Switched On

Buying business software is about more than features, demos, and subscription prices. In this episode of Switched On, Kevin Endres and James Wood discuss some of the less obvious factors organizations should consider before making a software purchase, from fit/gap analysis and integration capabilities to data access, security, extensibility, compliance, and hidden costs. Whether you're evaluating a major ERP platform or a smaller SaaS solution, the goal is simple: know what questions to ask befo

In this episode, James and Kevin tackle one of the most common questions we're hearing from clients right now: does AI mean fewer people, lower costs, and faster projects? James gives an honest, direct answer and it's way more nuanced than the LinkedIn headlines suggest.

Many organizations enter transformation initiatives with genuine commitment — and still go nowhere. In this episode, we dig into why so many leaders find themselves ready to move but stuck in place, and what it actually takes to break through organizational gridlock. The data is sobering: McKinsey found that 70% of large-scale digital transformations fail due to resource gaps, 67% are delayed by skill shortages in AI, cloud, and data, and Gartner points to a consistent lack of change leadership

Microsoft Data MVP and Fabric afficionado Chris Wagner stops by to talk about all things Microsoft Fabric. James and Chris discuss what makes Fabric unique, how it's positioned to fundamentally transform your business, and even peak ahead into the future to look at what's coming next.

We flip the script and interview ourselves. James puts interesting questions to Paul about generative AI and the UX possibilities that are starting to open up. Sometimes Paul wanders off to uncharted territory.

We're in the age of Copilots. Discussion focuses a lot around Microsoft - but the implication is clear: they're everywhere, and they're just getting started.

James and Paul pontificate on their experiences working in, with, and under business-led IT, shadow IT, and corporate IT. What's the best way forward, for IT orgs to have real impact on business outcomes?

We talk about the Copilot Studio demo and other possibilities. "Everything you categorized in your head as 'I can't do that,' pull it out and rethink it. It might be possible now."

Alan Chai, Microsoft Power Apps MVP and Head of Digital Transformation & Innovation at Schlumberger, wows James Wood and Paul Modderman with his tales of enterprise creation, curation, and learning new things.

James and Paul continue their season on the future of work with a great conversation featuring Holger Mueller of Constellation Research. We weave through a lot of future/past thinking on tech, take a detour through last name significance, and wind up placing Paul in a new job (which he forgot about and went all nerdy before recalling the pre-show discussion). Don't forget to catch Holger at Constellation's upcoming Connected Enterprise conference in late October! https://www.constellationr.com/c

James and Paul discuss the upcoming events in the fall conference season - especially Microsoft Power Platform Conference and SAP TechEd, and come up with their unique spin on a wish list for them.

James and I sat down to ruminate and prepare for our upcoming next season: The Future of Work. It's obvious that GPT (and especially ChatGPT) has completely saturated everyone's brains. It seems like we're finally seeing the veil between front-office and back-office start to tear. But most of all, we are PUMPED about this season - as both a way to learn from great guests, and as a time capsule of a unique moment in tech history.

James and I closed out our season of exploring digital transformation and its various meanings with a wrap-up conversation.

James and Paul sit down with Dustin Bruzenak, co-founder of Modern Logic - a Twin Cities-based software development shop specializing in projects that emphasize compassion and human-centered thought. Dustin offers great thoughts on the software industry: building the products, building teams, and finding your cultural center.

Paul and James take a fantastic opportunity to talk to the incredible Christian Lechner - a polymath of SAP BTP and Azure if there ever was one. Christian is passionate about developer experience and the possibilities of serverless compute (among other things), and runs the absolutely vital myNewsWrap repository/video/information experience. DO NOT MISS THIS. https://github.com/lechnerc77/myNewsWrap/tree/main https://twitter.com/lechnerc77

James and Paul discuss the Nuve platform with founder Nestor Lara - among other geektastic subjects. We discuss ins and outs of SAP DevOps, ABAP containers, and generally speaking platform-y things that will make your nerd heart sing.

Dawn Clark and Lori Beck from Bowdark's Microsoft team guest to help us create a roundtable to geek out over the latest Microsoft Copilot offerings. See https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/03/16/introducing-microsoft-365-copilot-your-copilot-for-work/ for more details.

Paul and James talk to Diego Dora, longtime SAP buff and founder of DIFF Consulting. Diego is knowledgeable about cloud, development, and system integration topics that should be helpful to ANY enterprise, and has a special flavor of SAP + GCP knowledge mixture.

Paul and James discuss possibilities for future seasons of Switched On. Data/AI? Cloud maturity? Other...things?

Paul and James talk to Paru Sankar, Managing Director for Mindset Consulting in Asia/Pacific, who transforms their understanding of digital transformation. Paru is a world-ranging technologist, and gives great perspective on a wide range of topics.

Paul and James outline their wishes for the upcoming year in tech.

James and Paul talk to Alex Jones (not THAT one) from NetSPI about the heretofore unseen connections between penetration testing and security. Alex brings a fresh perspective from his sales and marketing leadership positions, and it really stretched our imaginations.

James and Paul point the hard questions at themselves - asking each other the questions that they usually reserve for guests. What do people not understand about what you do? What excites you most about the future?

James and Paul talked to Jon Reed from diginomica about our seasonal "digital transformation" topic. He's been on the hunt for this very same idea for years - and his wisdom shines through.

We kick off a new season of Switched On with the topic: Digital Transformation. The sub-question should probably be: what the heck is it? James and Paul explore their own thoughts before the rest of the season kicks off into a bunch of great guests!

This is it! The end of season 3! Lots of solid leads on the question "Why can't IT keep up with the business?" - and probably most importantly, a concession that the question probably started off a bit loaded. I think we came to several points of agreement, led by our awesome guests.

James and I went down to sunny (sweaty) Orlando for Microsoft Power Platform Conference (MPPC) 2022. Apart from getting to see a great set of announcements, learn a ton, and meet up with past pod-friends we also got the chance to sit down and have a conversation with Charles Lamanna - hot on the heels of his keynote address.  Join us for this Very Special Episode of Switched On, our chance to share Charles' deeper thoughts on MPPC 2022 announcements.

This is the last guest episode for our season question: "Why Can't IT Keep Up With The Business?" Luke Komiskey is the founder of DataDrive, a managed analytics provider, with a cool approach to things. Seriously, go check out the website and scroll down to the On Your Own vs Growth Plan comparison. You'll see what I think is true out there in the world - companies going it alone in [any!] tech space in which they're not bona fide experts is probably a money pit situation.

We ask ourselves a question that underpins a lot of what we do: is it realistic to expect enterprise software to move to a vanilla, SaaS-ish place that minimizes or even completely eliminates customization?

James and I talked to James Montemagno to take a deep look at tech that will absolutely have an impact on our business app customers. Montemagno leads the developer community team, part of the developer tools division that builds all manner of the tools that many of us nerds use on the daily. I'm deeply appreciative to get this kind of tech insight, and Montemagno is a great communicator of his interests.

Paul and James scratch their heads and ponder the ontology of ERP. James stays brilliant, Paul tortures a Ship of Theseus metaphor.

James and Paul talked to Wade Krzmarzick, Director of IT at TSI, Incorporated. TSI builds scientific measurement equipment (among other things). He gave us insight into budget and time questions, strategic direction he thinks about, and what makes him most proud of his team. It was a great conversation.

Paul and James extract their own theme from presenting and viewing sessions at SAPinsider 2022 in Las Vegas last week. Their chosen theme? Clean core.

Paul and James bang their heads against the idea of "digital transformation" and what it means - BS, reality, everything else.

Paul and James talked to Michael Pytel, co-founder and CTO of Fulfilld, a cloud SaaS warehouse management startup. As a fellow SAP nerd, we have shared background for commiseration. Michael has done some amazing things with the technology powering Fulfilld, and he and the rest of his team have given a lot of thought to matching that technology up to business needs for several warehouse worker personas. It was a blast geeking out!

James and Paul discuss some of the worst and best qualities of the techical writing they consume, and where technical writing fits in the universe today. We left with more questions than answers!

Paul and James talk to Matt Ericson of Trekka Logistics, who holds court with great wisdom and energy for his industry and business. Matt talks about growth, complexity, transparency, and evolving systems to keep things smooth.

Paul and James tackle thoughts on RISE with SAP and the SI-created complementary services that IBM, Accenture, Infosys, and others have created. It all kinda wraps up under the banner of "digital transformation as a service" - but this isn't always clear.

James and I interviewed each other to tee up our third season. Our theory: IT can't keep up with the business. Our question: why? Lots of things floating around. Ideas. Half-formed questions. Ponderings from earlier in our respective careers.  What will we discover? Who will we talk with along the way? FIND OUT MORE this season on Switched On!

James and Paul have a quick discussion about the low-code space with respect to some new stuff out there in the universe from Microsoft, as spurred on by https://venturebeat.com/2022/05/26/how-microsoft-plans-to-improve-the-low-code-landscape/

James and Paul gathered a congress of super-nerds from the Bowdark staff to think back on the recent SAP Sapphire 2022 event in Orlando, FL. We combed through the Sapphire News Guide and used my on-site experience to dig deep.

James and Paul get together to expertly wrap all the amazing guests, topics, and information we digested over the course of season two. Stay tuned! Someone dies!

James and I talked to Holger Bruchelt, host of the awesome SAP on Azure podcast (also watch on YouTube) and all around swell guy. Holger put us on the right path with thoughts about platforms and infrastructure, integration and Power Platform, and being a futuristic nerd with GitHub Copilot (a perennial favorite topic of ours). He's just as fun to talk to when the recorders have stopped, so we hope you enjoy our conversation as much as we did.

James and I talked to Matthias Steiner for the fourth episode in our second season. He took to the SAP Community blogs to defend low-code/no-code (and later reiterated at diginomica), and we took notice. We'd been fans previously because of his influence on the various cloud platform gyrations at SAP, and of course because he's a willing Twitter prognosticator. We dove in on low/no-code and other platform things, for a great time.

James and I talked to Shane Young for the third episode in our second season: "Power Platform Democratization". Shane is the founder of PowerApps911, helping clients with Power Platform training and custom app builds in the Microsoft universe. He's a fun guy to talk to, and he's one of the most informative people you'll ever follow on Twitter or YouTube.

James and I talked to Em D'Arcy for the second episode in our second season: "Meeting Demand Through Governance". This was a refreshing talk for me - I have issues to work through with the word "governance", and Em is helping me walk the walk and do the work to get there. It's great material along the course of our second season theme of "Simplifying the Multi-Vendor Mess", as part of simplification can be distributing power to those who need it.

We have a thesis: the enterprise tech world continues to move to best-of-breed; and while new solutions abound, organizations continue to feel the pain of improving their overall business processes while simultaneously keeping their disparate systems in harmony. The "multi-vendor mess". This episode is an introduction and the first of a short season on this thesis. The rest of the season will feature luminary guests and interesting topics related to this mess, and innovative ways - and tools - t

James and I spoke with our highly-esteemed colleague Lori Beck about the recent Microsoft Ignite virtual conference. Lori leads our Microsoft consulting practice, and has great depth of knowledge and insight into Microsoft Dynamics. We had a great time talking about Logic Apps, Power Apps, Teams, and OpenAI GPT-3 (find below the poem that the AI wrote for us).

James and I spoke with the super-interesting Riley Rainey. Before you get to any of the regular industry-specific goodness we talk about, check out his GitHub repositories focused around replicating the Apollo Guidance Computer. I was tempted not to talk about anything in the SAP or development world and just blast on about nerdy space things. But we did eventually move on to things in the here-and-now, and it was great fun.

James and I spoke with the amazing Greg Robinette. Greg works at Newport News Shipbuilding as a systems architect. He's got great perspective on watching ships being built and then marrying that knowledge to the SAP systems he's architecting. We had a blast talking about organizational culture, decision-making, and value lifespans…all through the lens of the cloud.

James and I really dove deep into the recesses of Paul Aschmann's brain for this one. Paul is a mobility development expert at SAP, originally from South Africa and now living in North Carolina. In the past, Paul started Lithium Labs, which built Metric². Became part of the SAP Startup Focus program (now @SAP_iO), then joined the enterprise mobility team at SAP. His resume is RIDICULOUS.

This time, James and I talked to Chris Kernaghan. Chris brings a wealth of SAP techie skills to the table, and we got some great stuff from him! He's been an SAP Mentor for over 10 years, he evangelizes in the community with cloud strategy, and thinks about crazy/magical ways to make the entire system administration process light-years better. There was simply too much deep goodness to note it entirely in the notes here - just give it a listen!

James and I spoke with Hau Ngo, a business intelligence whiz. Hau founded and runs Summerlin Analytics, which consults and advises on business intelligence especially focused on SAP Analytics Cloud, S/4HANA, and SAP Business Warehouse. Summerlin does slick, informative write-ups of their ideas, and they're especially adept at finding cost savings in and through analytics.

James and Paul spoke with Carmen Bourlon, a virtuoso developer that just so happens to work with us at Bowdark. Carmen created margiemap.com, which visually illustrates the relationship between income levels and library access. She also wrote Let’s Take This Offline, a book introducing developers to the concepts of service workers and progressive web apps.

It's intro time - we focused on a brief bio of ourselves and what we want to do with this podcast in subsequent episodes.