Paas Summercamp 2017 in Lisbon

So – another summer camp is over.

What was the outcome of this? Was there more to it than meeting some old friends, dive into some slides, get your hands dirty on new versions and finally talk about it over a glass of Portuguese wine or beer?

So let’s start at the beginning – where are we right now?

In the Process Cloud Service track the global PM Nathan Angstadt kicked of the session by asking how many projects we are on that use PCS and how we get along selling the product.

The outcome was somewhat predictable: about one or two participants were on PCS projects, and selling is still a big issue.

We discussed the various reasons for that. The main essence was that the PCS is often positioned at previous BPM customers who still have to deal with large BPM implementations and are somewhat afraid of the new PCS-style. BPM and PCS are two different things. They target different customer issues. BPM is still useful when it comes to large scale implementations, while PCS is targeted more on the department level.

During the week this came back time and again. Cloud Services give you agility and speed - but are not always a direct replacement for large scale implementations of related on-prem products. This was also visible with the various hands-on exercises. Typically within an hour you had something running that could be shown to a customer.

With some preparation a quick demo in realtime could be created while the customer looks over your shoulder.

Additions like the ABCS (interfaces), ICS (integration), CECS (content) or API can easily be combined with PCS. 

PCS is for a number of cases the magic glue. Certain domain functionality can be done with the products (cloud services) but the real working together part will be done by PCS.

So after a week I am full of ideas, energy and still-to-be finished exercises. Visions of products and solution dance in my head. New people were met with whom I can cooperate and try to get a foothold in the PCS market.

Let's go for it.

Oh yeah - Lisbon is also great due to its good food, sights and excellent weather. My fifth journey into the city brought me to the Gulbenkien Museum https://gulbenkian.pt/museu/  which was very nice. Stories of others made sure that there are still undiscovered places for next years Paas Summercamp.

One last word: a success has many fathers - but there is always one person in charge of it all. Jürgen Kress did again a wonderful job of bringing partners, product managers, content and fun together. Many thanks for that.