In the first part of the blog about SCN infrastructure 2.0 (that´s how I call a future of SCN for myself) I opened the topic about what can we expect from SCN in the coming months and years. I became interested in the topic because there is a dedicated forum category where one can post his/her suggestions what to change/ improve/ get new on SCN. Many suggestions have been made and not many of them made it to the "productive system".
The problem is with the money, as usual. But I understand that, I understand how much money SAP has to invest into SCN to run it, support it and slightly enhance it.
So I ask: Should we call for an improvement of the current "infrastructure" (I cannot call it a system, because it´s everything but not very homogenous, read the first part of the blog to understand that different parts of this site run on different "engines"). Well, yes, we should improve the current system for some more time but should start discussing the future as well. The sooner we start to talk about having something new, something with more features (especially the so-called "social features" are evolving very quickly), less bugs, with a hope the improvements into this system will work for the users for a long time and especially with the support (I bet you all have heard before the problems with forums come from the fact, the forum engine is outdated Jive software, which is out of regular support).
I wonder how is it possible we waited so long that we cannot "upgrade" the forums now. We will have to "migrate" it as if it would be some legacy software. With this in mind one has to be glad that the new Idea Place runs on a newer Jive engine (Idea Place is a limited Jive deployment, where most of the features are blinded and only the "ideation module" is available). In case the new SCN engine would come from Jive, there is still hope we will be able to upgrade the current Idea Place to the newest release.
Let´s start asking (and answering)
- What software from what vendor will suit the SCN needs? Would new Jive SBS fit here?
- How many of the current SCN features should the new system cover? (Example: New Jive SBS system could merge Blogs, Forums and Idea place. These three "components" of SCN work separately now). Is there any system which could cover the selected features?
- Who are the decision makers? Who can tell us what will come? If and when we can expect something to happen?
- How will we "migrate" the current SCN to a new engine? (Example: since all the current components run a on a different system, we will have to migrate these systems into anew format of database the selected "new engine" will need. Will we migrate the current content or will we just shut down the "old" SCN and start asking our questions in a new one? Will we stop accepting blog posts in "old" system, make people to post their blogs in a new one and one day the "old" content will appear with a "new" face?
I am sure how many questions are there to ask and answer. I hope we will hear some answers.
This blog was not meant to criticize the SCN teams, they´re doing a great job. They do and you can check that out for yourself: a wiki page appeared, where one can see what improvements were implemented, check it here: Implemented enhancements for SCN. I hope to see more items coming out on this page. Some are very useful (like the character limit of a forum post) and recent as well (September 9th). So we cannot complain nothing happens. We are listened.
And we have to thank the names behind the curtain. I am not sure how many people worked on these improvements, but I can see two names we all know: Marilyn Pratt and Martin Lang. Thank you, folks!
Add your comments, dear Community members, because your voice counts!
Best regards, Otto
