Enterprise 2.0 – another “build and they will come”?


I already un-followed several people on twitter because I could not stand any more E2.0 trivia being hurled at me. I have hardly seen anything new being said about it. And no –  just by adding “social” and “collaborative
” to every sentence does not make you or your idea look smart.

I earn a living by finding out my customer’s pain points and offering solutions to them. I have only been in consulting for about 12 years or so, and hence don’t claim to be the most experienced dude around. However – in these 12 years – I have not seen a significant change in the top 5 pain points for big companies. And till date – I have not seen E2.0 in that list. I actually doubt if it even makes it to top 10.

Don’t get me wrong – executives at almost every single client of mine are keen to find how E2.0 can help them in their business. Most are willing to invest in pilot projects to check out the idea too.  But almost invariably – they can always find other avenues to invest that money for better ROI.

Here are  few things that are probably worth keeping in mind in this context.

1. Business users are not dumb

Everything does not have to be stupid simple. There are complex things they need to do, and a simple UI is not always what they are looking for. These people are smart enough to use complex tools as long as it serves their purpose.  They feel insulted when they read/hear that things have to be made stupid simple for them.

2. Not all customers are consumers

What works in B2C does not work in B2B all the time. So when we talk about facebook type things for enterprise – remember that it is only one of the many things a business user needs to do.

3. Guess what – people have been collaborating before E2.0

If a millennial reads about E2.0 – he/she might think that people used to never collaborate till now. Enterprises have been collaborating internally and externally all the time – it is the tools that kept evolving. Email, telephone, snail mail all have helped us collaborate and they all still work. What the new tools help with is scalability. But then again – unless it is B2C – not many enterprises need such extreme scale.

4. Large enterprises cannot be flattened

I get very amused when the E2.0 gang keeps talking about flattening hierarchies. Try doing that in a significant way for a large company – and you will soon figure out it cannot function effectively.

5. You can build your own community online – but you cannot control it

And this can bite you. If you nurture a community and make every one passionate about it – you should also be prepared for even more backlash if you mess up. Plus – you cannot restrict all the activity to a site you control. It is a free world – and people will discuss about you anywhere they please.

6. Collaboration is not always neatly tied to a given business transaction.

Lets say you can have an online chat with your vendor on a certain product. It is very seldom that you talk only about one transaction – you will talk about many transactions, weather, baseball and so on. But when you go back to that transaction – you don’t want to see the baseball discussion – you just want some specific discussion about that transaction. And most software I have seen don’t support a useful way to use collaboration information. Just being able to collaborate is not value adding – using that effectively in decision-making is key.  MDM, content management, collaboration, OLTP and OLAP all have to play together – and this is hardly possible today.

Bottom line – till it becomes a top-5 pain point, I do not see many enterprise customers taking the E2.0 plunge. And I am not holding my breath on it for now.

Context is everything


This happened in the year 2000. I am fairly new to USA, and sitting in my client’s IT offices in Colorado Springs,CO. It is close to lunch break – and my mobile rings. I pick it up – and it is my dear friend from India. A minute later I am telling him – in an exasperated voice -“Do not let that bitch on your bed, she won’t let you sleep one wink all night.”. Next thing I know, 20 heads are staring at me with horror written large on their faces. Little did they know that I was actually talking about a dog – a female German Shepherd that I bought and sent to my friend in India to show there in dog shows. Despite me explaining to the best of my abilities, I am sure not all 20 believed me then, or ever after.

That is the thing about context – data without context means nothing. And this is especially true in the world of analytics. A given set of data can mean many things to many people. Consider this example.  If you are at the physician’s office to check blood work results. You and the doctor are both staring at the same numbers. Yet – doctor and you have two levels of understanding about what those numbers mean.  But why does that happen?

It happens because we try to abstract everything into some common model for all users of the information.   Since you and the doctor have a difference in your level of knowledge on the subject, the idea is to make it useful to you – who has minimum knowledge.  It can also work in another way – like the stock market. There, the information is skewed towards the more knowledgable users – and the layman investor cannot make use of it easily.

But why does this happen? We have raw data  – so this should not be hard to represent it in ways that a given user can figure out. The reason is that if we were to create a report per type of user, it is a nightmare to develop and maintain. But what if there was a tool and a framework that could take raw data and present it differently to different users without a developer writing report after report?

Here is another scenario. Lets say an order entry clerk is entering a sales order. The context has all the information on customer, product, location and so on. And there are probably plenty of BI reports that analyze the product and customer in a hundred different ways. But the clerk probably does not know that or care about that. Wouldn’t it be nice if system had the ability to ask the Clerk “hey did you know this customer always pays on time, and hence you should check if he can be given a loyalty discount?” or “we have this other product that is similar, but no one is buying it. Why don’t you ask the customer if he would take that instead for a reduced price?”.  That is actionable information – presented in a way that a user can understand. And depending on context, system can figure out what the user can be presented with.

The best part is – there are plenty of technologies around us that can do parts of these already. Missing aspect is the integration of all of them. So – will all the smart product developers recognize this and do something about it? I am counting on them !  As intel says in their campaign – “it is not what we make, it is what we make possible”

Post SAPPHIRE NOW musings


SAPPHIRE was way cool – one of the most well-organized ones, and I enjoyed it very much, despite the extreme sleep deprivation that I had to endure. In general, I was quite excited with SAP’s messaging, and analyst commentary. But as soon as I left the convention center, I started thinking more about the messages I heard at SAPPHIRE, and I think I am not as excited as I was a few days ago. It was a mixed bag. Please check my blog I posted when I was on my way to Orlando. http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/19247

Let me start with Sybase. For one – SAP paid a huge premium for Sybase. The only reason I can think of is that SAP fears some one else like ORACLE or HP might be ready to buy Sybase, and in the process put roadblocks to SAP’s way forward on enterprise mobility. SAP claims to have figured out in-memory data bases even before Sybase story came out – and Sybase is nowhere near the top-tier of enterprise DB market. Even in SAP ecosystem, I think Oracle and DB2 have the lion share. So this is not going to help SAP rule the DB market. On Analytics – SAP has BOBJ, which is top of the line. So it is hard to imagine that they need more from Sybase. So mobility is the only reason that is worth SAP paying this premium. But why pay that much when Sybase is already a big partner, and is committed to building SAP specific solutions? 

Where this makes it confusing for me is that on one hand – SAP swears that they are committed to all the partners having an open level playing field. On the other hand – if a client gets a mobility pitch from a partner and Sybase tomorrow – which one will they choose? In today’s world – Sybase solutions are SAP CRM specific from what I know – and there are other partners that do other things. Post acquisition, I am pretty sure Sybase will become the de-facto standard.  This looks like a repeat of BOBJ story in analytics world – it is true that other BI partners can still sell to SAP customers, but what is the long-term value proposition for non SAP BOBJ vendors any more when they sell BI to primarily SAP shops? 

SAP cannot buy every company around – so of course they need partners to build things around their solutions. So I am not surprised that SAP reiterates its commitment to keeping it an open field for every one. But won’t partners now feel a constant fear that after they have invested in SAP solutions for a while, SAP will buy one of them – and leave others by the way side?

Now on to HANA and in-memory. I was super excited to hear that SAP is taking this route, and that they have something that customers can sign up for right away. On the flight back from Orlando, I posted these questions on my SAP blog and there has been some good discussion around it. http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/19339 .  Technical questions apart – SAP is a relative late entrant into this market. So calling it innovative is a stretch. Hasso had this idea a while ago. So what prevented this from getting productized for so long?

It was great to hear that Business By Design is finally ready for prime time. SAP also has a lot of side benefits due to this – they probably figured out how to scale with Agile, something that I am very keen to find out. Please check out the great discussion I had with Enterprise Geeks at http://enterprisegeeks.com/blog/2010/05/19/sapphire-agile-throwdown .Another plus is the use of Silverlight, a Microsoft technology that I think is superior to all the SAP UI tools currently available. I am fully bought in on Vishal Sikka’s position that SAP has way too many UIs to use just one common tool.  but for all the good things – SAP leaders made a statement that sounded like “we do not have a firm target for growth of BBD “. Really? Would you just throw billion dollars at something that you have no real expectations for? Had to swallow that.

I just think it is plain funny when SAP talks about sustainability in these big events like SAPPHIRE. This is an event that makes such a lot of carbon emissions – high energy use for the many display gizmos, the jet setting executives, and many vendors and participants who fly to get there, and the massive air-conditioning that keeps participants alive in Orlando heat and humidity. Al Gore, Powell and the Virgin guy didn’t drive their hybrid cars to get to Orlando, did they? And did the SAP top guns fly commercial between Germany and US to appear at the concurrent events  or did they fly in private jets? So yeah – it is very hard for me to buy into the whole sustainability pitch. It sounds hollow .

SAP is clearly in the top bracket of companies who have figured out how to use social media to its advantage. SCN has 2 million members and the SAP mentor program (of which I am a part) provides excellent input to SAP for free. SAP has a blogger program – which I think pays T&E for bloggers to come to these events, but in no way forces these bloggers to let go of their objectivity.  And twitter helped several of us keep track of the massive event. That is extremely forward thinking and admirable. They are leading from the front – and other companies should watch and learn.

Finally, a couple of things on the leadership front. First and foremost – Hasso is still SAP’s superman. None of the others evoke the kind of passion he delivers. Bill and Jim are a perfect pairing – and I think SAP made a wise decision to do the Co-CEO thing again, especially with these two guys. And Vishal Sikka has all the qualities of a great tech visionary – and like the taste of good wine, his message gets more and more clear to people who follow SAP as time passes. I used to think John Schwarz was the next big leader at SAP – but I was wrong. he left, and probably took some of his trusted guys with him. Now with Sybase comes its CEO John Chen. He is an amazing leader – some one who successfully turned around Sybase and kept it growing despite a terrible economy. Will SAP manage to keep him and his team or will he too leave one day soon after the acquisition? I am very keen to see how that unfolds.