Over ten thousand people are expected at SAPPHIRE user conference next week in Orlando. Here’s an overview of some of the ways SAP BusinessObjects will be featured at the event:
Show floor. The SAPPHIRE show floor is primarily organized by industry and functional area, and so SAP BusinessObjects will be featured throughout the exhibition, at 58 different pods in total.
If you’re interested in getting a traditional, product-oriented view of the portfolio, there will be business intelligence and information management pods in the “Strategic IT village” and enterprise performance management and governance, risk, and compliance pods in the “Success in the New Reality village.” The SAP BusinessObjects Edge products for for small and mid-size organizations will be demonstrated in the “SME village”. And If you would like to try out the products yourself, there will be hands-on training and self-service test drive areas.
Sessions. There will be 37 SAPPHIRE presentations, 53 ASUG presentations, 13 strategy sessions, and 1 pre-conference workshop. Most of them are listed in SAP BusinessObjects Zone of the online agenda builder. In addition, you can expect to see BusinessObjects reports and dashboards appear in many other sessions, including the main keynotes.
Executive events. There are a number of executive forums running alongside the main event, including some “customer value network” sessions in BI and IM, financials, procurement, and other industry roundtables.
I’ll be doing a presentation as part of an SAP BusinessObjects Executive Day, focused on how to ensure success with business intelligence (BI) in heterogeneous data environments – i.e. for anybody who doesn’t have SAP business applications, or is otherwise interested in our continued investments in an open portfolio of business user products.
On Wednesday evening, there will be a sneak preview of some next-generation BI technology, under NDA, for a select audience interested in becoming beta customers (contact me if you’re at SAPPHIRE and would like to attend).
Virtual event. You can take part in SAPPHIRE even if you’re not going to be in Orlando. Insights from SAPPHIRE will feature videos of the keynotes, virtual content booths that mimic the real-life layout of the show floor, and online staff to answer any questions you may have. Click here to register.
Community. You can expect lots of blog postings and tweets from the show (the twitter hashtag is #sapphire09, there’s a specific account @sapphire09, and the @businessobjects account will be active throughout the show). Several BusinessObjects blogs (including this one) will be consolidated on a new section of the SAP Collaboration Workspace (more info to follow).
The SAP Clubhouse site developed by Craig Cmehil and others will be following events closely, and you follow the event on eventtrack (registration required), with a live feed from various online sources (there’s even an Adobe Air desktop application that lets you add your own video from the event.)
News. There are lots of product announcements and press releases in the pipeline. If you’re not attending the show, you may want to sign up for this web seminar in particular: “Explore Your Business at the Speed of Thought with SAP BusinessObjects Explorer”
If you’re at the event, I look forward to seeing you there!