New Changes Hint At Hasso’s Priorities
In a not surprising update, SAP makes changes to Executive Board and management. Here are the changes:
- Gerhard Oswald becomes COO. Gerhard has experiences in support, consulting, education, custom development, and quality.Gerhard’s contract has been extended till December 31, 2011.Point of View (POV): Gerhard’s been a long-timer at SAP with 30 years of experience. He replaces Erwin Gunst who’s been out for almost a year with medical issues. SAP needs a strong COO in place and Gerhard has the credibility and experience to execute. Hasso’s putting a trusted lieutenant in charge.
- John Schwarz resigns. The former BOBJ leader leaves.
He was responsible for SAP BusinessObjects, Ecosystem and Corp Dev.POV: After being passed up for the CEO job, it was obvious that John would be leaving. Expect many of the BOBJ members in product management, product marketing, and development to be reshuffled as their support will be shifted. Those who didn’t fight hard for embedding T-Rex (inMem) and pushing out “Timeless Software” may be most impacted. - Peter Lorenz named as a corporate officer. Peter currently is the Executive Vice President for Small and Mid-size Enterprise (SME). He reports to Jim Hagemann Snabe.POV: The corporate officer position serves as an extended board member role. This hints at the importance of SME to SAP’s strategy. SAP also needs to build bench strength in SME.
The Bottom Line – SAP’s Making Big Changes.
Hasso’s acting fast to make changes. John Schwarz will be missed by many of the BOBJ team. Expect a ripple of changes as the management shake out finalizes over the next 8 to 12 weeks. Look for new product road maps to arrive prior to Sapphire 2010.
Your POV
Are you an SAP customer? How do you feel about the transition? Would you like to learn more about:
- Building a next gen SAP roadmap?
- Improving your SAP apps strategy?
- Augmenting SAP with SaaS?
- Putting third party maintenance and optimization to work?
Please post or send on to rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwaresinsider dot org and we’ll keep your anonymity.
Related Links And Resources
Here’s a list of related reports.
20100114 News Analysis: SAP Revives Two-Tier Maintenance Options
20091125 Speaker Notes: Keynote – SAP UK & Ireland User Group Conference 2009
Here’s a list of related links of news during Léo’s tenure. They will be added on an ongoing basis and updated as appropriate.
- 20100208 Computer Weekly – Warwick Ashford ” SAP admits enterprise support plan was a mistake”
- 20100208 DestinationCRM – Lauren McKay “After CEO Ouster, Plattner’s Plea: “Please Trust SAP. We Have Not Forgotten You.” “
- 20100208 SearchSAP.com/TechTarget – Courtney Bjorlin “SAP’s new CEOs need to show vision, clear product roadmap to customers, observers say “
- 20100208 Bloomberg – Ragnhild Kjetland “SAP Upheaval Pits Plattner Against Ellison in Market-Share Spat”
- 20100208 ReadWriteCloud – Alex Williams “Will SAP CEO Shakeup Lead to a Unified Cloud Computing Strategy?”
- 20100208 Wall Street Journal – Vanessa Furhmans ” SAP Chief Quits; Co-CEOs step in”
- 20100208 Associated Press – Matt Moore “Shares slip on CEO’s ouster; questions”
- 20100208 Computerworld UK – Elizabeth Heichler and Mike Simons “SAP CEO Leaves”
- 20100208 LeMag IT – Reynald Fléchaux “SAP : Apotheker évincé, Plattner place la jeune garde sous surveillance”
- 20100208 Wall Street Journal: All things digital – John Paczkowski “SAP Board to CEO: Auf Wiedersehen, Sweetheart”
- 20100208 IDG News Service - Joab Jackson and Chris Kanaracus “SAP Hits Reset Button With CEO Change”
- 20100208 ComputerWeekly – Warwick Ashford “SAP moves to restore customer and employee trust”
- 20100208 Information Age – Pete Swabey “SAP CEO Steps Down”
- 20100207 Wall Street Journal – Archibald Preuschat “SAP Returns to Co-Ceo Leadership, Apotheker resigns”
- 20100207 Information Week – Doug Henschen “SAP CEO Apotheker Resigns; Co-CEO’s Named”
- 20100207 Managing Automation – David Brossell “SAP CEO Resigns Suddenly”
- 20100207 ZDNet Irregular Enterprise – Dennis Howlett “SAP: Apotheker gone, Co-CEO’s in place”
Copyright © 2010 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.
It looks like Schwarz also thought he was a viable CEO candidate. You’d really have to know nothing about Hasso and the supervisory board to think he’d have a snowball’s chance, but his stepping down yesterday makes it clear that he either didn’t understand his role at SAP or was terribly misled by someone. Maybe he should have spoken with Shai before signing on.
Never a dull moment.