Last week I was at the Global Special Interest Groups meeting in Brussels. For more information see the blog about the introduction about GSIG for PI.
The meeting was hosted by Sapience.be, the Belgian SAP Usergroup. Thanks for hosting us.
There was two large items on the agenda. The user survey we performed in Q2 2011 and what is coming next with SAP PI.
For the survey we did have a lot of respondents. The survey now showed a much better statistical impact the previous. I’ll not go into details with the survey, because it will be published at a later stage, and sent out to everybody who participated in the survey. The main part is that it will be presented to the different SAP PI Usergroups and they will be able to use it. The SAP PI product management team did hear the survey results, so they are trying to help creating a better product.
The other things was how the SAP PI Usergroups was able to impact, where SAP is going to spend their investments in the next releases. We already saw that some of the requirements from the GSIG for PI were in the PI 7.3 and PI 7.3 ehp 1. Part of this was the investment done with the monitoring aspects of SAP PI, which has greatly increased. Also the performance was requested by the usergroup.
So GSIG for PI are currently working on a way to make it easier for the SAP Usergroups to contribute and vote on what is the item that needs to be in the coming releases or service packs. This seems like a good way to make SAP sure, what the SAP customers wants to see in the PI system.
As always it is nice to meet people, who you have only been on the phone with. So in that perspective it was nice meeting them.
I thing the best part of meeting thise people, was their passion for SAP PI and for the users of it. The main focus was on how this improvement will serve other clients. For instance the EDI module or Crossgate offering, may not be something that will affect the current users directly, but it was still something that people was looking forward to be added to the SAP offering.
I’m looking forward to see what the work of the GSIG will mean for the next release of what SAP PI is doing. If you don’t have a GSIG for you area it may be a good idea to start creating on.