SAP Business ByDesign - Partner Summit 2011 - What went on?
Skyytek attended its first SAP Partner Summit in Savannah, GA this past weekend and we walked away very impressed with this gathering.
The choice of location was simply awesome. The hotel was large enough to hold the conference comfortably and was in a great location next to the old downtown in Savannah. It was a great chance for all partners and SAP employees to network and mingle in great surroundings.
Our first impression was that the partners were very friendly towards one another, nice to talk to, professional and the SAP employees were more than accommodating. There were both new-ish and very new SAP Business ByDesign partners - we were surprised at how many there were considering this is such a new channel.
The stats at the conference were 560 partners and 120 SAP employees on hand. There seemed to be more people than that though - so we're guessing a lot of partners brought more than one person.
The keynotes were delivered with precision. We particularly liked the fact that SAP is not a company stuck in a traditional reseller model timewarp; the cloud isn't something they're working towards - it's being done NOW. A lot of the conference focus was on the cloud and mobility and the need for partners to change to the new world. This was well received.
The general sessions were well put together (at least the ones we attended which focused on SAP Business ByDesign) and covered areas around SAP Business ByDesign marketing, sales, product, SDK and plans for the future. We actually came away with no real questions unanswered - which is always impressive. The sessions were also filled to the hilt! In our opinion, this shows the level of great partner enthusiasm for SAP Business ByDesign.
The main event was set in an old open air rail house. It was very unique and different and yet another chance to listen to some music (a bit loud though for conversation). We particularly liked the food and drinks :-).
The SAP Business ByDesign Partners were numerous. We were happy to see some seasoned partners from our past that had signed up from competitive SaaS products. There were probably more though - its just that we didn't get the chance to meet them. The most impressive part was the fact that the partners were extremely excited, liked the channel model and were readily exchanging strategies and tips with one another. In other words, rather than each partner viewing each other as a competitor - there was complete cooperation; it seemed everyone was on a mission and that mission was to get SAP Business ByDesign out to the marketplace in short order.
Conference wrap up was executed flawlessly with a few key notes and excellent sessions. One thing that got our attention was SAP BI On-demand (which seemed a great way for customers with legacy systems to take baby steps into the cloud) and SAP Sales On-Demand, which is apparently built on the SAP Business ByDesign stack, and aimed at the Salesforce.com market. SAP Sales On-Demand does seem like a category winner though, with its sexy user interface and twitter-like feeds. Skyytek is keen to see the finished product when goes out on general availability in a few months.
Some new channel initiatives came to light during the conference. One of which was the new partner center (forget what they called it) which combines all the vast SAP Business ByDesign assets into one easy to use portal. There is also a new scoping tool coming out for SAP Business ByDesign which extends the configurator so you can quickly scope projects, reproduce these scopes and then upload the scopes to the system ready for project initiation and execution. This takes their existing product configurator to new heights and turns scoping and project management into something that you can easily replicate across different verticals. Both of these new features are to be released soon.
Overall, the conference exceeded our expectations. The content and excitement levels were there, networking never ceased and we were impressed at the amount of resouces SAP has invested into their channel and in particular, SAP Business ByDesign.
PS :The SAP Business ByDesign jackets were awesome. Nice touch.
Reader Comments (1)
Very good synopsis. Useful to know. thanks. .
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Nancy