Sapphire: Let the Best Breed

Bill McDermott, President and CEO of SAP America, kicked off Sapphire today with a shot at best-of-breed software. "It may have been best...but it did not breed". I think sublimally he meant "SAP is the best ...and boy, have we been breeding".

Bill, a consummate salesman who deserves a lot of credit for SAP's success the last couple of years, did not let his own facts get in the way of describing SAP as the best. Like "80% of IT budgets are now spent on legacy maintenance" (as this blog has been saying for a while). But legacy, in his eyes, does not apparently include the spend on SAP even though as he emphasized "SAP is 34 years old". In another part, he said the "time for "experimentation and fragmentation is behind us" even as he mentioned innovation several times and described SAP's own ESA component strategy.

About the breeding part. SAP wants to be in every buzzword market. So the featured produts during the kickoff included Duet in a shrink wrapped box (hey Google, we beat you to the desktop). ADP on stage talking about its growing partnership with SAP and BPO offerings. CRM in "hybrid" mode - on-demand or licensed from the same code base.  Of course, SOA.  About the only promising new market SAP did not emphasize was Open Source.

Lots to explore over the next couple of days. While SAP's faithful here are in line with "the best-run businesses run SAP" theme, both NetSuites and Oracle decided to send little messages at Sapphire contesting that claim. Bad breeding , that!