[UPDATED]. Apologies. This used to be a quick, irreverent overview of the brand-new cloud-based, software-as-a-service ERP offering from SAP, featuring the graphics you can see above.

But the video was declared off-brand, and has been deleted from YouTube by SAP. The following video is offered instead, with all of the original humor deleted.

The last few months has seen a lot of coverage of SAP’s directions on Web 2.0 technology including on-demand applications, social networking, and cloud computing. Here are some highlights, in the words of the leaders of these initiatives at SAP.

On-Demand

Phil Wainewright reported on SAP executive VP John Wookey’s presentation at the OnDemand Europe Conference in June:

“On demand is the next stage in the evolution of application development … It is absolutely essential from SAP’s perspective that we embrace this change,” he said. “On-demand is what our customers are looking to invest in. If we do our job well and listen to our customers, these are the applications we have to be delivering. We have to drive to leadership in on-demand applications.”

Here’s a video of John Wookey and Mani Gil, Vice President of OnDemand at SAP BusinessObjects, discussing the conference:

Here’s a copy of John’s presentation:

Links

• Wall Street Journal: SAP to Make Online Software Push
• Financial Times: SAP reshapes strategy for online software
• Mary Hayes Weier of Information Week: SAP Unveils SaaS Strategy
• Dennis Howlett: SAP’s John Wookey: the task ahead

Social Networking

A podcast from SearchSAP.com on how SAP’s Web 2.0 strategy makes way for social networking in business apps

“In that light, SearchSAP.com sat down with Zia Yusuf, executive vice president of SAP’s global ecosystem and partner group, and Mark Yolton, senior vice president of SAP community networks. In addition to managing strategy for SAP’s social networking sites like the SAP Developer Network (SDN), the two men play a role in what social networking tools may be integrated into SAP’s own software.

In this podcast, Yusuf and Yolton talk about SAP’s internal Web 2.0 strategy, including why sites like SDN have been successful and how SAP’s employees are using tools like Jive and CubeTree in their daily tasks. In turn, they discuss possible business scenarios in which tools like Twitter and LinkedIn could be integrated into SAP software.”

Cloud Computing

Information Week: SAP Sheds Light On Cloud Computing Plans

“In a keynote address and interview at the Interop Conference and Expo in Las Vegas on Tuesday, [SAP CTO Vishal Sikka] broadly outlined SAP’s cloud computing strategy and discussed the technical and business challenges the company needs to solve before doing things like ramping up the number of customers served by Business ByDesign.

SAP sees its opportunities in the cloud — which it seems to define very broadly as all Internet-based services — as threefold for now: enabling “business network service clouds” like iTunes that are powered by SAP Business Suite and Business Objects, complementary and integrated cloud-based services from SAP likeCRM On-Demand, and a mission-critical business application suite in Business ByDesign.”

Vishal’s slides:

Videos of Vishal talking about on current SAP strategy and technology trends:

Also see Vishal’s Timeless Software Blog.

SAP today announced new collaboration agreements that allow SAP Business ByDesign users to more easily leverage web services from third-party providers, including:

Business and investment news. Users can access investment research and other data from Hoover’s, Morningstar, and Business Wire, Google News, and Google Finance, and combine it with their own information about customers and suppliers.

Mapping and address services. Users can map and route customers, suppliers and other contacts using services from Google Maps, MapQuest.com, Navteq/Map24, and Falk online.

Search. Users can leverage Google Web Search, and Google Product Search, and GoYellow.de, a German service that allows reverse phone lookup functionality.

Further web services are planned to be introduced in the next release of Business By Design in Q3 of 2009.

Frustratingly, no information was available about the extent of integration with these services, and how customers could proceed. As Chris Kanaracus reported in his article SAP adds Web Services to Business by Design:

It wasn’t immediately clear how deep the integrations are between the services and BBD. This is a key point, said Forrester Research analyst Ray Wang.

Just being able to call out to Google Maps from within the ERP suite has limited value, Wang said. But if the system could use sales data contained in BBD to create a “heat map” showing the hottest territories, “that would be pretty cool,” he said.

At some point more information may be available on Web Services area of the Business ByDesign marketplace (registration required). For now, it contains roughly the information as the press release.

We’re used to seeing IT industry megavendors such as SAP augment their solutions with web 2.0 technology from smaller vendors, but now one of the leading enterprise 2.0 companies is turning to SAP for a cloud computing offers to extend new capabilities to customers.

At the Enterprise 2.0 2009 event in Boston, Jive and SAP announced that Jive is going to be a reseller of SAP’s on-demand BI solutions, providing “social BI” to their customers.

SAP has long been a customer of Jive Software’s Enterprise 2.0 collaboration platform, notably to power the forums on the SAP Development Network, and SAP’s Collaboration Workspace, and a few years ago SAP signed an OEM agreement to include Jive Forums as a standard part of the SAP NetWeaver portal application.

This announcement is a clear sign of the growing maturity of the enterprise 2.0 market, in two different ways.

First, it’s the first concrete results of SAP’s increased focus on the web 2.0 market, and in particular the investment in the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio of products, designed to transform the work of “business users” in the same way that ERP has transformed operational processes.

SAP BusinessObjects was one of the early pioneers in the on-demand business intelligence market, with a flexible platform that provides the best of both worlds: customers can use the same technology platform in a mix of on-demand or on-premise configurations, and move smoothly between the two. SAP’s agreement to partner with Jive is non-exclusive: the on-demand BI software is already used within other partner solutions including Oco.

Second, it shows that enterprise 2.0 solutions are real, and providing value in organizations. Jive’s 3,000 customers include many large organizations, that have been gathering valuable data about how companies collaborate internally and engage with customers and partners externally. As with any successful business process, they now want to examine and optimize that process, and mine that data with best-of-breed business intelligence tools.

These two trends were echoed by Susan Scrupski of ITSInsider, in her post And They’re Off. A Postcard From Enterprise 2.0 Event:

“This new venture, however, marks a clear initiative by SAP to (finally) take social software seriously, and likewise, it provides a grownup capability for a social software platform like Jive to deliver some clear business benefit.”

I believe business intelligence is an essential part of any successful enterprise 2.0 initiative, in order to:

Provide statistics on usage trends. Business intelligence helps proactively identify any technical or social roadblocks to effective deployment of collaboration tools, answering questions such as:

• When are the peaks and troughs of user activity? What causes them?
• Who has access to the system but is not using it?
• Which users have recently stopped using the system? Do they share any common characteristics?
• Are there any regular occasions where particular groups don’t use the system? Why?

Prove the ROI. Business intelligence functionality will help provide the data required to prove to skeptics of the value of collaboration and social computing inside organizations.

• Are users of the system more likely to get better (or worse) employee evaluations or bonuses?
• What’s the correlation between any groups of identified “top performers” and system usage?
• Do sales people who use the system achieve quota faster than sales people that do not?
• Does using the system replace other types of internal information dissemination, such as attending internal web seminars, or does it complement it?
• Is there any correlation between system use and employee or customer satisfaction?
• Are customers that engage in collaboration more or less profitable?

Optimize social relationships. If enterprise 2.0 software generates return on investment, it follows that it makes sense to try and optimize its use. Business intelligence systems can help decide where the network of relationships between employees, customers, and partners can be improved:

• Are there certain key “connectors” that provide a valuable service, but are not being recognized as such within the organization?
• Are there any groups of people that collaborate among themselves, but not with the rest of the organization? (e.g. bosses that frown on “their team” working with other departments)
• Do similar groups (such as regional sales offices) have different patterns of relationships? Why?
• Are there people that seem to be a negative influence on relationships within the organization? (e.g. detecting “bad bosses”
• Did the new bonus or incentive system we just introduced stop people collaborating?

Analyzing sentiments. Collaboration technology generates a lot of textual information that can be analyzed using technology such as SAP BusinessObjects’ Text Analytics, for analyzing the sentiment of customers, partners, and employees, about products, processes, or the collaboration system itself.

Note that in every case, it’s not enough to have information just from the collaboration system – it must be combined with information from other key financial and HR systems in order to get a full view of what is happening. This means that organizations must have a strategic approach to implementing business intelligence across the organization.

You can download Jive Software’s “Social Business Imperative Manifesto” here. And any organizations interested in trying out the SAP BusinessObjects ondemand solutions can click here to sign up for a Starter edition account.

Links and Other Analysis

Mary Hayes Weier of Information Week: Enterprise 2.0: SAP, Jive Combining BI With Wikis

Chris Kanaracus of IDG News Service: Jive, SAP Partner on ‘social BI’

Alex Goldman, InternetNews.com, SAP BusinessObjects integrates into Jive

Barb Mosher, CMS Wire, Jive Integrates SAP’s onDemand Business Intelligence Offerings

Oliver Marks, ZDNet Blogs: Jive & Telligent Get More Analytical

Susan Scrupski,  ITSInsider: And They’re Off. A Postcard From Enterprise 2.0 Event