Yesterday, the first day at the ASUG and SAPPHIRE Conferences, was busy but today was even busier, starting with an early morning breakfast meeting hosted by SAP Executive VP Marge Breya featuring guest speaker Jeanne Ross from MIT Sloane School's Center for Information Systems Research. This was high energy start to the day, with several of my SAP Mentors colleagues attending, including Marilyn Pratt, Anne Kathrine Petteroe, and Mico Yuk. I especially enjoyed hearing Ms Ross's observations on the challenges of deploying transformative technologies and her suggestions for meeting those challenges, which were: thinking ‘architecture,' working smarter, and valuing/ empowering your people.
To continue my learning today, I headed over to one of the SAPPHIRE Lines of Business Theatres for a session called Reduce Costs by Integrating Access Control with Identity Management, presented by John Myers of PepsiCo and Scott Osterman from PriceWaterhouseCoopers. From their case study, I was especially interested in hearing how they combined a security rewrite with an IdM deployment and migration to SAP's GRC suite. They offered great lessons learned from the value PepsiCo realized from that project.
The morning keynote followed, which was called Perspectives from SAP's co-CEOs, featuring Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe. Sustainability and mobility were main themes of their remarks. The key takeaways to me were that sustainability and mobility are SAP's strategic direction, and that sustainability enables businesses to maximize savings, lower costs, create or improve customer loyalty, and improve brand reputation. Both McDermott and Snabe shared infectious enthusiasm, and I came away feeling energized
An ASUG influence council kickoff session followed; those sessions are covered by a non-disclosure agreement so I can't say much other than I am looking forward to seeing what comes of this initiative.
After lunch I spent a few minutes visiting with some SAP Mentors in the Bloggers' Corner, then headed over to the ASUG Lounge for the Security and Internal Controls SIGs networking session in the ASUG Community Meeting area. The idea of these sessions is to introduce people to the ASUG SIG volunteers, do some networking, and discuss opportunities for working with SAP to influence the solutions road map. We had a very productive discussion; once the brainstorming got going, we got some great ideas for influence in BusinessObjects, the GRC suite, and general authorization and role maintenance issues.
Tonight I have several options for dinner, networking, and entertainment, so I'm sure I have a good time ahead of me to cap off another great day in Orlando.
