Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-12-11

• SAP Sets Pace on 'Flexible' Software Pricing
  The arrangements let customers pay quarterly or monthly fees to use SAP products, instead of buying the software outright and paying for it at the outset.
• SAP: Out with the Old, Shrugging Off The Tag
  I am not saying the 2010 is going to be a bumper year for SAP, but it at least feels like some hygiene factors are being worked out, and there are some cool new products to sell if SAP can work out the business model.
• Hadoop and Solr popularity continue to scale well
  A quick check of Google Trends shows that Apache Solr (the search server based on Lucene) and Hadoop (the open-source implementation of MapReduce) are popular query terms -- and becoming more popular by the day. (For links to the news stories labelled with flags 'A', 'B', 'C', etc., go to this Google Trends page.)
• Summits Aren’t Always the Peak, and the New Doesn’t Always Fully Displace the Old
  SaaS is important and remains the future of software, but there are multiple reasons why it will not reign supreme — not for a while at least.
• Event Report: 2009 SAP Influencer Summit - SAP Must Put Strategy To Execution In Order To Prove Clarity Of Vision
  Overall reputation: “B”. SAP carries significant brand presence in emerging markets and the SME space. Many companies equate ownership of SAP as a sign of success in their markets. Yet, existing customers have soured on the brand and continue to wonder when SAP will innovate in their requirements and not be distracted in other pursuits. In general, SAP still carries considerable brand equity which will buy it time as it reinnovates.
• The SAP Reverse Dichotomy
  SAP Reverse Dichotomy: our technology is better than what we tell you we have.
• Oracle Makes Its Case For EU Antitrust Clearance Of Sun Deal
  Oracle Corp. (ORCL) Thursday assembled a large group of customers at an antitrust hearing to support its argument that the European Commission should clear its $7.4 billion merger with Sun Microsystems (JAVA).
• SAP BusinessByDesign versus NetSuite OneWorld shootout
  Ray Wang and I were recruited to judge a “shootout” at the Sapience conference Helmuth Guembel had organized in Cambridge this week...I hope they accept that for the next few years, ByD will be an underdog and catching up to a decade’s lead pioneers like NetSuite and salesforce.com have. It needs all the publicity – good and bad - it can get.
• SAP Is Skydiving Into The Clouds
  The company presented a clear vision and solid roadmap for on-demand business extensions based on the Frictionless platform and enhanced Business ByDesign with important capabilities to become the successful SME On-Demand solution it is supposed to be.
• SAP Promises Acceleration on a “Clear Path” – Will it Be Enough?
  Like the dances I went to in high school, the event was mostly date-free, but direct questions elicited some specific, though uncommitted, statements about deliveries in 2010, especially from Marge Breya.