But don’t take my word for it.
I met James through his blog, and I read his research because it was free and easy to obtain, unlike the traditional analyst stuff. I will continue to read more because it is good. The Redmonk paper on compliance architecture remains the best piece I’ve read on compliance and software.
Cheers Thomas Otter, who works for SAP’s Business Solution Architects Group, in an interesting job. He is also a good bloke and I was happy to get some insights into SAP and where its heading, how it is differentiated from the competition, and what the future of enterprise compliance architectures will be.
Thomas also has some good insights about the power of English as a language for bullshitters to bludgeon opponents; Anglo-Saxon business language can be comprised of shiny surfaces and euphemism, all sound and fury signifying nothing. Compare and contrast with German, which tends to be more passive, more concerned with accuracy, and always includes a subject. In German someone always gets the blame. In English, "mistakes were made"… It makes you wonder, doesn’t it – maybe marketers speak English and technical people speak German…. 😉
Its good to recalibrate around concepts like enterprisey and lessconfig with someone that lives and breathes process and ultra-configurability and works every day with C level execs.
Thomas is talking to chief compliance officers. That means he knows the score. I am very interested in SAP so its good to be having a dialogue with someone at the firm.
Blogging is giving SAP a porpous membrane just as it is with other vendors, although the change in culture of openness is perhaps more striking because its SAP we’re talking about. The move to the cluetrain is very good news for the market at large, which can now have more conversations with SAP, and good for SAP because it will potentially make the Walldorf giant more open to external ideas.
Tags: SAP, Thomas Otter, lessconfig, enterprisey, redmonk, compliance oriented architecture, German English
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