I don’t normally do this….but

Someone reminded me it’s Christmas in just  10 weeks….again. And the retailers have started their stocking of the shelves and offers are starting to appear. Also today my Facebook page reminded me that last year a local A Capella group released a video for Christmas. I watched it again and it was still as good as last year, and I wanted to see how many of you would watch it on YouTube. See what you think click here.

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This could get very messy……

I mentioned a growing scandal in South Africa a number of days ago. Well it seems that now others are concerned that links with those either under investigation or investigating, might drag them in and their links to those companies are now being questioned. It remains to be seen how this will be untangled, but there are some nervous corporates out there. Standard Bank is now considering its links to McKinsey and SAP and also having conversations with KPMG. As the old saying goes “there’s no smoke without a fire”. Question is where and what is the fire? Everyone is keeping very tight-lipped about it.

I like the video clip…..

Every day we are all bombarded with marketing clips and then one comes along that catches your attention….in this case for me it’s an SAP one. My view is that this is slick and good marketing……doesn’t tell you that much but works exceptionally well as a teaser, and does what it says on the tin. It gets you thinking.

Click here.

A Celebrity and technology…..

There’s a great article by Gryff Ryhs Jones around taking care of your passport in the Telegraph. His concluding remarks suggest that like Pets we humans should also get “chips” because it would do away with passports, streamlining entry to countries. Perhaps a throwaway remark…..but it got me thinking.

Actually a chip could mean nothing at all, it could be replaced and it could of course be used to track you in many ways. But the solution of course would be to have the chip linked to something physical, and actually why not 3 factor authentication?

A physical object – the chip.

A secret known to the governments only built into the chip – probably an encryption key.

A biometric link of some sort stored on the chip.

It all seems entirely practical to me, but I can hear the civil liberties people chanting from the sidelines, but like Gryff if it was entirely voluntary then why not? If it saved me hours in airline queues, meant that I could get faster access at numerous events and activities that neede to identify you then so be it. Yes, the governments could “snoop” on me, but with nothing to hide what’s the concern?

GIGYA – an SAP Company

What’s the significance of SAP’s announced purchase of GIGYA? There’s a lot of speculation out there, but for me I think it is pretty obvious. SAP is charging down the Cloud strategy, through acquisition and core product conversion. If we look at what SAP are driving, we have Cloud ERP, we have Cloud Markets, we have Cloud Expenses, we have Cloud Human Capital solutions, we have cloud customer engagement solutions, and we have Leonardo (SAP’s IOT solution framework). And there in lies the rub, we are starting to connect all sorts of things and they aren’t just in the business domain anymore. In fact a major component of IOT is branching out into people’s everyday personal lives, smart fridges, smart lighting, smart heating, in fact pretty much anything now……..and this presents a challenge. As more and more services are deployed and made available to Joe Public there needs to be a single sign on mechanism – and it’s nothing like what the IT community are used to.

It’s the era of the Social Networking single sign on using something from the big boys such as Google, Twitter, Facebook and perhaps Microsoft. That presents some challenges when your customer base is now a hybrid of business and public, more and more the case today as the middle men are slowly eroded.

SAP are saying this is to enhance the Hybris solutions, and yes it will be used that way for sure, but I think there is more to this acquisition than first glance.

 

 

SAP in South Africa continues the digging……

There’s a scandal brewing in South Africa – first it was KPMG, then McKinsey and now SAP. Employees and by default the companies are alleged to have been involved in unethical business practices.

SAP took immediate action, placing four executive directors on “administrative leave” whilst getting in an independent law firm Baker Mckenzie to investigate. They’ve been doing this since July. SAP have been quick and vigorous in their reaction to allegations.

KPMG also announced they were undertaking an independent investigation using a respected independent South African law silk.

Mckinsey also hired a law firm Norton Rose Fulbright to investigate.

Meanwhile a leading PR company Bell Pottinger has been expelled from its trade body around more than questionable involvement in other activities, in South Africa, and is now heading into administration following abandonment by its customers.

 

What will be the outcome for SAP, KPMG, and McKinsey?

Retiring is sort of stressful……

The story goes…..it will be so relaxing when you retire.

It’s very early in my attempts to retire so maybe it’s just me, but so far I’ve not noticed this. More it’s a transformation. A move from paid for work to unpaid for work. One of my ex -work colleagues who is about to retire is using the phrase “Taking back control”  to describe this transformation. Unlike the politicians, I think he has hit the nail on the head.

There still has to be a plan, there still has to be financial records and controls, and execution is still key. And there still has to be work….it’s just different and more of what you want to do, rather than the dictatorial direction of the people at the top. But it’s still there….just work you want to do.

Never having been a business owner, I guess it’s a bit like that…….but my customer base is somewhat limited in comparison, just family and friends.

My journey has started, it will I guess never be complete until it is. I’ll still do a bit of SAP related things whilst people want me to, and it doesn’t impact my retirement because that is now the number 1 gig in town.