RSA 15 - ENG 6

I've always been a sports fan. My earliest memories are youth soccer, basketball, hockey, baseball. Collecting cards and watching my favorite teams were my passions growing up.

Today, I watched the Rugby World Cup, and I took away the following thoughts:

• A World Final in anything is good entertainment. The importance of the event resonates, even over TV.
• Rugby players are tremendous athletes. The sport requires a combination of speed, strength, skill, and fitness not found in traditional American sports.

While I won't be playing Fantasy rugby anytime soon, I'll definitely take the time to catch some matches live in future seasons. Thanks to Craig Allen for the indoctrination -- and congrats on the Cup returning to his home country!

More on Business Objects and SAP

There's a good recap of the competitive response HERE. There are clearly some excellent points in that article. BOBJ's lack of integration is noted in a market where integration is paramount. While I don't agree that growth needs to be organic, BOBJ's inability to integrate and advance their products is an investment that SAP will now need to take on to stay competitive.

Analytic apps using Business Objects? Forget about it, at least for now...

Happy Birthday, JT!

JT turned the big Siete this weekend, and we celebrated in style:

• Friday was a duo: an indoor afternoon bash (the first birthday of his life with rain, I guess odds were against us) for his classmates at Coyote Creek. Apart from the great games (pin the tie on Spongebob???) and food, we were graced with a visit from Spongebob himself. Friday evening was a smaller gathering, which included Baja Fresh and some awesome sangria for the parents (credit: kelnanney).
  
• Saturday we took Jack, Shane, and Max to Great America. JT braved the Log Run water ride and others, including a virtual IMAX Spongebob ride -- what luck! With no lines and perfect weather, we caught the park at the perfect time.

Photos here -- Laura's Pics and here --> Julie's Pics

SAP to Integrate Business Objects: Good Luck!

It's old news now, but SAP has a definite agreement to buy Business Objects for $6.8B (USD). The price is actually a higher multiplier than Oracle paid for Hyperion, and represents a major departure from SAP's organic growth strategy.

What's even a bigger change for SAP is playing "me-too" to their competition, particularly Oracle. The notion that performance management should be pervasive within enterprise software applications has been trumpeted by the Red Empire, and SAP seems to be reacting to that message. To be fair, that strategy was first socialized by Siebel, which invested heavily integrating nQuire CRM analytics within the Siebel application, with very good results. So, while it took several years, SAP is coming around to this idea. And while I've always looked as SAP BW as an impressive feat of software engineering, it is clear that there is a market demand for user-facing tools and applications that present business information from the BW data.

The question: Was Business Objects a good choice?

• There is substantial product overlap with OutlookSoft, the last major SAP acquisition. Business Objects had moved into the Enterprise Planning space with Cartesis and SRC acquisitions, and I would assume those products won't be part of the go-forward strategy.
• Business Objects product architecture will require substantial investment to integrate into SAP. The BOBJ suite is cobbled together from Crystal, Excelsius, and legacy BOBJ products. BOBJ XI had product overlap, limited integration, and some serious functionality holes (multi-lingual reports, anyone?). Add BEx and Infocubes to the mix, and it becomes confounding for companies who don't maintain an army of experts on staff to make sense of it all.
• BOBJ itself didn't have market-leading SAP integration, so more investment will be needed there.
• SAP ended it's partnership with Crystal last year to announce a partnership with Microsoft, Duet. Now it's back, I guess.
• BOBJ tanked last quarter, and already has revised estimates downward for the upcoming quarter.

It looks to me that given the overlap, and future integration costs, SAP overpaid.

Blowin' Through Seattle

Seattle is a great city. It just has an awesome vibe to it, and my last quick trip there was no exception.

I stayed at the Alexis Hotel, which is undergoing some renovation, but nonetheless highly recommended. The room was big, with some decent artwork (really!), HD TV, and free wireless. The real treat, though, was the Library Bistro breakfast: a truly splendid egg-white omelet with chicken sausage, homestyle potatoes, and homemade sourdough bread toast.

Since I arrived late, I passed on the Bookstore Bar for a drink, but it looks like a cool place for a nightcap.

The service at the Alexis is very good. I was impressed with their responsiveness despite having the front desk out of commission for the renovation. The best thing about the location: running along the Seattle waterfront. They turned me on to a great 5-miler. From the Alexis, head down to the water on Madison, turning right in front of the Ferry landing. Run through Myrtle Edwards Park to the old Industrial Park, and return.

Thanks to Lesly Matney and the good people at eProject (they have some great stuff!) for the Alexis recommendation.