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SAP SAPPHIRE 07 VIENNA Post 2 – First Day

By the time I set foot in the Conference Hall, the show has more or less finished and the last session of the day for bloggers was in full swing with Dennis Moore of SAP Labs. My journey started at 7 am, taxi to airport, Manchester to Charles De Gaule, and from there to Vienna. Then I had the same idea as David Terrar of trying out the public transport. Took CAT (express train from Airport to City Centre) to Wien Mitte, then Underground to Le Meridian, dumped the bag, back in the Underground, this time to Wien Nord, finally tram to Masse, where the Conference Centre was located. All was fine, except the temperature was perhaps twice of Manchester. It took me completely by surprise – bucket load of sweat!

Here are two photos of the last session.

L to R: Charlie, Maggie, DennisM, Craig, Sig and David

DennisM spoke about Twitter, SAP’s Enterprise Search, SOA mashups, widgets, etc etc. But most interesting insight I took away was the cultural difference between Oracle and SAP as he saw it. According to Dennis, Oracle is about:

  • Command and control
  • Founder still in control
  • Centralised control
  • Top down control
  • Confrontational
  • Attack competition

According to DennisM, Sap is about:

  • Customer focus – will only deliver if customers demand it
  • Board decision is start of the discussion, and not the end of the discussion as in the case of Oracle

L to R: Charlie, Axel, Prashanth, etc listening to Dennis Moore.

I got the feeling that DennisM was not that comfortable talking to bloggers and was in bit of a rush to get away. I did managed to query how SAP views customer pain around document exchange. It was not really Dennis’s forte. I am hoping for a better answer tomorrow.

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