I have nothing but respect for John Wookey, and I urge you to read analysis from Phil Wainewright and Dennis Howlett who are at the SIIA conference in Amsterdam where John just presented his vision – but this InformationWeek interview with John about SAP SaaS left me confused:
“Here's what SAP customers can expect in the coming months: function-specific software applications, available by subscription, that plug into customers' on-site SAP Business Suite systems, and that SAP will host for customers using a multitenant architecture. “
“However, SAP won't develop software services that compete directly, as independent SaaS applications, with companies such as Salesforce.com, Concur, and Ariba”
This sounds like a “moat” strategy – protect the core, on-premise product with a series of surrounding “best of breed” SaaS
Reconcile it against the integrated, wall-to-wall is better than best-of-breed argument SAP has been using for decades. Reconcile this with their BusinessByDesign – which is a fairly broad SaaS ERP/CRM solution set - and promises we heard at Sapphire just 4 weeks ago about that “bear coming out in the summer”
Or may be we should just ignore these as periodic yawns from the still hibernating bear…not ready yet to stand up and dance with Slim Shady.
