Yes, I said it. Standards require a lot of time. It can take years from taking an idea for a standard until shipping a product that is compliant with it. This is not necessarily a bad thing since customers care for interoperability and ultimately, standards need to be implemented in a compliant manner. But what does "compliance" mean and what if there is room for interpretation?

Listen to the interview Craig Cmehil invited me to. I explained some of the trade-offs SAP is working with when it comes to standards-setting and participation in open source projects.

By the way, originally, I wanted to talk about the broader aspect of open innovation, but I'll cover that separately. That's at least my promise here. Oh, and yes, it seems that I am now actually starting to be "social" - meaning to blog more frequently ... ;-)