My “Inside Track” on the SAP Inside Track 2009
The SAP Inside Track Palo Alto 2009 is a day of community organized sessions, many held by SAP Mentor Initiative living in the Bay Area for people in SAP technical and functional roles.
This is where the Bay Area and beyond SAP Community Network comes together face to face. I have been a member of SCN since 2007 but quite frankly have not been an active member. Well OK, I have been active. I read blogs, read technical content and read articles on the wiki. I just haven’t “really” contributed. I mean “really” because I have not blogged or participated in discussions. I have wanted to. My role is to provide the marketing and technical objectives for the Sun and SAP relationship so I think I have some thoughts and documents to share myself. I decided to join my fellow community members today in person – I found it extremly valuable!
What I found most valuable was speaking with some customers from the Oil and Gas and Entertainment industries about what they do and how Sun can help. Had I not been here in person, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to meet such great people and share with them all the great things Sun and SAP are doing together. For example, in a few weeks (look for my next blog!) I will be publishing a paper “Platform Design, TCO, and Cost-Effective Flexibility: The Role of Solaris in Support of SAP Enterprise Applications.” These customers found this extremely interesting and wanted a copy immediately.
Another thing we spoke about was a new special interest group (SIG) our partners, Great Northern and Owens Corning are putting together in the US. It’s the SAP on Sun SIG – and the first to be platform-oriented! Customers such as All-State, Dow Corning and Grainger are already participating and it is a great place to share topics such as optimization, virtualization, upgrades on Sun Technology. This is a great place for customers to share experiences with other customers. Many folks at the community meeting were also very interested. (by the way – send an email to mike.anderson@gnorth.com or greg.turco@owenscorning.com to get involved).
So basically, I had a great day meeting folks from various parts of SAP’s business, partners and customers to share all the activities we are doing at Sun for SAP. As a result, I am even more motivated to become more of an active participant. I reached a handful of people in person, but now our message can reach more folks interested in what Sun and SAP are up to.
