When we asked the SAP Mentors whom they would like to talk to the most, on top of their list was SAP's CTO Vishal Sikka. This is why am especially happy that he will present at the Community Day in Las Vegas. Here part of the press release when SAP appointed Vishal to be their Chief Technology Officer:
WALLDORF, Germany - May 30, 2007 - SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced the appointment of Vishal Sikka as chief technology officer (CTO) to lead the company's technology and architecture strategy across its product portfolio. Effective April 2007, Sikka is responsible for ensuring a clear and harmonized road map for SAP products to deliver ongoing innovation and long-term value to customers worldwide. As CTO, Sikka leads the company's forward-thinking efforts around emerging technologies, plays a leading role in the long-term direction of SAP's research efforts and is chartered with mapping SAP's next-generation architecture. Reporting to SAP CEO Henning Kagermann, Sikka heads SAP's newly established Office of the CTO to drive these efforts.
We have so many great sessions at the Community Day, that we were tight with time. This is why I first offered him 30 minutes for his talk, but he said 30 minutes is too short to get into anything serious, so I gladly extended to 45 minutes.
He is going to talk about what Timeless Software is and what that means. Those are views and perspectives that have been shaped by what SAP has learned from more than 30 years of application programming.
At SAP we need to understand and optimize the fundamental equations around content, containers and change.
We need the ability to
- Build application functionality across all roles, industries, geographies, ...
- Maximize their reach across all kinds of consumers
- Deliver this over containers that span multiple generations of technologies
- Minimize the cost and Maximize the ease of their:
- Construction, deployment, and lifecycle in a heterogeneous landscape
In other words, we need to build Timeless Software.
I can't wait to hear him elaborate on these lessons learned from our 30 years of Software development.
If you have not done so, register here for either the SDN or the BPX day.
P.S. According to unconfirmed rumors in the picture above Vishal is showing how time bound Oracle software is 😉
