For Many of You, Zen is Indeed New Information

We’re about a week removed from the recent webinar that EverythingXcelsius.com founder Mico Yuk hosted with SAP about the future of BusinessObjects Dashboards and a new dashboard technology code-named Zen. Zen will likely go into ramp-up by the end of 2012, and it will tie into SAP HANA and SAP NetWeaver BW.

I felt my eyebrows raise when some in the SAP community suggested the webinar’s content was not new information.

The argument was that Zen had come up in user group discussions and other forums already, and while that is true, that stance misses the bigger point. In such settings, discussions about Zen occurred in the SAP vacuum. The tree fell in the forest with almost no one there to hear it. The corporate bubble blew a kiss at us.

What is SAP Zen?

Zen is the current alias of an upcoming SAP technology that will work with HTML 5 to render dashboards for desktops and mobile devices. Zen is part of a three-pronged approach SAP is taking with dashboards for the remainder of 2012, including: SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, which SAP will update for mobile use via HTML 5 options Zen, which SAP will initially design for use with SAP NetWeaver BW and SAP HANA, and which will eventually morph with SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards into a seamless product Exploration Views, which is part of the upcoming SAP BusinessObjects Feature Pack 3and will provide self-service views of information that resemble dashboards

Here’s a dose of real life: Those of us who spend time each day talking about SAP developments on social media sites and within user groups make up a small percentage of the SAP customer base. Yes, folks on Twitter are influential with SAP, but they often do not represent the majority of SAP users. Twitter users who chat about SAP – and I’m among them – are like virtual groupies hanging out with a rock band, which is cool, but it is far removed from what most people do.

There’s a guy upstairs in my office in the accounting department who uses SAP Crystal Reports. You know how many user groups he’s a part of or how many SAP tweets he’s posted?

Zero.

For him, like many others, SAP software is not something that shapes his professional or personal life; rather, he uses it because his employer told him to.

So when Zen is mentioned to 700-plus people attending a webinar and they haven’t ever heard that term before, then yes, it is new information, regardless of where else Zen has been discussed. Information is as much about the forum as the content.

We'll have more about Zen for subscribers soon...

Follow Scott on Twitter @BI_Expert