Cooperating — or co-opting?
Partnerships have not always gone smoothly in the past for SAP, and industry observers are waiting to see how the company will handle the challenges involved in this effort.
As the Walldorf, Germany-based company pushes more aggressively into the software infrastructure market, it is increasingly bumping heads with large industry players — some of which are important partners.
IBM's WebSphere software and BEA Systems' WebLogic suite provide the same software plumbing functions as NetWeaver, although they are not SAP-specific. Similarly, Microsoft — another significant partner — provides a .Net-based system for building applications that use data and functions from SAP applications.
In the past, the German software maker has formed partnerships, only to end up competing with those same companies later. For example, it once had relationships with supply-chain-software company i2 Technologies and procurement vendor Commerce One, but SAP dissolved these after it began making competing products, Richardson noted.
"It's pretty hard to be a software company and not compete with SAP. Culturally, that's just how they think," said Rod Favaron, president and CEO of Lombardi Software, a small, independent maker of tools for business process management.
However, Favaron and other partners noted that SAP appears to be changing its stance by offering application makers and developers more technical and marketing resources.
In the past, SAP has been "partner-unfriendly", said Randy Hawkins, director of strategic alliances at Serena Software, which provides change management tools. But the German company's efforts to open up its software and foster relationships with other application providers has helped Serena sell to SAP customers moving to NetWeaver, Serena executives said.
"They have got a very large installed base — it's almost a whole economy in and of itself," said Mark Manzo, senior director of strategic alliances at Serena.
The NetWeaver community process should be a good way to scale up SAP's existing program for independent software vendors, Manzo said.
Paolini acknowledges that opening up to the outside world poses some thorny issues for both SAP and its partners. The company intends to get feedback from other industry players as it builds a larger NetWeaver network.
"In an open platform, the risk is you do need to work with competitors and you do have to accept there will be competition — perhaps even with our own products," Paolini said. "But the idea is that you grow the pie for everyone."
