Weblog:		SAPPHIRE08 - an outsider's view
Subject:		Plexus?
Date:		2008-05-13 04:57:30
From:		Anton WenzelhuemerBusiness Card
Can you tell us what Plexus is? I feel like some people closely related to SAP but not working for SAP have embarked to a guerilla marketing campaign called 'Create Plexus awareness' (but don't tell too exactly what it is). A typical marketing strategy. Or has Plexus been discussed on SAPPHIRE but not on SDN? anton

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• Plexus?
  2008-05-27 17:51:05 Andre Fonseca  Business Card [Reply]
  
  
  Hi Anton, Dennis and Kieran,

  
  First I wanted to thank both Dennis and Kieran for the answers as they both experienced collaboration workspace (new name for Project Plexus) while we were in the Pilot and were amazing contributors inside and outside of our community.

  
  It is not guerilla marketing. Our project has been in a pilot until Sapphire Orlando and most of the workspaces are private in nature but our official press release is going to happen in an event at the SAP Co-innovation Lab soon.

  
  If you think about co-innovation, you notice the need for private collaboration tools that enforce the legal terms between the companies that are creating the innovation. Collaboration workspace from SAP is such tool. We partnered with Jive Software who created a great individual contributor collaboration solution called Clearspace Community and we added the enterprise membership awareness on top of it with the help of our partners Adobe, Intelligroup, Enthiosys and Wipro.

  
  While SDN and BPX offer a public collaboration, collaboration workspace focuses on private collaboration. Whenever the results become public, they get posted on SDN and BPX and whenever a group decides to create a private collaboration, they can do so on collaboration workspace.

  
  When you go to our website http://plexus.sap.com you will see what you can do with the ES Community, IVN, COIL and BPX. But right now most of the groups in there are private and available through invitation only.

  
  Please feel free to ask questions in the http://plexus.sap.com/community/gettingstarted and our community will be able to provide you more insights.

  
  Best,

  
  Andre

• Plexus?
  2008-05-23 07:36:09 Kieran O'Connor  Business Card [Reply]
  
  Hi Anton,

  
  The Collaboration Workspace from SAP was originally established under the project name Plexus.

  
  The workspace is designed to provide a secure easy-to-use platform for roundtables and ecosystem collaborations complementing the BPX, SDN, and ESC sites. It facilitates document exchange and collaborative work on material that is not yet ready for widespread distribution or publication (due to sensitivity of IP issues or other needs for restricted access).

  
  Here's a link to the welcome message from Aaron Williams of the Enterprise Services Community which should give an overview and orientation...

  
  https://plexus.sap.com/blogs/gettingstarted/2008/02/09/welcome-to-collaboration-workspace-from-sap

  
  Kieran
  

• Plexus?
  2008-05-13 07:25:12 Dennis Howlett Business Card [Reply]
  
  @Anton: If you read my main blog at http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett, you'll see that I am a pretty sharp SAP critic. BUT, when they do something well - and I believe Plexus is goodness - then I will say so.

  
  In the post above I said: "You can think of it as a super blog environment with the ability to readily drop any kind of content into the framework."

  
  If you want to have a quick look at the publicly available stuff I know about then I'd suggest checking out this link: https://plexus.sap.com/index.jspa

  • About Plexus - A guess
    2008-05-13 12:50:08 Anton Wenzelhuemer Business Card [Reply]
    
    In case someone misunderstood Dennis' Plexus part like I did here's my impression from a short trip around the site cited and a little further analysis:

    
    In contrary to what I understood from the original blog SAP is not creating any software to support collaboration but they are extending their usage of Jive Software's product Clearspace.

    
    So, if '...they do something well...' it is giving additional collaboration opportunities to the community, definitely a step in the right direction. The design of the beta site, imho, is, ermmm, cookie cutter style, but enterprisies seem to love that, and geeks don't care as long as the functionality rocks.
    It is interesting to see what the site has been used so far, or what the use cases so far point at: support of the Enterprise Service Conmmunity (ESC) collaboration. A look at one ESC mission statement I found on that site says 'To provide SAP and our ecosystem with an IP-safe program that enables the co-innovation ...'. 'IP-safe' and 'co-innovation' makes me a bit suspicious. While there's is nothing bad about it in the first place it should definitely not be mistaken with a free (like in 'academic') discussion and innovation platform(and in contrary to what some people think there are also reasonable business models with the provision of really free environments).
    but the degree of freedom of the collaboration platform plexus will be easily to be judged by the quantity of NDA documents and terms of conditions documents and the amount of fine print lines in those documents required to take part in that IP safe environment ;-)

    
    my 2 cents,
    anton

    • About Plexus - A guess
      2008-05-13 22:20:11 Dennis Howlett Business Card [Reply]
      
      @Anton - I'm not sure what the issue is here. I said: "a framework for offering online community capability back to the partner ecosystem. A few weeks back I'd been part of a team that used Plexus to deliver a series of blog entries in support of a global marketing event. If you've not had the chance to look at Plexus, I'd recommend it - especially if you have marketing projects in mind."

      
      If there was a lack of clarity here then I'm not sure where it is.

      
      I do not know whether SAP will productize the service and push it out to the wider community but it is something I can raise. I am aware that SAP is looking at these styles of service as something that can enhance existing applications. On that point I'd draw your attention to a conversation I had with Doug Merritt who was talking about how information created in these Web 2.0 style applications might usefully inform areas like talent management. (As an example). Once again, I'm hoping to pick up that conversation again in Berlin.

      
      One correction - it is BASED on Jive but has been extensively developed. As I said - I plan to find out more in Berlin.

      
      As to the issue of co-innovation, I had some brief discussions with Zia Yusef on that topic but there is much more for me to find out before making any pronouncements in that direction.

      
      I would suggest that issues around 'co-innovation' etc is a separate topic. To that extent, I'd invite you to spell out your concerns and thought, perhaps in a separate blog post and draw my attention to it. I can then raise those directly when I meet with Zia next week. Does that work?

      
      The bottom line: being part of the community provides me with questions I can raise at the appropriate level and allows others within SAP to see what matters to the community.

      
      It's all goodness.

    • About Plexus - questions
      2008-05-13 14:09:31 Bryant Loftin Business Card [Reply]
      
      Looking over the Plexus site I'm still not sure what the context is. Is it a standalone sandbox experiment? If not, is it only being used by SAP for the SDN/PBX context or is the intent to replace the current forums platform in EP?

      
      Bryant

  • Plexus?
    2008-05-13 08:05:42 Anton Wenzelhuemer Business Card [Reply]
    
    dennis,
    I appreciate your work. this name dropping just looked strange to the 'outsider'.
    thx for the link & kind regards,
    anton

• Plexus?
  2008-05-13 06:49:54 Craig Cmehil  Business Card [Reply]
  
  I think it actually has been discussed here but I can't find the links right now :-(

  
  Marilyn might be able to point you though.

  • Plexus?
    2008-05-13 07:15:21 Anton Wenzelhuemer Business Card [Reply]
    
    where is 'here? in Orlando or on SDN? SDN search yields 3 hits of 3 prominent people dropping the term as if it were common knowledge what it is. this is what made me post my earlier comment.
    • Plexus?
      2008-05-13 07:50:01 Craig Cmehil  Business Card [Reply]
      
      I thought here as in SDN and I thought Marilyn but she said she was not involved so perhaps Frauke knows more - I'll keep looking. It was at TechEd, Sapphire and I'll be at Sapphire in Berlin next week...

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