I caught up on some morning reading of reaction to yesterday’s SAP event in NYC and posted this comment on Dennis Howlett’s post
Dennis, I saw it from afar and two things stuck out
a) very little discussion of economics. If anything all the partner quotes etc gave the feel of deja vu all over again – the Sapphire party vibe. Decade ago may not have mattered but today SAP’s back office has lots of competition for corporate IT and innovation $. And in the back office, SaaS world has shown far more efficient apps management, risk free upgrades etc. Simplification has to show in lowered IT $. SAP has lots of homework left to make that tag line have punch.
b) how little new there was product wise. Fiori has been a while coming, ERP on HANA was announced a while ago, little new functionality – in fact a regress with so little likely industry coverage. The new if anything is the HANA cloud and there was little to show how that data center will scale, how the connectivity will be competitive. I mean, cloud data centers and networks are now a decade old at Google, MS, Amazon, FB etc and if SAP is building a cloud for even a fraction of its customer base, should be showcasing some big thinking.
Honestly, I got sense the announcement was rushed. 3 more months of thinking through deployment issues and they could have had a fuller, more mature presentation at Sapphire.
