Weblog:		SAPPHIRE08 - an outsider's view
Subject:		Plexus?
Date:		2008-05-13 07:25:12
From:		Dennis HowlettBusiness Card
Response to: Plexus?
@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

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• 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

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