Mark Yolton

Mark Yolton leads SAP’s Web 2.0 professional social networking communities oriented around the company’s solutions for the benefit of customers, partners, and others in the SAP ecosystem.

These include the SAP Developer Network (SDN), the Business Process Expert (BPX), the Business Objects (BOC), and University Alliances (UAC) communities, totalling more than two-million individual members interacting around the clock and around the world in 200+ countries and territories.

SAP Community Network (SCN) members engage online daily at http://scn.sap.com and at global events including SAP Tech Tour (50+ cities worldwide) and SAP TechEd (four major conferences on three continents).

The SAP EcoHub (http://ecohub.sap.com) is an online, community-driven solution marketplace where partners showcase their solutions and services and where customers can easily discover, evaluate, and initiate the purchase of partner and SAP solutions.

In addition, Mark’s team is responsible for SAP’s Standards Strategy & Open Source activities – which focus on engagement in technology, industry, and open-source standards groups, including leadership and participation in independent standards bodies, and the subsequent adoption of technology and business standards in SAP’s product portfolio.

The SDN and BPX and BOC communities – through collaboration both virtually online and physically at TechEd and Tech Tour events — drive adoption of, and innovation around, the SAP platform, products, and technologies.  Community resources include information, tools, training, best practices, demos, downloads, articles, whitepapers, a bi-weekly newsletter, discussion forums, blogs, a wiki, and a rich array of other resources geared to benefit developers, enterprise architects, business analysts, systems administrators, and application and solution consultants in customer, ISV, and systems integrator (SI) organizations.  A new University Alliances Community (UAC) brings this same wealth of rich information, collaboration tools, and connections to thousands of students and professors studying advanced degrees in business and IT worldwide.

Especially effective and valuable to community members are the online discussion forums where configuration and customization challenges are solved at the rate of 6500-posts-per-day by fellow community members who possess expertise and prior experience, online blogs where 5,000 community members and SAP product specialists offer thought leadership and recurring insights into trends and successful approaches to innovation, community-produced wiki content for frequently asked questions and recurring topics, newsletters with 400,000 subscribers, and major events that will attract more than 30,000 SAP customers, partners, employees, prospects, independent consultants, industry analysts, bloggers, and members of the media to key locations around the world.

Mark joined SAP and his current role in 2005.  Immediately prior, he managed online properties for PeopleSoft and then Oracle.  Previously, Mark was VP of marketing and strategy for the $3B Services division of Sun Microsystems, and he managed internet properties as well as field sales support and regional marketing for Unisys Corporation and The Prudential.

Mark has degrees in Communications/Journalism and Marketing from Shippensburg University in central Pennsylvania, and has completed MBA coursework and continuing executive education at LaSalle University (Philadelphia), at INSEAD (France), and at Stanford University (California).  A Philadelphia native, Mark lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and travels globally as he works with SAP Community Network members and colleagues around the world.