One of the things Microsoft really gets is how to build a platform, innovating and yet carving out real spaces for their ISVs to play in. Part of this is community involvement, and part of this is the ability to let go of some control. SAP is trying to do the same thing.

We had a chance to meet with Zia Yusuf, Aiaz Kazi, and Mark Yolton today to discuss some of the challenges with building their platform ecosystem. As Zia put it, "it is not a platform until the people say it's a platform."  Their strategy revolves around three primary concepts: Adoption, Co-innovation, and Monetization. 

One of the interesting issues brought up by Michael was around the IP rights. Zia acknowledged that this was a complicated and critical issue, but said it's important to look at different stakeholders and different processes. ISVs building software to be sold on the xApps Hub retain their rights and simply sell through this "glorified directory".  In the Enterprise Services Community, where SAP works with customers and partners to define the WSDL, SAP retains rights - but this is less of an issue because the co-innovation is in the contract, and not the actual construction of the service.  Mark thinks that Intellectual Property law in general is still trying to catch up with the co-innovation enabled by today's technology, and I've discussed plenty of scenarios here in the past where this is the case. On SDN, everything is shared and it's "understood that it is freely shared information."

The next challenge is building a strong ecosystem around enterprise software which is, as everyone here admitted, maybe not the most exciting area.  It appeals to a smaller audience, so their goal is deeper, not broader, involvement.  They are embracing the blogosphere. Currently 2/3rds of the bloggers on SDN are not SAP employees, and they expect this to be more skewed towards the customers and employees in the future. Mark Finnern said SDN blogs are often overlooked.

Ismael suggested a "NetWeaver Lite" that is available free to all, something he had suggested in the past. Zia said that is precisely what the Composition Environment aims to be. There is a free runtime - what they are calling a "lean consumption environment". As an ISV you can build and run, and while they have not announced pricing it is targeted towards the SMB market and individuals. And, as one member of our little corner noted, they managed not to call it Lite, Express, or Essentials.