#38 SAP, Greening, ChatGPT Again, Sleep
Hi there,
Here comes that Eurythmics song again as we patiently wait for April showers to bring May flowers.
Speaking of which. Even if you have just missed Arbor Day celebration, it’s never too late to make a difference for a healthier world. So go ahead, hug a tree. Or better yet, plant one.
-Jelena and Paul
SAP: Shareholders vs Stakeholders
For the past few years, I’ve been having cognitive dissonance when reading SAP quarterly earnings and revenue reports. Financial news is all about The Cloud but at the same time user groups, such as DSAG, are still very much interested in on-premise products. The Register article picked up on this:
SAP is telling investors that customers' migration to the cloud is only a matter of when – not if – despite evidence to the contrary from users, analysts, and other third parties.
Nevertheless, investors liked the news since SAP stock price jumped on a “positive outlook”. I suspect this is more of an indication that the stock market is just a big casino than anything else. Meanwhile, I’m investing in popcorn to watch the eventual Cloud Standoff between SAP and customers.
Another financial report of “platform-as-a-service revenue was up a particularly strong 45%” I guess means that SAP BTP remains a big “cash cow”. But what we’re hearing from the customers is that SAP BTP is expensive. SAP has a history of locking in the customers into their ecosystem (to be fair, every software vendor at least tries to do that) and many times before, it was not feasible or just not worth the squeeze for the customers to seek alternatives. But I do wonder if the current sketchy economy and better availability of other services will prompt the customers to search more actively for an escape route from SAP confines.
Disclosure: this is not financial advice. In fact, you shouldn’t listen to me at all, what do I know? As a very minor shareholder though, I really wish SAP would take bananas out of their ears and listen more to the customer groups. JP
Yep, ChatGPT Is Coming To SAP
I took a break from GPT and other AI awesomeness a few issues back, but…come on. We're sitting right on the edge of a bunch of amazing stuff. Now just leave it to marketing and business-speak to make things 134% less clear, and we're really off to the races!
Two recent stories catch my attention. First up, a note from the SAP News Center about SAP embedding IBM Watson AI into SAP solutions. As you might expect, it's a little light on specifics - but we do get to hear that Watson is at work inside TripIt from Concur. The story also calls out new capabilities in "SAP Start" (is this the same thing as SAP Mobile Start?) will be designed to "boost productivity". This is good, as I rarely choose business apps designed to inhibit productivity.
In its first-quarter revenue report and surrounding media interviews, SAP also said it was working with Microsoft to get ChatGPT and/or similar generative AI tools into its products. CEO Christian Klein says as many as 50 AI use cases will be available to customers after the upcoming Sapphire conference. While this is similarly light on specifics, consider that compared to the normal speed of getting cool new tech into SAP, this is lightning fast.
Will SAP customers accept the inevitable experimenting required to make the latest generative AI work well within SAP's software landscape? Surely it won't be that the first use case will be the magic bullet, landing perfectly and enhancing every enterprise? Both announcements lack specificity. In the past, that has sometimes meant they would never gain specificity. This time, I have a hunch it's different - if generative AI is as transformative as people say. (And yeah, I'm one of those people.) PM
Greening of IT
Sometimes it’s hard not to get cynical when talking about ERP and sustainability. This subject is prone to buzzword abuse and aggressive marketing with the results that are, at best, greenwashing.
But a recent blog post Greening IT – Improve performance of SAP-programs and cut down spool output by SAP Community Champion Baerbel Winkler is a breath of fresh air. Baerbel’s post is about making meaningful changes right now that will have immediate positive effect on the environment (both SAP and planet one).
It’s interesting that Baerbel mentions the needlessly generated spools as one of the improvements. In my first SAP implementation in 2005, our thoughts were far from environmentalism. But one night, several team members were called in because our brand-new SAP system got brought to a screeching halt. The root cause turned out to be a background job that was scheduled to run every few minutes and the programmer who thought it’d be hilarious to generate a spool request with message ‘No data found’ when there was nothing for the program to do. As a result, the system ran out of numbers for spool requests in one night and then went bananas. Fun times in the warehouse.
I’d encourage everyone to read Baerbel’s post and organize similar events in their workplace. I bet many customers could use some spring cleaning to get rid of junk in their SAP trunk. JP
MS SAP ABAP AI SDK: OK
Microsoft announced the launch of "Microsoft AI SDK for SAP ABAP". It is "designed to provide SAP ABAP developers with the tools they need to create intelligent enterprise applications using artificial intelligence technologies." There's a lot to like about this.
Huge props to anyone who open-sources ABAP tools. And huge props to those who do with the target of abapGit in mind. Slowly but surely, abapGit is going to rule the roost as ABAP developers' hub for a modern package-ish code ecosystem. So an SDK bringing new functionality to SAP customers that delivers it in this way is an ecosystem positive for sure.
Integrating AI with SAP (of any flavor, OpenAI or otherwise) is something I've been advocating for years. Look no further than my magnum opus. Yes, this newsletter will NOT let you forget that book. But snarky self-promotion aside, AI is a natural match for SAP at the customer side. So much harmonized and clean data, in a single place…it's just primed and ready for AI to tackle.
Microsoft deserves kudos for making documentation and issue/discussion forums - many ABAPish things don't get that kind of love. I want to say: like everything in the OpenAI world, this is just the beginning. Get on this elevator now. (I don't mean this specific SDK necessarily, just that the elevator of generative AI with SAP is already open and waiting.) I'm sure I sound like a broken record, but I'm just gonna keep repeating it. Software is gonna be different, soon. PM
Intruder Alert
Total Temporal Intrusion By Work by James F. Richardson is a fascinating tale of several waves of increasing work intrusion into our private mental space through the lens of a simple Outlook feature. It’s an entertaining read that is not merely a “Boomer rant” about technology but also raises important ethical questions. Just a little taste of James’s writing:
Pretending that the email didn't come through or got lost in junk became a proven Weapon of the Weak against management's absurd demands for instant feedback. Yet, Microsoft still did not accelerate the update of its Portal of Doom (i.e., your work inbox) to make its utterly buried "delayed delivery" feature vastly easier from a user experience perspective.
Delayed delivery feature exists not just in Outlook but in most messaging platforms, such as Slack. Yet I suspect many people are blissfully unaware of that. Technology provides many of us freedom to work when and where we choose but let’s be cognizant of intrusion into the “whens” of others. JP
Sleep: Secret Nerd Power
I love software development. It's very inward-focused, using working memory and deep symbolic manipulation. It's a high that I think a lot of people who get to do things they love share (and I recognize it's a privilege to get to do work that I love). But for the past couple years, I've noticed my mental tools have deteriorated a little. My ability to stay focused and have lots of bits floating around in active memory has waned. I can't quite get in the same zone I used to, at least not as regularly. It's the kind of thing that someone outside my head might not notice…but inside here, it's clear as day.
I thought it was a consequence of getting older - I'm 42, for crying out loud! - but some recent medical work has found another probable cause: sleep apnea. In the last couple years, alongside my mental ability cooldown, I've definitely noticed that my tiredness is through the roof. At times during the day, if I don't stand up and move around I am in real danger of dozing off at my desk. And this is not for lack of stuff to do!
Being nerds like me, I'm quite sure that some of you readers are in a similar situation. In talking with doctors, reading around, and observing my own life with more scrutiny, I can offer a few personally-vouched-for tips:
Don't stay up later than your feeling of tiredness. Apnea or not, I too often ignore my body's signals that it's time to rest.
Drink more water. If you're a soda addict like me…drink way more water.
Get up and get active before you get the drowsy feeling during the day.
If you notice that your tiredness is increasing and you don't feel like anything has changed in your life, get evaluated for sleep disorders as soon as possible. Sleep disruption has health consequences for pretty much your entire body!
In addition to the exhaustion, people near me also noticed that my mood was…less fabulous than before. Trusted people who can tell you if you're a bigger jerk than usual are priceless.
I haven't been able to get the treatment I'd like yet. When I do, you can be sure that I'll let you know how it goes for me. PM
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