There was another flurry of media/analyst/blogger activity around SAP yesterday as Dr. Hasso Plattner explained the way forward after Leo Apotheker resigned. I did not attend that press conference. Just like I did not the 5+ hour media circus around Oracle/Sun a couple of weeks ago. Or the recent IBM Lotusphere.
Honestly, they remind me of what Gen. Colin Powell often says. 150 million in the world are causing us difficulties – in Iran, in N. Korea etc whereas 6 billion are looking forward to wealth creation and improving life. But on TV each night, it is about Afghanistan, Iraq and other trouble spots.
50% of tech and telecom spend is with 25 vendors – and most of them are not innovating but getting plenty of media attention and our budgets. I would rather focus more on hundreds of smaller vendors and at customers where innovation is happening – from haptic interfaces to sensory networks to next-gen data centers to carbon sequestering.
As Ryan Hunter at Wedge Partners summarized in his note to investors yesterday “ Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss”.
Yes, I look forward to Hasso delivering on his vision of in-memory analytics, and I look forward to SAP building next-gen data centers like Microsoft’s to truly scale ByD. While creating a “happy” company at the same time.
But for now, as Ryan says “We believe that SAP’s R&D organization is widely inefficient and driven more by the inclination of internal factions than it is driven by market demand or customer requirements.”
Seen that TV show before. Let me know when “Lost” turns to “Found”
