Comments on: SAP, Oracle under the SOA, on-demand gun

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 15:19:07 +0000

Netweaver and Fusion are both sold separately today.

By: kris

kris — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 08:23:44 +0000

It could be a fear that if Netweaver or Fusion is sold seperately then the main business of these companies are lost.
But definitely a rethink in strategy is required that too with the market climate having changed over a period of time. The strategy employed even 5 years back is not effective in todays market.

By: Puzzles and mysteries « AccMan

Puzzles and mysteries « AccMan — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 07:21:43 +0000

[...] There is some debate around SAPs recent numbers. There are two polarised views. Jeff Nolan thinks SAP is running a tired business model and that’s reflected in the recent results. Josh Greenbaum is more relaxed. He asserts SAP is in for the long haul and that it’s strategy is fine. I’m more concerned about the change in the way SAP assesses the market. Why? Because this type of manouevre is exactly the sort of thing that sets off alarm bells in my head. CA was infamous for moving the goal posts and as we now know but only suspected at the time, it was profit shifting. I’m not for one minute accusing SAP of any financial chicanery but they do have a habit of overburdening analysts with numbers and that almost always leads to confusion. [...]

By: Samir Raiyani

Samir Raiyani — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 19:48:10 +0000

Hi Jeff, I’ll ping a couple of friends whose companies run SAP for the type of in-house apps they are building on NetWeaver and get back to you. In my ignorance, I haven’t bothered to ask them in the past, of course. If you have any cool examples of apps built that use more of the infrastructure and less of connectivity to the backend, please share them also.

By: PaulSweeney

PaulSweeney — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 19:13:12 +0000

HI Jeff, off topic question: do you remember that enterprise sales cycle model evaluation tool you were discussing last year:? it had many “loops” in it that you could use to see if a start up was going to hit its targets by looking at all the assumptions and feedback lags etc. I am giving a presentation and it would be a handy example. Apologies for the butt in. Kind Regards.

By: Oracle and SAP Results: Evidence of a Fading-Edge at Orbit Change Conversations

Oracle and SAP Results: Evidence of a Fading-Edge at Orbit Change Conversations — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 18:08:00 +0000

[...] Large enterprise market is getting saturated (no surprise here). This is putting a premium on expansion into new markets lower down the food-chain. But the new set of mid-sized and smaller customers need a different product architecture, business model and mindset which SAP and Oracle are not (yet) geared to deliver. [Jeff Nolan makes this case here.] [...]

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 04:26:31 +0000

Samir,
your argument is paraphrased as “because SAP apps are built on Netweaver only SAP customers will want it therefore it’s only valuable in the context of SAP interoperability” but that argument fails when you consider that any application vendor could build an app that not only leverages the enormous community of SAP developers and customers but can scale from a systems management perspective. BTW, that is precisely what SAP customers are doing with Netweaver today, building applications that support their businesses whether or not they integrate with SAP’s apps or not. When you consider that big SAP customers like Coca Cola, Unilever, P&G, and many others have more developers on staff than most medium sized software companies, this is not insignificant.

By: Anshu

Anshu — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 20:49:13 +0000

Yes, the business model needs to change to a pay-as-you-go model. I agree that the vendors need to shift their business mdoel but I think the product issue is no less important. Its almost chicken and egg. In the SMB space, you are talking about competing with the likes of Intuit (for Financials). It would be eaiser for Intuit to move up (adding complexity is easier than simplifying) than for large enterprise vendors to move down. The path to these markets may eventually come via acquisitions of the likes of Salesforce and NetSuite, or perhaps even Intuit itself. The Cisco model may be most apt here. Cisco acquired LinkSys and is now better positioned in the SMB space.

Almost the same problem exists with emerging economies. The ‘simplified’ large ERP systems are just not suitable for a large portion of the emerging economies. You will see local players emerge, grow and the get bought out at sky high valuations in 2-3 years.

(The opinions expressed here are my personal views.)

By: Samir Raiyani

Samir Raiyani — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 19:49:35 +0000

Hmm… I’m trying to think which of the NetWeaver components would people most want and why. The Java app server is pretty bad. BW is decent, but only because it has good connectivity to the schemas of the SAP apps. I am not sure if Exchange Infrastructure would be used for anything other than connectivity with SAP apps. My feel is that the only reason people would want to use NetWeaver components is to connect better with SAP systems.

Would you agree?

If so, then it makes sense that if SAP makes easy connectivity to SAP apps free (by giving away NetWeaver), it could build up more innovation within its ecosystem, as compared to – say – the Salesforce.com ecosystem.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 14:22:25 +0000

Samir,
I disagree that outside of the customer base nobody wants it for the simple reason that there is a lot “there” that is not readily available in the LAMP middleware stacks. I can recall dealing with partner and portfolio companies (when I was with Ventures) that practically begged for it but could not justify the cost or deal with the complexity of it, which are not unrelated issues.