One of the best kept secrets in the SAP world is the SAP International Research Forum (IRF).
"The IRF is an invitation-only think tank with renowned international academic and industry leaders as well as experts and thought-leaders from various areas discussing the latest IT trends. Results and subsequent discussions from the IRF are being worked up and continued via regular book publications". This event occurs annually.
Recently I was priveledged and humbled by the opportunity to attend this event in Germany. As mentioned above that one of the outputs of the IRF is a book. These books are informative and a great resource. The recent IRF focussed on the "Future Internet". Previous IRF's have focussed on:
2009
End-to-end real world awareness
Infrastructure of the Internet of Things
Potential "killer" applications
Future manufacturing
http://www.sap.com/about/company/research/pdf/IRF_2009.pdf
2008
Web-based service industry
Infrastructure for enterprise SOA 2.0
Potential "killer" applications
Semantic service discovery
http://www.sap.com/about/company/research/irf/pdf/IRF_Book_2008.pdf
2007
Enterprise 2.0: Defining the boundaries of structure
User-driven innovation
The service grid
Business model transformation
http://www.sap.com/about/company/research/irf/pdf/IRF2007_Book.pdf
2006
Web 2.0
IT security
Real-world awareness
IT as a tool for growth and development
http://www.sap.com/about/company/research/pdf/IRForumBook2006.pdf
More details about the can be found at http://www.sap.com/about/company/research/irf/index.epx
Good luck
Paul
