]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Evangelism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SAP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Networking]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/?p=495</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I am a proud member of the 2.0 Adoption Council, a group devoted to creating and sharing best practices in Enterprise 2.0 adoption. The 2.0 Adoption Council is a peer-based, information-sharing group interested in the latest thinking, best practices, case studies, and helpful tips associated with executing socio-collaborative strategies and projects in the large enterprise.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img style="border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" title="adoption-council-banner" src="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/sapweb20/2009/09/adoptioncouncilbanner.jpg" border="0" alt="adoption-council-banner" width="690" height="310" /></p>
<p>As part of my role helping evangelize the use of social media within SAP , I am a proud member of the 2.0 Adoption Council, a group devoted to creating and sharing best practices in Enterprise 2.0 adoption (see the “<a href="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/category/web20_in_sap/" target="_blank">Web 2.0 in SAP</a>” section of this site for more information about internal Web 2.0 deployments at SAP).</p>
<p><img style="border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" title="image" src="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/sapweb20/2009/09/image1.png" border="0" alt="image" width="314" height="227" align="right" />As explained on the council website at <a href="http://www.20adoptioncouncil.com">www.20adoptioncouncil.com</a>, the council members are:</p>
<blockquote><p>…a collection of managers in large enterprises that are charting the course for 2.0 adoption.  Although we may use different platforms and tools, we all share a common enthusiasm for bringing a new way of working to our representative companies.  We call ourselves “internal evangelists” and some say we have one of the most difficult, yet exciting jobs in the global marketplace.</p></blockquote>
<p>And the member welcome explains that:</p>
<blockquote><p>The 2.0 Adoption Council is a peer-based, information-sharing group interested in the latest thinking, best practices, case studies, and helpful tips associated with executing socio-collaborative strategies and projects in the large enterprise.</p>
<p>There are very few opportunities for customers to connect with each other and share their specific interests, ask questions, and help solve problems others are facing while playing the role of &#8220;internal evangelist&#8221; at their day job. It is sometimes a frustrating and thankless job!</p></blockquote>
<p><img style="display: inline; margin: 0px 0px 0px 10px" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3021/3658477877_1e5b83ed46.jpg" alt="" width="303" height="222" align="right" />The 2.0 Adoption Council was formed in June of 2009 by <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/susanscrupski">Susan Scrupski</a>, Founder of <a href="http://www.socopartners.com">SoCo Partners</a>, alias <a href="http://twitter.com/ITSinsider" target="_blank">ITSinsider on</a> Twitter (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mkrigsman/3658477877/" target="_blank">Photo</a> by <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/bio.php?id=krigsman" target="_blank">Michael Krigsman</a> of the <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mkrigsman/3658477877/" target="_blank">IT Project Failures Blog</a> &#8212; and excellent amateur photographer!).</p>
<p>The Council will be conducting research and publishing white papers culled from the collective intelligence of contributing members. It will be a major participant in the <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/sanfrancisco/">Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco</a> (November 2-5), where the <a href="http://itsinsider.com/2009/08/05/who-will-be-the-internal-evangelist-of-the-year/">Internal Evangelist of the Year</a> will be announced. If you’d like to nominate a member to be Internal Evangelist of the Year, please fill out <a href="http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dHMtRV9XLTZlcFduMGNwM3YyY3J0b0E6MA..">this form</a> – and if you’re attending to the show, we look forward to meeting you!</p>
<p>Membership of the council is invitation-only and restricted to individuals that are actively involved in a 2.0 adoption effort in large organizations (generally more than 10,000 employees). Each company can have two individuals on the council (<a href="craig.cmehil.com" target="_blank">Craig Cmehil</a> is the other SAP representative), and each person is expected to devote each time to helping the council community. (Susan, does this count? <img src='http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':-)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p><img style="border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; border-right-width: 0px" title="image" src="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/sapweb20/2009/09/image2.png" border="0" alt="image" width="172" height="196" align="left" /><a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-20-Adoption-Council/120953840119" target="_blank"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 15px; border-right-width: 0px" title="image" src="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/sapweb20/2009/09/image3.png" border="0" alt="image" width="324" height="97" align="right" /></a>The council has a <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-20-Adoption-Council/120953840119" target="_blank">Facebook Page</a> open to anybody who’s interested in 2.0 best practice, but the main work of the council happens in a collaborative workspace kindly provided by <a href="http://www.jivesoftware.com/" target="_blank">Jive Software</a> (although the council does not recommend any particular platform to its members) and regular conference calls between members.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/itsinsider/20-adoption-council-intro" target="_blank">presentation by Susan on slideshare.net</a> below outlines the goals and organization of the Council.</p>
<p>
<div style="width:425px;text-align:left" id="__ss_1981099"><a style="font:14px Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;display:block;margin:12px 0 3px 0;text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/itsinsider/20-adoption-council-intro" title="2.0 Adoption Council Intro">2.0 Adoption Council Intro</a><object style="margin:0px" width="690" height="576"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=2-0adoptioncouncilintro-090910193656-phpapp02&stripped_title=20-adoption-council-intro" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><embed src="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=2-0adoptioncouncilintro-090910193656-phpapp02&stripped_title=20-adoption-council-intro" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="690" height="576"></embed></object><div style="font-size:11px;font-family:tahoma,arial;height:26px;padding-top:2px;">View more <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/">presentations</a> from <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/itsinsider">Susan Scrupski</a>.</div></div>
</p>
<p>The topic threads of the council have been both useful and fascinating – it’s great to swap stories and tips with people that understand exactly the environment we’re working in, and it has already started gathering useful facts and figures, e.g. <a href="http://itsinsider.com/2009/09/04/fact-gathering-on-2-0-adoption/" target="_blank">this post from Susan</a>:</p>
<p><a href="http://itsinsider.com/2009/09/04/fact-gathering-on-2-0-adoption/" target="_blank"><img class="size-full wp-image-880 alignnone" title="budget" src="http://itsinsider.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/budget.png" alt="budget" width="412" height="307" /></a></p>
<p>Finally, most important of all &#8212; there’s <a href="http://www.cafepress.com/20Adoption" target="_blank">2.0 adoption council swag</a>!</p>
<p><img style="border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" title="adoption-council-t-shirt" src="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/sapweb20/2009/09/adoptioncounciltshirt.png" border="0" alt="adoption-council-t-shirt" width="233" height="300" /> <img style="border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" title="image" src="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/sapweb20/2009/09/image4.png" border="0" alt="image" width="451" height="300" /></p>
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		<title>Social Networking @ SAP: CubeTree</title>
		<link>http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2009/07/social-networking-sap-cubetree/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2009/07/social-networking-sap-cubetree/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:00:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Timo Elliott</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[All]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web 2.0 in SAP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[BusinessObjects]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CubeTree]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Enterprise 2.0]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jive]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SAP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Networking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web 2.0]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/?p=417</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[SAP has been testing a new on-demand social collaboration platform from CubeTree to facilitate internal networking, alongside other internal platforms such as Jive, CubeTree, and Atlassian.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img title="cubetree-banner" style="border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="312" alt="cubetree-banner" src="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/sapweb20/2009/07/cubetreebanner.png" width="692" border="0" /> </p>
<p>SAP has been a long-time user of <a href="http://jivesoftware.com" target="_blank">Jive Software’s</a> forum and workspace technology (<a href="http://www.jivesoftware.com/products" target="_blank">formerly called ClearSpace, now SBS for “Social Business Software”</a>), and <a href="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2009/06/social-bi-jive-chooses-sap%e2%80%99s-on-demand-bi-platform/" target="_blank">there are close commercial ties between the two companies</a>. Notably, Jive’s platform is used to power the <a href="https://cw.sdn.sap.com/index.jspa" target="_blank">SAP Collaboration Workspace</a> area that is used for both external collaboration with customers as well as internal collaboration – including the main internal “SAP 2.0” forum for discussing SAP’s own adoption of Enterprise 2.0 technology. </p>
<p>But as discussed in a previous post, <a href="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2009/02/social_networking_at_sap/" target="_blank">Social Networking @ SAP</a>, and like most large organizations, a variety of other platforms are also used inside the organization including <a href="http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/">Atlassian’s Confluence</a> and an internal development, <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=4899">Harmony</a>.</p>
<p>In addition to these existing deployments, late last year, a small workgroup of SAP BusinessObjects employees based in Palo Alto, California, began beta-testing a new, on-demand enterprise collaboration suite called <a href="http://www.cubetree.com/" target="_blank">CubeTree</a>. </p>
<p>The initial installation was focused mainly on twitter-like status feeds, functionality that wasn’t easily available from the other platforms. It rapidly went viral within the company, with employees able to invite other employees. I personally started using the site in November last year. </p>
<p>During the initial beta phase, CubeTree was used widely across different SAP departments, and I personally found it very useful to get insights into the activities of other teams working on related projects – especially SAP’s own web 2.0 technology plans. </p>
<p><img title="image" style="border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="124" alt="image" src="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/sapweb20/2009/07/image.png" width="169" align="left" border="0" /> One of the key advantages of the CubeTree on-demand architecture is the ability to rapidly add new features as they are demanded by users. There’s a weekly software update, and new features are explained <a href="http://blog.cubetree.com/2009/07/task-management-from-within-your-feed.html" target="_blank">on the company’s blog</a>. To help encourage a variety of opinions and focus feedback, CubeTree uses functionality from <a href="http://cubetree.uservoice.com/" target="_blank">User Voice</a>. Participants are given “votes” they can use when making requests and comments to developers. </p>
<p>CubeTree <a href="http://www.cubetree.com/site/press" target="_blank">launched</a> their production platform in May of this year, and it now provides the full suite of typical features offered on today’s consumer social networking sites: user profiles, follow/follower news feeds, micro-blogging, along with enterprise collaboration tools including wikis, file sharing, and polls.</p>
<p>Here’s a <a href="http://www.cubetree.com/site/features_micro_blogging" target="_blank">list of features</a>, and the feature tour video from the CubeTree web site, below.</p>
<p><object width="690" height="380"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=4617452&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1" /><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=4617452&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="690" height="380"></embed></object></p>
<p>David Meyer, VP Product Management for Emerging Technologies for SAP BusinessObjects was the main sponsor of the CubeTree project, and participated in the CubeTree launch video below, talking about the promise of the social enterprise and how CubeTree helps him achieve his goals.</p>
<p><object width="690" height="380"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=4599556&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1" /><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=4599556&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="690" height="380"></embed></object></p>
<p>Transcript of the video:</p>
<blockquote><p>Voice-over: SAP BusinessObjects has employees and offices around the world, designing and developing the world’s leading business intelligence solutions. Managing product lifecycles throughout multiple offices and time zones has its challenges, so they turned to CubeTree to facilitate collaboration and to open up channels of communication between stakeholders.</p>
<p>David Meyer: CubeTree helps ideas flow like water and I think that everybody in the enterprise is incredibly thirsty these days, because they’re captured in these silos and stuck in meetings and we need to bring back that human element. And people often don’t equate technology, the social technology, with the human element, and they think it’s de-humanizing. I think that people that are immersed in these systems see it as the exact opposite. They re-humanize within the confines and the constraints of how we’re forced to live our enterprise days. </p>
<p>Voice-over: Casual conversations and impromptu meetings are commonplace. But collaboration within the enterprise can be limited to one office or one team. By using CubeTree, development is more agile and collaboration is made easier. </p>
<p>David: CubeTree meets some of the needs &#8212; the very real needs &#8212; we have in the enterprise by making us simply move faster. Somebody says something in CubeTree. Somebody else says something from a different walk of life. A few minutes later, and by the end of the day, there’s a brand-new idea. It didn’t exist in the morning. It’s the composite idea, the best, the 1+1+1=8 within these dialogs with people from diverse viewpoints. And those are the things that are very exciting, that I think everybody is starting to feel the acceleration that these tools can provide. </p>
<p>Voice-over: CubeTree has already impacted the way people work at SAP BusinessObjects. </p>
<p>David: The other day I was remarking on a little company that TechCrunch covered. Within three hours, somebody from the ecosystem team saw that I had a point of view on it, looked at it themselves, realized where it fit in into our product strategy, and that same day had signed an NDA with that company, and was talking to them the next day. That’s remarkable!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>David also explained his motivations for using CubeTree in the launch <a href="http://www.cubetree.com/site/press_external">press release</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>“The market looks to SAP as an innovator and thought leader in driving business transformation through technology. Social networks are transforming how people communicate in their personal lives. We adopted CubeTree’s enterprise social software to bring the same network effect into the enterprise, connecting people and ideas across the company to accelerate our business.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The internal deployment has not been without its wrinkles, however. Legal and IT security objections to the use of a hosted environment (rather than the in-house deployment of the Jive platform) had to be overcome, and deployment had to be briefly interrupted for non-US employees while European data confidentiality concerns were addressed. In some countries such as Germany, the employee worker council had to be consulted, and has not yet given its go-ahead, barring that country from the deployment. And, of course, the functionality overlaps with existing platforms were examined, and a business case required for the costs and overhead of a new solution. </p>
<p>Unlike the Jive collaboration platform that is available to all SAP staff, CubeTree deployment is currently only available for employees of one of the product divisions of SAP Business Objects, but the deployment may be (re)extended in the future. </p>
<p><strong>Links</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>TechCrunch: <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/10/cubetree-launches-as-a-facebook-friendfeed-twitter-for-enterprise/">CubeTree Launches As A Facebook + FriendFeed + Twitter For Enterprise</a> </li>
<li>Bill Ives: <a href="http://www.theappgap.com/cubetree-releases-innovative-enterprise-collaboration-platform.html">CubeTree Releases Innovative Enterprise Collaboration Platform</a> </li>
<li>“Buzz” Area of CubeTree web site: <a title="http://www.cubetree.com/site/buzz" href="http://www.cubetree.com/site/buzz">http://www.cubetree.com/site/buzz</a> </li>
<li>Official CubeTree Twitter Channel: <a href="http://twitter.com/cubetree">http://twitter.com/cubetree</a> </li>
<li>Ross Fubini, CTO and Co-founder of CubeTree on Twitter: <a title="http://twitter.com/fubini" href="http://twitter.com/fubini">http://twitter.com/fubini</a> </li>
</ul>
      ]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>Social Networking @ SAP</title>
		<link>http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2009/02/social_networking_at_sap/</link>
		<comments>http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2009/02/social_networking_at_sap/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:46:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Timo Elliott</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[All]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web 2.0 in SAP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Harmony]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SAP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Networking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web 2.0]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/?p=76</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[At Sapphire two years ago, SAP talked a lot about Web 2.0 and the new "Harmony" internal social networking tool. Where is SAP today?]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In 2007, SAP announced at the Sapphire event that it was getting serious about Web 2.0 within SAP, using new technologies to help “shift from a top-down, technically rigid structure to a more fluid, informal way of thinking with a certain trust in that people can find workable solutions to their problems.”</p>
<p>Attendees were impressed. For example, Jerry Bowles noted a blog post called <a href="http://www.enterpriseweb2.com/?p=233" target="_blank">SAP to Enterprise 2.0 Community: We Get It</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>“Having spent a lot of time talking with a number of SAP executives at SAPPHIRE in Atlanta earlier this week, I’m delighted to report that SAP is one of those forward-looking giants that get it.  Big time.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Shortly after Sapphire, Steve Mann, who leads Social Media Strategy for SAP, posted a document on his <a href="http://ablebrains.typepad.com/ablebrains/2007/05/social_media_to.html" target="_blank">AbleBrains blog</a> authored by the <a href="http://www.socialmediatoday.com/">Social Media Today</a>: “<a href="http://www.socialmediatoday.com/ClientFiles/2b461d74-0b05-4149-a6fd-33257181a2c7/sapnetworks.pdf" target="_blank">SAP: A Company Transforms Itself Through Social Media</a>”, which outlined the success of SAP’s community efforts such as <a href="https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn" target="_blank">SDN</a> and <a href="https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/bpx" target="_blank">BPX</a>.</p>
<h2>Everybody in Harmony</h2>
<p>One of the first initiatives was a self-developed internal service called “<a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=4899" target="_blank">Harmony</a>”. Designed as a “Facebook for the Enterprise”, it has been running as a pilot since April 2007. It includes user profiles and skill sets, and lets users build ad-hoc groups with discussion forums. It has more than accomplished its goals of bringing people together around a number of topics, both personal and professional.</p>
<p><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" title="harmony-screen-shots" src="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/sapweb20/2009/02/harmonyscreenshots.png" border="0" alt="harmony-screen-shots" width="690" height="247" /> </p>
<h2>Preparing for the Future with a Unified Approach</h2>
<p>Harmony has been very successful, with over 7,000 members. But there are also other Web 2.0 platforms internally, such as wikis on the corporate internal portal using <a href="http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/" target="_blank">Confluence</a> software. In addition, SAP has a <a href="http://www.adobe.com/enterprise/partners/sap.html" target="_blank">strong partnership with Adobe</a> and provides <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatconnectpro/" target="_blank">Adobe Connect</a> collaboration rooms for employees. In order to be sure of getting the right platform for the future, and taking into account the explosion of enterprise social networking vendors in recent years, SAP decided to implement a formal process for choosing a unified approach for the company.</p>
<p>A series of internal surveys and meetings were used to create a request for proposal (RFP) to the major software vendors in the space. This was then topped up with Twitter announcements that generated another 11 other submissions. <a href="http://twitter.com/stevemann/status/1150338873" target="_blank"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" title="image" src="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/sapweb20/2009/02/image.png" border="0" alt="image" width="300" height="198" /></a> <a href="http://twitter.com/stevemann/status/1152630962" target="_blank"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" title="image" src="http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/sapweb20/2009/02/image1.png" border="0" alt="image" width="300" height="191" /></a></p>
<p>If you’re a vendor, and haven’t already submitted, I’m afraid it’s too late. As soon as we have more public news of what platform has been chosen (and Harmony is still one of the options), I’ll let you know…</p>
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