I sent Bill McDermott a “please stay in touch” note last night, and sure enough a couple of hours later, even on what must have been an emotional day for him, I got a nice note back. I have always admired his polite grooming and his always-positive vibe.
As an analyst, though I have to unemotionally look at technology vendors from a customer pov and my trilogy of SAP Nation books provide a nice summary of McDermott’s legacy at SAP.
On Wednesday, before I knew of his decision to resign, I had the opportunity to summarize that at an ASUG Executive Exchange event. On a panel with CEO Geoff Scott I laid out what I have liked about SAP in the last few years
A) It has been a product launch machine, and I encouraged the audience to not just look at S/4HANA, but also C/4, Leonardo ML and IoT, Qualtrics, IBP, AIN, SCP and other newer products.
B) I told them I liked what Bill and Hasso have done to make “younger” the SAP leadership with Christian, Jennifer, Juergen, Alex, Ryan, Jared and many others. I suggested the audience similarly think about their recruiting profiles to attract younger tech talent and make that a consideration and not wait till 2025 to consider migrating from the ABAP world
C) I told them Bill, in particular, had made SAP a lot more open and humble. I certainly saw that in writing volume 3.0
I also told them what I would like to see SAP deliver and what will now become Jennifer and Christian’s legacy
On Wednesday, before I knew of his decision to resign, I had the opportunity to summarize that at an ASUG Executive Exchange event. On a panel with CEO Geoff Scott I laid out what I have liked about SAP in the last few years
A) It has been a product launch machine, and I encouraged the audience to not just look at S/4HANA, but also C/4, Leonardo ML and IoT, Qualtrics, IBP, AIN, SCP and other newer products.
B) I told them I liked what Bill and Hasso have done to make “younger” the SAP leadership with Christian, Jennifer, Juergen, Alex, Ryan, Jared and many others. I suggested the audience similarly think about their recruiting profiles to attract younger tech talent and make that a consideration and not wait till 2025 to consider migrating from the ABAP world
C) I told them Bill, in particular, had made SAP a lot more open and humble. I certainly saw that in writing volume 3.0
I also told them what I would like to see SAP deliver and what will now become Jennifer and Christian’s legacy
A) I want to see SAP become much more serious about the public cloud. I have told Christian I worry that in a few years we will have 000s of single tenant S/4 installations. That will only replicate the implement, upgrade, AMS economics of the previous generation that led to my writing volume 1 which was not flattering to SAP. It will also prevent SAP from gathering substantive data in the cloud for effective cross-customer ML scenarios. SAP has always been better at developing code more than supporting it, so it will take a sea change for SAP to build and importantly scale its public cloud at demanding SLAs. It does have pockets of multi-tenancy experience with BYD and its cloud properties but needs to expand that.
B) SAP’s “digital core” is already the widest in the industry compared to that of its competitors. However, even that is tiny compared to the industry footprint of the customers it serves. SAP needs to deliver vertical functionality - every industry has gone through seismic changes in the last 15-20 years - and it needs to step up not keep looking for partners to help deliver industry specific operational functionality that its customers have been paying it maintenance for all these years.
C) SAP has to significantly prioritize its customers above its partners. It has to push its SI and outsourcing partners to automate their operations or even cannibalize them with its own IP. Additionally, the market pendulum is swinging back to build technology from the last few decades of buying. SAP needs to view its hyperscale partners - Amazon, Microsoft, Google among them - not just as infrastructure but as platform plays. They have to be viewed as co-optetion, not just as partners and it needs to make its own cloud platform and other build capabilities much more vibrant.
On the ASUG panel, I was asked when I would write SAP Nation 4.0. Not anytime soon I said. McDermott’s move has me rethinking, but I really want to give Jennifer and Christian time to make their mark.
B) SAP’s “digital core” is already the widest in the industry compared to that of its competitors. However, even that is tiny compared to the industry footprint of the customers it serves. SAP needs to deliver vertical functionality - every industry has gone through seismic changes in the last 15-20 years - and it needs to step up not keep looking for partners to help deliver industry specific operational functionality that its customers have been paying it maintenance for all these years.
C) SAP has to significantly prioritize its customers above its partners. It has to push its SI and outsourcing partners to automate their operations or even cannibalize them with its own IP. Additionally, the market pendulum is swinging back to build technology from the last few decades of buying. SAP needs to view its hyperscale partners - Amazon, Microsoft, Google among them - not just as infrastructure but as platform plays. They have to be viewed as co-optetion, not just as partners and it needs to make its own cloud platform and other build capabilities much more vibrant.
On the ASUG panel, I was asked when I would write SAP Nation 4.0. Not anytime soon I said. McDermott’s move has me rethinking, but I really want to give Jennifer and Christian time to make their mark.
I look forward to their success, and in the meantime I promise to be tough but fair in my blogs and importantly, in the advice I provide to customers.
Exciting times ahead.
