Monday, April 30, 2007
Sales Technology | The premier source of CRM & SFA information for decision makers - Current News (Home) - SAP CEO: We are not arrogant, we are the market leader
Sales Technology The premier source of CRM & SFA information for decision makers - Current News (Home) - SAP CEO: We are not arrogant, we are the market leader
"We are not arrogant, we are the market leader. We cannot learn from the competition, but we watch them. If you look at who is running the backbone of largest companies, it is us, so we are learning from customers. They give us best the possible knowledge of what is going on in the market," Kagermann said during an interview I attended with a group of fellow bloggers.
“We believe we are in the lead,” he continued. “It’s not so much about how many clients we can take over from the competition. Enterprise software is pretty sticky. We have a clear indication of where we are heading.” Most SAP customers exist in heterogeneous environments, and have multiple, overlapping enterprise software providers. “Our first objective is to convince customers that SAP is the strategic vendor of choice,” he said. Without mentioning Oracle by name, he said, “SAP co-innovates the future while our competition consolidates the past.”
“We know there are companies out there innovating faster than us. It’s OK with me. Over time we will enter these spaces, particularly with A1S we will have an entire on demand suite.” He noted that 65 percent of SAP's revenue ($12.8 billion US in 2006) comes from small- and medium-sized businesses, what SAP calls SME (E for Enterprise). SAP has been slow to adopt the on demand model, but based on presentations by several company executive, including Chairman Hasso Plattner's discourse on the future of business suites, the tide has turned.
A1S is slated for volume shipment in 2008 and is aimed at mid-market customers, typically with 50 to 500 employees. It is more horizontal than SAP’s higher-end products, such as the A1 suite for the upper mid-market, and is designed from the ground up with an enterprise services architecture. It doesn't have the deep vertical slices of A1, but will include some vertical capabilities, such as blended manufacturing and project accounting, according to Scott Lutz, vice president of marketing for SME.
He also said that A1S will have a standard price per month per user (he mentioned $160, but he said it was just an example), no matter how much functionality of the suite is used. Customers will be able to try before they buy and deploy the end-to-end business suite within a week, he said.
NetSuite, like SAP's phantom A1S, is an on demand suite covering the sweep of back office applications. I asked Kagermann whether he viewed NetSuite as a competitor. He responded, “They have been working on it for eight years. It cannot be a very modern technology.” Workday, a company founded by PeopleSoft founder Dave Duffield, is also working on a complete business suite based on an SOA architecture, and claims that it will have feature parity with SAP in 18 months. MORE
"We are not arrogant, we are the market leader. We cannot learn from the competition, but we watch them. If you look at who is running the backbone of largest companies, it is us, so we are learning from customers. They give us best the possible knowledge of what is going on in the market," Kagermann said during an interview I attended with a group of fellow bloggers.
“We believe we are in the lead,” he continued. “It’s not so much about how many clients we can take over from the competition. Enterprise software is pretty sticky. We have a clear indication of where we are heading.” Most SAP customers exist in heterogeneous environments, and have multiple, overlapping enterprise software providers. “Our first objective is to convince customers that SAP is the strategic vendor of choice,” he said. Without mentioning Oracle by name, he said, “SAP co-innovates the future while our competition consolidates the past.”
“We know there are companies out there innovating faster than us. It’s OK with me. Over time we will enter these spaces, particularly with A1S we will have an entire on demand suite.” He noted that 65 percent of SAP's revenue ($12.8 billion US in 2006) comes from small- and medium-sized businesses, what SAP calls SME (E for Enterprise). SAP has been slow to adopt the on demand model, but based on presentations by several company executive, including Chairman Hasso Plattner's discourse on the future of business suites, the tide has turned.
A1S is slated for volume shipment in 2008 and is aimed at mid-market customers, typically with 50 to 500 employees. It is more horizontal than SAP’s higher-end products, such as the A1 suite for the upper mid-market, and is designed from the ground up with an enterprise services architecture. It doesn't have the deep vertical slices of A1, but will include some vertical capabilities, such as blended manufacturing and project accounting, according to Scott Lutz, vice president of marketing for SME.
He also said that A1S will have a standard price per month per user (he mentioned $160, but he said it was just an example), no matter how much functionality of the suite is used. Customers will be able to try before they buy and deploy the end-to-end business suite within a week, he said.
NetSuite, like SAP's phantom A1S, is an on demand suite covering the sweep of back office applications. I asked Kagermann whether he viewed NetSuite as a competitor. He responded, “They have been working on it for eight years. It cannot be a very modern technology.” Workday, a company founded by PeopleSoft founder Dave Duffield, is also working on a complete business suite based on an SOA architecture, and claims that it will have feature parity with SAP in 18 months. MORE
