photo from ThijsFr’s brilliant flickrstream

At the end of January,  I’ll be leaving SAP.

It hasn’t been an easy decision, but I’ve been offered an opportunity that I simply can’t ignore.

I’m grateful to SAP for the opportunities it has provided for me for more than a decade. I’ve made many friends, and working at SAP has shaped much of my working experience. Through SAP I’ve met and worked with some of the leading companies in the world. I’ve had the pleasure of getting smarter through the osmosis effect of hanging out with clever and open people. Without SAP, we would have not learnt German, nor felt as at home in this formerly strange land as we now do.   It has been far more than just an employer to me and my family.

My valedictory sentiments echo Jeff Nolan’s, especially with regards to blogging.  I could write of many incidents and memories, some happy, some sad, but that would fill a book, not just a blog post. I’ve much to thank SAP for.

Stepping through the door.

I’m joining Gartner, where I’ll be researching and covering the HCM-HR space.  I’ll be working closely with Jim Holincheck.  There is a world of innovation beyond SAP, and I’m determined to learn more about it.  Feel it is time for me  to view the software world through a different lens.  Gartner will be ideal  for me to do just that. During the epic interview process I’ve met many of my new colleagues, and it is a place where curiosity thrives.  Curiosity is my oxygen.

This blog, the conversations I’ve had in the blogosphere, and enterprise irregulars board made me realise that I enjoy writing and thinking about the industry a lot.   When Gartner called, it just seemed to be a great fit.  In making the decision to leave SAP and join Gartner,  I’ve relied on the advice of several friends, some of whom I met via the blog.  My wife  has been a rock of rationality.

We plan to stay in Germany, and I’ll have a broad European and global focus. There is a lot of innovative HR technology in Europe and beyond that I’d like to pick up on, and enterprise 2.0 / social media hold huge potential to impact HR.  I should also be able to expand my PhD work in compliance / CSR  and data protection law.

I’m excited about the change, I’m nervous but somehow confident.  I’m bringing experience and an open mind. It will be a blast.

Robert Frost said it best.`

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that, the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

 

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I marked the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way

I doubted if I should ever come back.

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

 

From  photobunny.

 

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