When I recently blogged about the evolution of how SAP approaches open source, I was focusing on what has changed over the recent years and why. While our approach is generally much more open than in the past, the usage of open source in our products and our contributions to open source projects are still carefully managed, however. Customers expect full support and maintenance for software they receive from SAP, which is why we need to manage the usage of open source from different perspectives. Does the respective component fit from a functional, architectural and strategic point of view? Can we accept and comply with the licensing terms? How can we provide the required product support long-term? Only if these and other questions can be answered satisfyingly with respect to our quality and product standards, we can actually integrate open source components into our products and can utilize the various benefits.

In this regard, my colleagues Dr. Alexandra Cordes from our Global Legal department, Janaka Bohr from the Global Licensing department and I are going to present on "Open Source as a Strategic Business Enabler: A Case Study with SAP" in a webinar hosted by Black Duck Software on 11 May 2010. In this webinar, we will review the benefits open source holds for development organizations, the management challenges it presents, and approaches for addressing the challanges.

Please feel free to join us and reserve your space here. If you have any questions upfront, please let us know - there will also be a Q&A session in the webinar where we are happy to continue the conversation.