How SAP Missed An Opportunity
Hello, it’s me again. Your Friendly SAP — foe? If you follow me you know that I admire the technical prowess of SAP, but despise about twice as much their marketing “acumen” (there are no other words that are politically correct and fit nicely between quotation marks). I wrote about it in more detail in […]
The SAP Fort Knox
Andrew Nusca at Fortune interviews Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP here. What’s striking is Bill talks incessantly about the “new SAP” : HANA, Ariba, Concur, SuccessFactors, Hybris, Fieldglass, Sybase. The stuff is not exactly new – most of the products are decades old, but they are new to SAP and Bill is clearly enamored with […]
The trajectories of great software companies
Ever wonder how much growth a software firm should really target? If you thought the sky’s the limit, you might want to think again.
Is the Cloud Disappearing or Darkening at SAP in Procurement?
SAP is shaking up its cloud business. Or perhaps the cloud is shaking up SAP. Both Vishal Sikka, who championed HANA on the executive board level, and Shawn Price, the president of SAP’s cloud business unit for only a few months, have left (see news coverage here and here). While there are different views on […]
Bringing the Hack into HRMS
I’ve not blogged or written for a while, but I figured it was time to start again. No promises on the regularity of posting appearance. I’m not a comet. Deliberate, consistent customer engagement drives most product enhancements. There is a profound skill in listening to a specific customer need, and turning it into a design […]
SAP’s Brand, Product Lines and Channel Partners- Reconciliation Needed
I attended SAP’s Channel Partner Summit in Miami last week. While I generally applaud (and welcome) Jonathan Becher’s (SAP’s CMO) decision to reposition SAP’s brand, I believe some bigger issues have yet to be reconciled or subdued. These issues impact SAP’s channel partners, the company itself and its customers. SAP CMO Jonathan Becher Copyright 2013 […]
IFRS, as in SAP
I think Jim Snabe, co CEO of SAP is creating his own new terminology for reporting numbers when he says about 1H13 numbers “First of all, we don’t like to be in the category of traditional software players. We’re now a cloud company. And as opposed to the competition, we didn’t outsource the cloud to partners. We […]
Continuing evolution of cloud application software
It’s not just cloud vs. on-premises anymore In technology, everything evolves, mutates and, eventually, goes away after being replaced by something altogether better, newer, cooler and more powerful. Sometimes, even new technologies experience rapid evolution. Cloud computing is definitely in the mutating and evolving phase of its existence. Let’s look at how cloud computing has […]
SAP Buys Hybris
‘Tis the Season, I guess The press release said all the right things. SAP was acquiring hybris, a Swiss ERP company that will help SAP get over into the online world that was started by the company’s acquisition of SuccessFactors, a human capital resources management company. This is largely good stuff as the company has […]
SAP, SAP, Wherefore Art Thou SAP?
SAP Founders 1988 — Klaus Tschira On The Left I’ve always had a warm spot in my heart for SAP. When I published my first (and thus far only) 700+ page book in 1994 (“Human Resource Management and Information Technology: Achieving A Strategy Partnership”), Klaus Tschira, one of SAP’s founders, became a big fan of my […]
