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Jim’s blogs on SAP TechEd 2009 Berlin

Today started out with rain, but it seemed to have stopped before I left my hotel room.  See my Flickr feed for a view of part of my walk to the U-Bahn.

When I got to the conference center I completed a blog that I started offline last night, grabbed a couple croissants and tried to find the special Mentor seating.  As I was looking around I found Dennis Howlett, so I tagged along.  He was headed to the front row, where attendants with signs for “Press, Analysts and Bloggers” which I figured I qualified for two-thirds of. But the message was “verboten” as I stepped over Dennis and sat down.  I said “Ja, Ja” and as I didn’t understand what they were saying I sat still.  Then the wireless network was switched off.  Not a good sign, as a technology company should be able to keep the lights on, walk and talk at the same time.

I won’t comment on the keynote, until I talk to management, but Dennis noticed my reaction to a futuristic claim that customers won’t need to do full regression tests.

Here is the crowd dispersing in an orderly fashion:

After the keynote, and the wireless came back on, I wandered up to the roof garden (?) area and thought I’d listen to the press briefing, particularly as I got an “Oh, SAP Mentor, go ahead” rather than the “it is forbidden” speech I’ve heard a lot here. So I missed the Business Objects road map session at the same time, and was disappointed to find those slides are not yet online.  Come on folks, you gotta share with those who have multiple agendas!

Chip Rodgers later tweeted:

“heard from IT at #sapteched08 – they ID’d a security device causing problems. Fixed now. Let me know if problems continue”

That was a relief to a lot of people who were having issues with the wireless connectivity.

I had a good chat with Michael Schwandt who asked what *I* would do if I was in charge of SCN.  Wow, the million dollar question. I said I’d have to thing about it, but certainly clean up and reorganization sounds liek the right direction. I was also sorry I missed the quantity/quality discussion about SCN at Community Day.

After lunch I went to my first hands-on session.  The speaker I was hoping to see was unable to be in Berlin due to illness, so I will need to follow up later with him on topics around the Solution Manager Documentation Assistant.  At least it has a cooler nickname than Business Objects – “SoDocA” pronounced “Sew Dook Ah”.

Marilyn Pratt let me know that James Governor and Tom Raftery want to speak to the two of us tomorrow, so my Wednesday lunchtime is filling up, and not with food.

At 4PM we had an SAP Mentor meet-up, which was mostly about Eco-Hub, which I don’t think I’d touch with a 10-foot pole, and then a bit about licensing.

Mentors et al in picture
Left to right
Row 1: Morten Wittrock, Darren Hague, Dick Hirsch, Anne Kathrine Yojana Petterøe, Dennis Howlett
Row 2: Frauke Hassdenteufel, Dan McWeeney, ?, Joseph Zeinoun
Row 3: Mike Pokraka. Phil Kisloff, Lee Provoost, ?
Row 4: Julius Busche, Christian Guenther, Oliver Kohl
Row 5: Anton Wenzelhuemer, Michael Schwandt, Michal Krawczyk
Row 6: ?

After that, I went to a session which was almost completely filled, on Virtualization and the SAP Adaptive Computing Controller.  A lot of great questions from the audience.  The person sitting next to me was just as fascinated with the Twittering I was doing.  Which reminds me, I’ve done a couple Twitter elevator speeches this week.

• Gunther is SAP Product Manager for Virtualization and Adaptive Computing. Session is packed.
• Gunther talking about role changes (identity management / security) when virtualization features adopted.
• Gunther has 3 live demos prepared – he’s moving resources in an SAP virtual machine with the Adaptive Computing Controller. Working well.
• Number of SAPS configured on virtual servers was showing as 10,000. Someone asked how it was measured; Gunther said it is imaginary number.
• Gunther taking question from the audience; repeating every one for clarity. Great discipline but we’re going to miss some slides.
• Gunther talking about SAP licenses considerations for virtualization. The audience perked up despite the late hour and full house. $ value?
• Gunther finished up with speedy run through a flexible license server model to deal with SAP system normally tied to CPUs. More details pls 

All right, I’ve procrastinated going to Demo Jam.  Time for crowd surfing!