After Doug Burgum left the company in August 2007, Microsoft calls and invitations faded rapidly. My conclusion has been that SAP has been opening up while Microsoft has been taking a tighter grip on information. In the last five years, Microsoft has cut down on the number of executives for whom speeches are posted on its website. In the last year, it trimmed the scores of executives whose pictures and profiles were posted on the site, down to the senior leadership. Now the latter is more typical of corporate America. However, it also seems to be part of the hardening of the corporate arteries up in Redmond. Some of the SAP invitations are for enterprise size companies, not the midmarket. But since technology works its way downstream, it is often good to become more educated even if no story results immediately. This publication has previously mentioned that SAP has talked open platforms while Microsoft talks about the benefit of its stack. That is part of the same trend, the same competing philosophies of doing business.