It’s about who’s on the bus… thoughts from SAP TechEd in Amsterdam

I spent last week in the beautiful city of Amsterdam for the SAP TechEd 2013 conference. The conference was a fantastic experience with many great hilights. But one thing consistently came to the front of my mind throughout the week – the people.

A friend recently told me that “it’s not about where the bus is going, but rather who’s on the bus” that counts. I have been thinking who’s on our bus from two perspectives. Both our own Mobile Secure team at SAP and our customers.

I consider myself incredibly lucky to work with a fantastic team of people who bring you the SAP Mobile Secure portfolio (which includes SAP Afaria, SAP Mobile Documents, and SAP Mobile App Protection by Mocana).  Our product managers, engineering leads, alliance managers, presales team, marketing team and partners are some of the smartest people in the mobile security industry.

In Amsterdam, we had to shift some responsibilities around as one team member had to leave unexpectedly. What resulted was a true team who came together beautifully. Our VP of development stepped in to deliver lectures, members of our EMEA presales team emerged from the woodwork to support the booth for the entire week, and one even  delivered a technical lecture with only an hour to prepare. Every team member picked up the slack and we had a truly amazing week. We successfully shared the SAP Mobile Secure story with hundreds of SAP customers, hilighting our mobile device management, mobile content management and mobile app security solutions. We made some good friends of the SAP Mentors as well.

Combining the great people onsite at TechEd with the rest of our team hard at work around the globe, I realized that our “bus” is full of smart, dedicated people who work hard everyday to serve our customers. When you have the “bus” full of the right people, you know that whatever path you take is sure to be the right one.

This brings me to our customers…  the  bus has room for more than those I named above; it has room for you too.

I have had the pleasure of running the SAP Mobile Secure Customer Advisory Board for the past several years, and our meeting in Amsterdam was one of the best meetings yet. We’re at an exciting time in this market, where mobile is really taking off and security is a top priority. Our customers are working closely with us to help drive our products forward.

While I talk about having the right people on the bus, this absolutely has to include our customers. Collecting feedback and having honest conversations about where our products are headed is one of the best ways to navigate that bus in the right direction. Our customers continue to impress me with their insight and vision for how mobile will transform this businesses over the coming years.

I don’t often name people in my blogs, but I’d like to publically thank Martijn Tielen, Martin Hedberg, Britt Womelsdorf, Holger Gauss, Joe Owen and Senthil Krishnapillai for being part of the fantastic  Amsterdam team. The rest of our team working around the world includes Matt Carrier, Mark Wright, Marcus Coulter, James Naftel, Bryan Whitmarsh, Adam Stein and countless others. (Sidenote: you should read their blogs and follow them twitter!)

I look forward to going to work every day and riding on the bus with the best in the business. If you haven’t worked with the Mobile Security team yet, I encourage you to reach out and connect with us. Follow me on Twitter @miljagillespie for updates from our team on a regular basis.