Do you doubt Ellison's claims that are related to running SAP on a grid system?
I haven't been in his meetings, and I haven't seen his presentation so I don't want to speculate about what he said and what he's shown. I would like to see it happen.
You were promoted to be a member of the SAP executive management board last year, and your duties were further expanded in February. As the youngest board member, the newest to the company and the only non-German, what are you bringing to the table? How are you putting your stamp on the company?
I think sometimes companies tend to focus on what they used to do. There's a great saying by Picasso that if you just try to do what you did last year, over time you will lose your innovation, you will lose your drive and lose the appeal you have. Well, that's a paraphrase. But sometimes you have to bring in another fresh view and to have an outsider that's an insider, which is what I do.
Is it ever tough being the outsider?
The perception the world has of SAP and the reality of SAP are very different. It's a very pluralistic, multinational company. It's the most global company I think you can imagine. If you look not at our board but our extended board, we have a guy from New York. We have a guy from Australia. As you know, I'm from Israel.
Hasso Plattner, SAP's former chief executive, stepped out of his day-to-day management of the company in May. How is the company changing, if at all, under the leadership of Henning Kagermann?
Henning is great. He's probably one of the smartest people in the world. And Hasso is fantastic in the sense that he recognised early on that he needed to mentor his successor. So we laugh about it, but Henning has been in the ramp-up for the last 20 years. He has been mentored by two of the best in the business, by Dietmar Hopp (SAP supervisory board member) and by Hasso. And the transition has been probably one of the best-managed transitions in our industry.
How does SAP stay on top? Is it going to be a matter of bringing out new and better technology, or will it be a marketing game from here on out?
I don't believe that marketing is the long-term sustainable model. You don't market your ideas; you market what your customers have done with them. And that's exactly what we're doing.
To some degree, SAP is the trusted innovator. We won't jump in headfirst and bet the farm on something. But we will test the waters. We will figure what the best approach is and then take you with us down the path. And usually, when we take you down the path, we show you the path for the next four, five, even 10 years.
Talkback
SAP is the slowest, most horrible POS i've seen out in the market. Let's be serious...the security is so tight you cannot integrate any of it in any current business application. Don't even tell me that SAP is good for reporting cause it is HORRIBLE. You cannot get a single GOOD printout. COnsultants are way too expensive, licensing is expensive, support is limited, the application is just HORRIBLE.
We put forth so much money into a piece of software that's probably worse than a basic access fe/be combo. Let's get real here...speak the facts..you may claim you're making software but for one you're charging an arm and a leg, and 2 your GUI sucks.
If this is the case what jon says,
why is SAP then the no. 1 company here,
jon? anybody?
Murt
Not so! Microsoft has run its business for years using SAP software, and I don't think they would accept a "POS" as you call it. In fact, considering how many business rules they are processing, the SAP applications are really amazingly fast and flexible. Just imagine adding that sort of auditability, security, scalability and internationalization to your own code....
Sounds to me like you're trying to write an "outside-in" program that leverages a SAP system. The simple fact is you can't do this until you've invested serious time and money in learning about their system. I'm currently advising on a PeopleSoft CRM implementation and the learning curve is just as steep.
It *is* worth the effort to learn SAP - I know that Microsoft built quite a few company-wide applications on top of their SAP system, because they used to demonstrate them at conferences and would invite SAP prospects to Redmond to talk about how happy they were. I worked for SAP for a while - after investing my own money in training - and I know they are 100% focused on producing exactly the features and performance that top companies demand.
Good luck with your project.