The Boring Enterprise Nerdletter #28: SAP Build, re:Invent, CALM, Azure Space, KM, ChatGPT
Hi there,
Happy Conference Season! Just like the bears fill up on fish and berries to prepare for winter, the enterprise software analysts, pundits, and influencers feast on the conference materials to last through spring.
In case you missed SAP TechEd, you’ll find our continued coverage here and in the new Nerdcast episode with Jon Reed of diginomica. Want to know what happened at AWS re:Invent? Paul's got you covered too! And when this issue goes live, ABAPConf will be just wrapping up its full day of ABAP deliciousness.
Bon appétit, y'all!
-Jelena and Paul
If You SAPBuild It, Will They Come?
Resurrecting the portfolio concept of the late SAP Leonardo and naming it SAP Build, just like the discontinued unrelated product, is a bold necromancing move. Will the new SAP Build incarnation thrive or meet the same fate as its namesake? And, most importantly, should you care?
SAP Build was announced at TechEd as a “unified low-code solution” and at this point it’s a collection of existing products with some more on the way. This Wu-Tang Clan consists of the artists formerly known as: SAP AppGyver, SAP Process Automation (workflow + iRPA), SAP Work Zone, and SAP BTP Launchpad service. All of them have been given new names that just roll off the tongue, like “SAP Build Apps development environment” (AppGyver).
The premise is simple: the “fusion teams” (of citizen- and military-grade developers) will use the latest automation and workflow stuff, then “AppGyver” some front-end on it, slap a card to a launchpad or to a Work Zone website and mission accomplished. All with “drag-and-drop” (this is stressed about 25 times in presentations) and Signavio somehow involved. (For a more detailed overview of “Visual Programming in SAP Build Apps”, check out TechEd session AD111.)
This sounds really swell but these are all existing SAP products, sooo... did they not work together before? Because they didn’t have the right name? Unification is not something you can imagine into existence by saying the name 3 times in front of a mirror though.
We’ve had all these fine (I guess) products and here comes SAP Build. Now the question is: if SAP Build is a solution, then what is the problem? JP
re:Invent re:Cap
I think if my only job was to watch tech events and read through their news announcements, I'd be pretty happy. Microsoft Ignite was a few weeks ago and gave me lots of goodies to chew on, and recently AWS re:Invent went down. Here are my choice snacks:
Amazon SageMaker Data Wrangler Supports SaaS Applications as Data Sources - look at the graphics on this page. Just like a million other tools in the cloudosphere (YES THAT IS A LEGITIMATE WORD IT TOTALLY MAKES SENSE), SageMaker is putting emphasis on data channels and connectors. If you want to do ML with your business data, chances are that data is locked away in some application you may not have easy access to. Data Wrangler is joining the ranks of those who want to change that story.
Accelerate Your Lambda Functions with Lambda SnapStart - I have been totally into serverless more or less since it appeared. It's mostly magic and mostly awesome, and over the years the only little tweak I've really wanted is that occasional cold-start time on requests. SnapStart looks to really make that much better (with Java-flavored functions), so hopefully this has tendrils into the rest of the serverless runtimes.
AWS Application Composer (Preview) - I think serverless architectures are still confusing for a lot of people. Drawing it out and connecting boxes with logical flows is a step in the right direction, and when it generates starting stub files for developing the pieces I really start to see how that can help speed the development process.
AWS Supply Chain (Preview) - business applications are, of course, a logical place for AWS (and other orgs like it) to continue to grow into. I have never tried any of the AWS Business Applications, so I have no idea of their quality. But if the supply chain product here can actually deliver on its promised features of recommended actions and demand planning, I'd say it's off to a pretty good start. PM
CALM Without the Storm
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) software occupies a strange niche that is considered important but at the same time is often overlooked and rarely glamorous. In the on-premise SAP world, for a long time it’s been represented by SAP Solution Manager, the product hated almost unanimously.
But new times demand new solutions, such as SAP Cloud ALM (CALM?). It is oddly presented as “for Implementations” and “for Operations”, even though it is just one product.
To me, the “Implementation” part is the least interesting. It appears to be relevant mostly to the SAP Activate adepts and enters a crowded market of “story-board-task” products, such as Jira or Azure DevOps.
The “Operations” part deserves a closer look and I’m curious how it evolves, considering SAP’s doubling-down on the integration and event-based architecture. I think it’s great that monitoring of “IT stuff”, such as service availability, can be combined with monitoring of the business processes. I wish there were more demos by the customers with real-life scenarios though.
For die-hard on-premise customers CALM probably doesn’t matter much yet, but for others it definitely deserves attention for the following reasons.
It’s included in the SAP Cloud Service subscription (details here and there is a video on how to request it).
ALM has one of the best SAP Community topic pages and regular Community Calls.
There are several openSAP courses (I recommend this one).
There is a free, public demo system (it works, I went there, tried it, got a t-shirt, well, the last part is not true but the rest is).
These are the signs of a product team that is passionate and knows their customers. I think there is a good chance of a full swing from the most hated to the most loved product in ALM space. JP
Azure Apps For Astronauts
Microsoft Azure has an awesome-sounding tool called the "Azure Orbital Space SDK". As a highly experienced business application developer, whose work ranges from creating purchase order display apps to creating purchase order approval apps, I want nothing more than to get a hold of the Azure Orbital Space SDK and get crackin' on writing a SPACE purchase order display app.
Snark aside, it really is cool that this, and similar, SDKs exist. When I started as a software developer in the aughts - hell, when I started reading science fiction in the 80's - I never expected to have a chance to create things that enable space exploration. "The Azure Orbital Space SDK was created to be able to run on any spacecraft and provide a secure hosting platform and application kit to create, deploy, and operate applications on-orbit."
Several of the partners Microsoft lists are space infrastructure experts. It's a delightful surprise to think about the software in orbit connecting to the cloud - from the opposite side of the cloud. PM
Buyer's Guide to Knowledge Management Platforms
In my day job at Mindset, we do a lot of learning and knowledge sharing internally. Recently, we were in the market for our "next generation" Knowledge Management (KM) platform. The features we wanted to see: easy organization of various content (text, video, etc.), robust search/tagging, something to make sure the content stays fresh, ability to comment, and reasonable pricing for a smallish team.
We started with several candidates found online and recommendations from friends / development community. This is what we found.
Happeo and Bloomfire had no prices listed on their websites and were eliminated first. We figured it was like a fancy restaurant: if you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it.
Atlassian’s Confluence at the time of research was showing high cost for over 10 users and I just found it’s no longer true. However, Confluence strikes me as more of a wiki / documentation management software than what we envisioned.
Tettra had an odd vibe of a product that's not quite ready. There were no public demo videos (you had to sign up first) and it wasn't clear what its advantages are exactly.
Notion seemed neat at first but their UI was somewhat reminiscent of Slack (Slack is a great product but not a KM platform) and geared more towards managing documents and tasks. It’s not what we had in mind but if you're considering Confluence, I'd give Notion a try.
The winner for us was the Guru app. It’s not ideal (I doubt a perfect platform exists) but fits our needs and offers a simple yet effective UI. There is also an extensive collection of knowledge about the app itself and support from the community. JP
P.S. Big thanks to my colleague Rama who did most of the legwork for this research.
Ode to BEN
Everybody is talking, tweeting, and blogging about ChatGPT. In an act utterly devoid of narcissism, we harnessed its power to compose an ode to ourselves. This is "Ode to Jelena and Paul, The Boring Enterprise Nerds" by ChatGPT:
Jelena, the fierce warrior princess,
With a love for technology and software,
She's a master of the digital realm,
A force to be reckoned with, for sure.
Paul, the bumbling court jester,
Is also a tech-savvy fellow,
He may stumble and fumble,
But his knowledge of machines is mellow.
Together, they make a dynamic duo,
Navigating the world of enterprise with aplomb,
Their love of memes and technology,
Helps them overcome any challenges that come.
So here's to Jelena and Paul,
The Boring Enterprise Nerds,
May they continue to thrive,
In their world of bits and bytes, words and verbs.
Maybe some of the rhythms are a bit choppy - but I have to tell you all, writing a prompt and watching slick verses appear right in front of my eyes was nothing short of magic. It's gonna change the world. PM
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