Two Quick SAPPHIRE Endnotes: ByDesign and Ecosystems

Tuesday I got to meet with SAP Business ByDesign chief Peter Zenke and ecosystem czar Zia Yusuf. And while I don't have time today to compose the full blog post that each meeting merits, I do want to describe my impressions in broad strokes.

Mr. Zenke was quick to address reports (including mine) that ByDesign has been delayed. As our meeting began he said, "The product is out. The product is not delayed. We are [only] rolling back the accelerated deployment." So it's the big marketing push and worldwide rollout that has been delayed, not the product itself.

Zenke went on to discuss the rationale behind the no-longer-accelerated launch, saying that SAP wants to bring more automation to the in-flight product upgrade process, which should eventually only require a few hours of downtime for the customer and one or two days of work behind the scenes by SAP. He said, "There were some surprises. We thought it was a little easier."

He reiterated Léo Apotheker's comment on Monday that, "What you can never fix is the wrong impression on day one," and said clearly that, "There is no pressure on SAP. We want to do what's right. We want happy customers."

It's fascinating to watch such a mature company with such deep competence in so many areas enter a space that is totally new for them, in this case SaaS. Some companies might gloss over the complexities and subtleties of the new space, and ignore the gaps in their competence. SAP seems to be carefully identifying the gaps, learning from them, and proceeding only once they're filled, even if it means scaling back global launch plans.

The delay, er, rolled back acceleration, makes for juicy headlines. But the resulting increased product quality should make for happy customers. It's pretty clear which is more important to SAP.

I also got to sit down with Zia Yusuf, who runs SAP's far-reaching ecosystem efforts. We didn't get to dive as deeply as I would have liked into the nuts and bolts of how SAP manages its relationships with its ecosystem partners, but I did get a glimpse into SAP's sophisticated portfolio management process and how it helps address the platform problem.

SAP looks to partners for "innovation at the edge", and goes so far as to publish a product roadmap on SDN and explicitly call out the "white space" opportunities around its platform—areas where SAP has no plans to develop competing solutions that are therefore ideal for partners. Zia also briefly described the governance structure within SAP that addresses potential partner conflicts on a weekly basis.

The wild and wooly "Web 2.0" world could learn some things from buttoned-down SAP. I specifically asked Zia if he would be willing to give a talk about managing ecosystems (he's in Palo Alto), and he said he'd be happy to. Google, Facebook, are you listening?

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