Craig Cmehil has a short piece about Harmony, a social computing application currently under controlled test led by SAPs Imagineering unit. Harmony is designed to serve as a tool that flattens the organisation and better helps SAP employees connect and learn from one another. My initial thought is that Harmony looks rather like Blogtronix but on second thoughts, it's also got a touch of Ning and LinkedIn about it.
As evidence that SAP 'gets' the value of socialising it organisation, Denis Browne, SAPs VP Imagineeering said that a call to 1,600 SAPpers to take a look garnered 400 requests within 24 hours. That's viral adoption. More interesting to me is the way these applications will change SAP.
Observing from the outside, it is easy to presume that SAP's culture is one that reflects the kind of sluggishness and atrophy that often characterises large organisations. It is learning that social computing apps of this kind can 'invade' any organisation.
Former SAP exec Jeff Nolan thinks:
...it's absolutely criminal that something this interesting couldn't get developed and into customer hands more quickly.
Jeff's point is well made, especially when you read what Jeff was saying about Harmony more than a year ago:
I don't know if this will ever be a product we offer but they are certainly intending to build it into our internal systems because one of the most significant challenges anyone in a large company faces is finding people who have worked on similar things as you, or have a background that is particularly relevant to a project or team.
Despite Jeff's remarks, they don't take into consideration the way individuals in companies like SAP work. Especially those at the executive level. For instance, in conversation, SAP CEO Henning Kagermann acknowledged that he's not yet into consuming information electronically, preferring printed material. Does this make Henning a technology laggard? If you sit in the 'web 2.0′ camp the natural inclination is to say 'yes.' But that's not the whole picture.
I'm well aware that making apps available doesn't mean everyone will either appreciate the utility or be ready to adopt. That's a challenge many of us who are invested in this kind of technology will face as we seek to promote the use of these innovative tools. Ever it was so. We do well to remember that.
As an aside - if SAP productises this for customers, I wonder if it will adopt 'web 2.0′ pricing - i.e. free and/or consumer pricing.
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Innovation
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