When SAP launched S4HANA a few weeks ago, an executive emailed me to ask if it reminded me of 2006?
2006 as in the Oracle “Halfway to Fusion” announcement. Today Oracle alum and even some at the company chuckle about how premature the announcement was. And Oracle said it was blending acquired functionality from PeopleSoft, J. D. Edwards etc. SAP did not discuss how Ariba. SuccessFactors, Concur would fit into S4HANA. In fact, it specifically left out vertical extensions from short term S4 plans.
My reaction was it reminded me more of 1997 with all the press releases from its accounting firm heritage partners. Back in those heady days, they were “halfway to reengineering nirvana”
Now, I read Dr Hasso Plattner invoking IBM : “Since I worked once for IBM I take announcements very seriously.”
That actually takes me a further decade back to 1987 when IBM announced its major SAA initiative. As its website says: “Systems Application Architecture, which is designed to make application programs look and work in the same manner across the entire range of the company's personal computing systems, midrange processors and System/370 processors.”
I suspect to some it invoked memories from the 1970s. I cannot relate to much in tech world then. The 70s to me bring out images of disco jeans, SNL and Bob Woodward
Seriously, given the track record in the enterprise world, what can we forecast about S4 availability?
And should a next-gen product really make you look back?
