See you at SAPPHIRE in Orlando

In a little over a week, it's time for SAPPHIRE NOW in Orlando. Apart from working the Winshuttle booth and meeting with various customers, partners and subject matter experts, I'll be facilitating a "microforum" discussion on master data:

Improve your Master Data following a bottom-up approach
Partner & SME Solutions Microforum 2
Wednesday 4:00 pm - 4:45 pm

During the conference, I'll be very interested in connecting with anyone who wants to share their experiences with managing and improving SAP master data. If I don't see you at the session above, you can find me at the Winshuttle booth or reach out to me on Twitter (@kalsing).

See you at the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas

Next week it's time for the biggest SharePoint event of the year, Microsoft's own SharePoint show in Las Vegas. I'm looking forward to catching up with many friends in the community from around the world. I'll be anchored in the Winshuttle booth talking about ERP integration and business critical processes with anyone who is interested. Swing by or reach out to me on Twitter (@kalsing).

I have a scheduled partner theater session at 7.20 pm on the Sunday night about how SharePoint can be a platform for delivering on Gartner's Pace-Layered Application Strategy. I'll barely be back from a visit to Winshuttle Labs in India, so my colleague Jeff Shuey is going to cover for me. Jeff's an awesome presenter so don't miss it!

A pace-layered application strategy around your ERP
For ERP-centric business processes, there is an increasing gap between business users’ need for optimization and innovation and IT professionals’ goals of reducing costs, maximizing security and standardizing technologies. Learn how SharePoint can bridge this gap and become your platform of innovation in business critical applications, enabling you to quickly respond to ever-changing business conditions.

Wrap-up from the ASUG Data Governance SIG in Houston

I've spent the last three days in Houston at the ASUG Special Interest Group (SIG) for Data Governance. It's an area that has been steadily growing and in its eighth annual incarnation there was 220 attendees and three full days of sessions, all focused on data governance. Certainly, a stark contrast to the Oracle conference I attended last week in San Fransisco which had 50,000 attendees with a very broad range of interests. Kudos to the organizers for putting on an excellent event with an intimate atmosphere where we all had the opportunity to connect with everyone else.

The content included lots of invaluable insights from various SAP customers and industry thought leaders, all about how to tackle data governance. One of many things I wanted to validate at this event was the case for using Microsoft tools as an important part of the tool bag for data teams. It was evident that master data management and governance are areas where using tools such as Excel, Access and SharePoint is very common. Data governance is often championed by technically savvy business people who want to be empowered to solve problems without lengthy and costly projects on the tool implementation side of the equation. Hence, it makes sense that these business user oriented tools are heavily utilised. However, it was also clear that the use of these tools needs to be managed properly to keep everything aligned with the long term objectives.

There was a lot of talk about best practices for executively sponsored governance programs with a well-defined long term roadmap. However, it was also acknowledged that a top-down approach does not, by itself, yield the short term results required to keep the movement going. As it was nicely put by Maria Villar from SAP when talking about SAP's internal data governance program: "Information governance is a team sport and everybody has to play" and "ownership should be pushed to the lines of business." Most speakers reasserted that process owners in the business should be accountable for their own master data. In one session, when the audience was asked whether they had a roadmap outlining their master data program, the majority responded that data management capabilities have been introduced on a reactive basis.

All in all, I sensed a consensus around the need for both top-down and bottom-up data governance initiatives. There needs to be a long term roadmap outlining the strategic goals which will ensure the continuous support from top management and alignment with the company's business goals. But there also needs to be more tactical initiatives where lightweight and cost-effective solutions will yield immediate results and measurable business improvements. It's the latter, I'm currently focused on at Winshuttle.

Wrap-up from Share 2012 in Atlanta

I’m about to shoot back to the Pacific Northwest after some great days amongst SharePoint peeps in Atlanta. For me, the Share 2012 show started on the Monday night, being a booth bandit for Winshuttle in the exhibition hall. We had some interesting conversations with people wanting to understand how to get their SharePoint environment better integrated with their SAP backend.

Tuesday kicked off with a triple keynote with back-to-back sessions by Dux Raymond Sy, Microsoft's Gideon Bibliowicz and finally Jody Billiard and Shawn Olsen from Coca-Cola. Dux was interesting and enthusiastic as always. One of his key messages was that in order to succeed with your SharePoint initiative, it needs to be intentional, business-driven and have the necessary sponsorship. It sounds obvious, but in too many organisations SharePoint is still being driven by IT as a secondary initiative without clear business goals.

Following Dux, Gideon provided an overview of Microsoft’s vision for the SharePoint platform. Microsoft’s fastest growing server product ever is still all about the platform-based approach coupled with an extensive and vibrant eco-system. Having been involved in the SharePoint community as well as other technology communities at various stages throughout my career, I can only agree that the SharePoint eco-system and community are second to none in the enterprise world when it comes to breadth, depth and most importantly, enthusiasm.

Jody and Shawn from Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated were next sharing their experiences with rolling out ‘RedCentral’ for the 2,000 users in their division. After a rather energetic introduction, even showing ads for Coke brands on the big screen, they focused on an interesting use case around using SharePoint to deliver tools to their sales force consistently. They have done a great job getting the most out of the standard capabilities. A piece of advice for everyone was that building a dashboard on SharePoint will get you a promotion!

I also attended the late afternoon panel discussion on governance which was moderated by Jeremy Thake. It was a lively discussion, but I couldn’t help thinking that it would have been even better if there had been more specific advice on how to implement governance. Governance conversations have a tendency to stay on an abstract level. There was some mention of best practices around site templates and other bits, but much more of this would have been great.

The closing keynote on Wednesday afternoon by Sarah Haase from Best Buy was a highpoint. Sarah went through various approaches to driving successful user adoption, providing lots of practical advice on how to get users engaged and excited. A key takeaway was that this is entirely possible and there are proven ways of tackling it. She also showed this hilarious video illustrating how a movement takes form.

From my perspective, it was interesting to spend the majority of my time speaking to customers on the exhibition floor. There was clear evidence of a growing interest in taking SharePoint beyond basic collaboration and document management. More and more customers are looking for ways to leverage SharePoint as a platform for solving more business process-centric problems, involving workflows and business data from various backend systems.

Kudus to The Eventful Group for putting on another terrific event. I’ve been involved in many of their events for the last five years and it’s always a pleasure. One of the really cool things they do is line up an off-topic motivational talk at the end of the first day. I was particularly excited about listening to Braam Malherbe’s story since I only just read his book, The Great Run. Check it out. This guy completed a 4,200 km run along the entire length of the Great Wall of China. It certainly makes any challenge with SharePoint look rather insignificant.

Speaking at SAPPHIRE NOW and the ASUG Annual Conference 2012 in Orlando

Time flies and we’re rapidly approaching May and the annual SAP bonanza in Orlando. Like last year, I’ll be delivering a presentation on how to empower business units to solve SAP challenges with SharePoint. I will have a particular focus on where to find the “low hanging fruit” and the characteristics of those use cases. This is the session abstract:

Leveraging SharePoint to Empower the "Business Developer"
Increasingly, business people empower themselves to create solutions that support their business functions. These business developers are here to stay and harnessing their enthusiasm and integral domain knowledge can provide the business with a vital competitive advantage.
Considering SharePoint's popularity amongst business users and its wide range of core capabilities aimed at business developers, it provides an immense opportunity for supporting business processes across the enterprise. Without writing code, it is possible to extend the use of SharePoint to include solutions that are fully integrated with SAP.
This session will outline what it takes to surface SAP transactions in SharePoint following an approach that is entirely driven by the business. In particular, there will be specific examples of how a business developer can utilize SharePoint to create forms and workflow solutions which evolve around SAP.

During the conference, I will also be conducting research interviews with subject matter experts in functional areas that can benefit from SAP/SharePoint integrated solutions. If you are going to the conference and want to share knowledge and experiences around surfacing SAP through SharePoint, I’d be keen to hear from you. You can reach out to me on Twitter (@kalsing) or send me an email.

Export SAP data to SharePoint with Winshuttle Query

When business users are automating processes by essentially building applications in SharePoint, there are often use cases where a solution needs to include data from SAP. It could be mash-up scenarios between SharePoint content and SAP data or it could be simple use cases where having SAP data in SharePoint for easy access makes sense.

There are many ways of achieving this through custom programming. However, what I wanted to bring to your attention here is a new feature of Winshuttle Query which effectively empowers a business user to create an SAP data query and export the extract to a SharePoint list without writing any code.

I have recorded a five-minute video that demonstrates how this works. The video shows the desktop approach which is handy for quick prototypes and ad-hoc requirements. There is also an enterprise version of this functionality where the data queries can be scheduled to run regularly on a server, automatically keeping the SharePoint lists in sync with the SAP tables. Apologies if my voice sounds a bit muffled on the video. I blame Camtasia’s voice optimisation.

Speaking at the European SharePoint Conference in Berlin

After an awesome few days at the WUG conference in Chicago, I’m headed for Berlin next week to speak at the European SharePoint Conference. I’ll be talking about how SAP customers can utilise SharePoint as a platform for optimising SAP-centric business processes. Although my talk is centered around SAP, the issues and solutions discussed are relevant to any large ERP back-end. Here’s the session outline:

Accelerating SAP Transactions with SharePoint and InfoPath
Data entry into SAP can in many cases lead to complex business processes taking up unnecessary time and resources throughout the organisation. Enterprises can achieve significant cost-savings by providing alternative interfaces that simplifies data entry and increases user adoption.
Considering SharePoint's popularity amongst business users, it provides an immense opportunity for delivering SAP transactions to the broader user base. As an integrated part of the SharePoint platform, InfoPath is a tool for creating electronic forms which can be utilized by business users to rapidly create fit-for-purpose user interfaces for SAP.
In this session, you will learn what it takes to surface SAP transactions in SharePoint solutions following an approach that is entirely driven by business users. In particular you will see specific examples of how a business user can utilize SharePoint and InfoPath to build alternative user interfaces for SAP, with no programming involved.

I’ll be keen to connect with anyone at the conference who wants to discuss SAP/SharePoint integration and/or workflow for SharePoint in general. I will also be looking for a SharePoint talent to join our European team. Just ping me on Twitter (@kalsing) and we can arrange to meet. I look forward to meeting you!

Wrap-up from the Winshuttle User Group conference in Chicago

The annual Winshuttle User Group (WUG) conference has been the sole focus of my attention the last few days. After the inaugural event in New Orleans last year and follow-up events in London and Paris earlier this year, the WUG has grown exponentially into a sizable affair with more than 400 Winshuttle enthusiasts gathered to share experiences, attend customer presentations, participate in training classes and engage with the Winshuttle Partner Network.

The show was kicked off Monday with a keynote that included a solution demo by Winshuttle Co-Founder Vikram Chalana and a very inspirational talk by Harold Hambrose on software design and usability. Vikram’s demo showcased an expense claim process automated in SharePoint and fully integrated with SAP. It was a great example of all the Winshuttle products working nicely together to provide a complete, yet simple solution. In 15 minutes he demonstrated both the end user experience and gave an overview of how it was all put together. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of this demo was the fact that the entire solution was built in under four hours on a flight from Seattle to Chicago.

Following the keynote, I attended a couple of customer presentations focused on the Central governance platform. Both sessions sparked some hectic debates between business users and IT representatives. Like any other business user-oriented software platform, such as Microsoft SharePoint or SAP Business Objects, the Winshuttle suite aims to empower the business without compromising IT governance requirements. It is a balancing act that sometimes can create some internal friction in organisations. However, consensus was that it is something that cannot be ignored and business units seeking more autonomy in solution development need to partner with IT every step of the way to ensure success. It is clear that business user tools must have good governance and control features to be relevant in an enterprise context.

At the end of the first day, I facilitated a panel discussion on master data governance. Again, all attendees were very open to share their experiences and some valuable lessons were passed on. Probably less than half of the companies represented had reached a maturity level where master data governance is centralised with an executive sponsorship. This is what everyone is striving for though and it is increasingly becoming an area of high priority.

Tuesday was all dedicated to training and overall the event was a massive success. Like other industry events, the WUG provides a perfect opportunity to collect feedback from customers and partners alike. And there is no doubt the customer-to-customer interaction was well appreciated by everyone. Large enterprises face many of the same challenges and taking out a few days to learn how other companies are dealing with these challenges is invaluable. And as a Product Manager, I have certainly come away with a long laundry list of first-hand customer feedback and ideas that will feed into both short term product improvements and long term roadmaps.

SharePoint rock star wanted for Europe

Following the success of Winshuttle’s product suite as an effective way of utilising the SharePoint platform for SAP process optimisation, we are ramping up our global SharePoint competencies. We have an immediate opening for a highly motivated SharePoint rock star in Europe.

We are looking for a consultant with solid SharePoint experience who can work directly with business units to compose solutions. Are you interested? You will be helping customers to optimise SAP processes through the use of Winshuttle and SharePoint technologies. Prior experience with SAP is desired but not a must.

This is an awesome role where you will be part of a strategically important Acceleration Team where the primary objectives are customer readiness and enablement. As such, your focus will be on short and sharp engagements that prove the value of Winshuttle software and help customers to hit the ground running.

Key responsibilities include project scoping, solution architecture and proof-of-concept delivery. Expect to be working with many different customers across Europe. Ideally, you should be based out of our EMEA head office in London, but we would be willing to consider other arrangements.

I’ll be in Berlin for the European SharePoint Conference, 17th through 20th of October, and in London during the first week of November. If you are interested, please drop me a line (kristian dot kalsing at winshuttle dot com) and we can arrange to meet up for a chat. This will be a lot of fun!

Keynote summary from SAP TechEd in Las Vegas

The 15th anniversary edition of SAP TechEd has kicked off in Las Vegas and the keynote was delivered this morning by Vishal Sikka on stage, introduced by Hasso Plattner connecting through from Germany. In addition, various technical leads were called in to add their two cents’ worth in their respective areas of expertise. If there was one common theme throughout the keynote, it was certainly HANA. Actually, there was barely a single sentence during the 1.5 hours that didn’t include the magic word, HANA!

Before Vishal Sikka came on for the main act, Hasso Plattner briefly summarised the vision for HANA which was painted at SAPPHIRE earlier this year. Back then, a great deal of attention was given to the ‘what’ and the ‘why.’ Now, after 12-18 months of proving the technology with early adopters and after three months of general availability, it’s time to get down to business and concentrate on the ‘how’. The inherent challenge will be to bring a highly disruptive technology to the market without causing major disruptions in the installed base.

Vishal Sikka started out by emphasising that the intention with HANA is not to add more complexity to an already crowded mishmash of application layers in the SAP technical landscape. Nor are they “replacing the litter with a different kind of litter.” HANA is all about “bringing together the grand simplification.” Delivered on the next generation of commoditised hardware, HANA will provide a unified infrastructure for future applications. A new consolidated layer of in-memory data and application logic will “provide businesses with the freedom to innovate.”

There were lots of lofty promises as you would expect from a keynote, but halfway through the presentation there was a reality check when the attendees were asked to raise their hands if they were considering embarking on a HANA project. Less than 5% of the audience put their hands up. Despite all the hype surrounding HANA, most customers are still battling with much more mundane aspects of realising the return of their existing investments in SAP technology.

Moving on to future developments of the HANA platform, the most immediate introduction to the market will be the launch of BW for HANA (Project Orange) on November 7. Customers will basically be able to run BW directly on top of HANA, eliminating the databases currently underpinning BW and introducing unprecedented performance improvements. With HANA, SAP is in general betting on traditional data marts and data warehouses going away in the future.

The keynote also had some brief updates from the major SAP platforms of NetWeaver, BusinessObjects and Sybase. The key message here was that all technologies are undergoing a renewal and support for HANA is added wherever it makes sense. Capabilities for managing HANA in the SAP landscape will be added to Solution Manager. Technologies such as PI, BPM and Gateway will all be extended to support HANA. BusinessObjects universes will be natively optimised for running on HANA.

Finally, the keynote was concluded by a series of demos and examples of applications built on various UI platforms underpinned by the HANA infrastructure, accompanied by the usual customer testimonials of how easy it was to implement. However, the final verdict of the promised simplicity will have to wait until we have heard the experiences of customers that were not carefully nurtured as early adopters. All in all, it was a keynote that was reinforcing SAP’s strong commitment to HANA and driving the message of “bringing on the grand simplification of the layers.”