Why TechCrunch is boring, SAP is not, and the world has gone mad

http://peopleprocesstech.com/2011/12/05/why-techcrunch-is-boring-sap-is-not-and-the-world-has-gone-mad/

by zalthor • 15 years ago

224 139 15 years ago

peopleprocesstech.com

zedonious_sq• 15 years ago

Author's primary income comes via SAP products

johnappleby12• 15 years ago

For sure, and I'm open and honest about that :)

I would like to say a few things though, especially to those people who think that it's an us and them scenario.

First, I have personally spent a lot of time on open source software, and you will for example find some of my code in the Linux Kernel, if someone hasn't removed it by now.

Second, I think that closed communities are a bad thing, and it's something I strongly believe that SAP needs to get better at. Yes, SAP has the largest community network in the world with 3 million members. But it's not good enough at opening that up to the wider tech community, which is a loss.

Third, I think that integration to the wider tech community like HN, would be a huge benefit to Enterprise IT. We can be silo'd and the expertise of this group in writing nice-to-use apps is something we really need.

kokey3• 15 years ago

I think the same can be said for 'boring' non-tech industries, like energy, transport, finance, food retail etc. These are essential industries that make the world turn, but because they lack the 'cool' factor they also get the blame for many of the ills in the world. This is while the entertainment industry (film, games, art, music) can shrink by 90% without causing much damage, are often considered less evil or even more important than those who provide the essentials.

I don't think the world has gone mad, I just think it's how the world is perceived from by different age groups. When you are a teenager you think you'll never stop listening to the cool new music when you are older, but when you are older you realise the latest craze is cute but not that relevant.

On a different tangent, every year or two I have a look at what is happening in the open source world in the space that SAP operates in. A few promising things pop up from time to time but never gets much traction, but it does seem to progress a bit over time, slowly. I think the only thing that will move it forward is if universities put some projects behind it in their business and technology courses.

arethuza4• 15 years ago

Do you think anyone has a copy of SAP at home that they hack on in their own time for their own pleasure? I suspect not...

Anyway, I have to repeat my favourite quote about SAP from a Slashdot discussion:

"SAP is how Lucifer interacts with our world."

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/05/28/2143219/Allegedly-Rig...

Which I think sums it up nicely.

Jd5• 15 years ago

Does anyone have a copy of Google at home that they hack on in their spare time? Or Apple? Or Facebook?

freshfey• 15 years ago

I think arethuza meant something like the facebook developer platform, xcode (iOS/Mac OS X hacking, read: apps) and the Google API's.

darklajid4• 15 years ago

I can access Google from home. And Facebook.

Which SAP instance are you suggesting to connect to, would I be so inclined? How would you start creating things for SAP vs. for example Facebook (or G+ now, or the Mac Store)?

There's a set of companies on the one side with broad public appeal and lots of ways to hack and tinker. On the other side you have a behemoth with an army of suits, costing you a couple of limbs for every move - and it's completely useless for the layman.

Note the last statement. If you don't run a business and are in a couple of related positions you just don't care about that stuff. If you are you're probably using and either loathing or loving it. But even if they had SAP in 99% of all companies, they'd still only reach a limited subset of people.

paganel• 15 years ago

Also, FB would get a lot more users/visits if lots of major enterprises wouldn't block access to it so that their employees could spend more time in SAP and not on FB (it happened at my wife's job, a medium to large European oil company).

zalthor3• 15 years ago

You can get a trial version of SAP here > http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/webcon...

But the problem is that its not meant to be run at home. I'm guessing most contracts for SAP run into the 10s of millions and I don't think they intend to give that up quite easily. Though there are a few companies (for example: Secude) that pretty much sit around and build hacks on SAP applications, but that too involves a lot of paperwork with SAP and almost always ends up with SAP buying out those companies.

smiler2• 15 years ago

I tried to download this trial - it 404s

dextorious6• 15 years ago

"""Do you think anyone has a copy of SAP at home that they hack on in their own time for their own pleasure? I suspect not..."""

And what does this has to do with anything? Do you have a copy of the Google search engine to run at home? (the real one, not a plain text indexer like Google desktop).

dvanduzer2• 15 years ago

Hack on Solr. Dabble with the NLTK. Implement a couple of the algorithms in the Collective Intelligence O'Reilly book. There're plenty of interesting opportunities for the hobbyist in the world of information retrieval.

Neither Facebook nor SAP are solving particularly interesting problems. Is it useful to facilitate meaningful human interactions? Yes. Is it valuable to glean insights about the operational structure of a business? Certainly.

Both of these companies do something like this, but emphasizing the wrong aspects of scalability. TechCrunch is still boring, but SAP isn't interesting.

johnappleby12• 15 years ago

I love the comments but this is exactly the stuff I was talking about in this article. I'd love to show the wider tech audience a bit more about SAP and how it works. Guess that can be my project for 2012.

1) Yes, you can download a trial version as Zalthor points out. I'm trying to work with SAP to make this more open and easy to do. It's important.

2) SAP customers vary from 1 employee (SAP BusinessOne) to 250,000+ employees (SAP ERP). But from a download perspective the interesting stuff is coming with Gateway and the Unwired Platform. With those tools - the server components of which will be available in the cloud - you can build Edge/Web Apps and Mobile apps using whatever tech you want. Ruby on Rails, iPhone, whatever. That's the sort of open integration which I hope will interest this audience, not downloading copies of SAP ERP for home.

3) Couldn't agree more, don't block social media at work. I wouldn't work for a company that did. By the way, SAP encourage social media and have 50k+ employees. But some organizations are stuck in the dark ages.

4) Streamworks integration is coming for the mainstream soon. It will be PaaS, integrated with the new Java environment and developer toolkit and supports open integration. It's had a bad press so far. Hopefully this will help.

Hope this helps.

MatthewPhillips• 15 years ago

Very well written article. My problem with SAP is simple. I have no idea what they actually do. None. They do a terrible job marketing their products to people who would actually use them (as opposed to the people responsible for choose which products in this category get purchased). The only product of SAP's that I know anything about is Crystal Reports, and only because it ships with Visual Studio.

For example, here's the one-liner about BusinessOne that you pointed out:

A SINGLE INTEGRATED BUSINESS MANAGEMENT APPLICATION FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

^^ I get nothing from that. The details section on their website don't do much better. I fear this is not accidental; the pitch is just enough to get you on the phone with one of their sales people.

sunchild8• 15 years ago

I think you might be somewhat lonely in this good will campaign for SAP.

In my decade-long career as a lawyer for customers who buy enterprise IT, the only company that I consider more obnoxious across the table than SAP is Oracle. If you are doing business with these companies, you pretty much deserve what you get. I've seen a few CIOs lose their jobs when ERP falls apart (it almost always does, for a variety of reasons).

I'm not saying there isn't a bunch of useful technology, but these aren't technology companies – they're sales organizations, and that side of the business is not pretty. I can't understand why anyone does business with obnoxious sales organizations like these in 2011.

Maro• 15 years ago

My father has been a SAP consultant for about 20 years. I remember when I was a kid, he told me about this guy at his work who took SAP home and hacked on it at home in all his free-time (he was single). Unlike most SAP consultants who are only qualified for one or two SAP modules, this guy got to wizard-status in all of them. My father always said this guy got so good he had a demi-god like status at the company and was making big bucks.

So, SAP is certainly not sexy, but if you can take the pain and get good at it, you'll make big bucks.

johnappleby12• 15 years ago

I think this is definitely traditionally true, and there are people making big bucks in the SAP space - contract rates can be high for geniuses.

What's changing is that open standards mean that the wider tech community can integrate into SAP. This both commoditises the business, drives rates down and makes it more accessible. I suspect that in 10 years time we will see a very different Enterprise IT market.

cromulent• 15 years ago

>> a copy of SAP at home

This is a good example of one thing SAP are doing poorly.

An equivalent of this is "A copy of Microsoft at home". I hear even SAP consultants speaking like this, which shows their communication is not getting across properly.

SAP is the company. They have many products. Each one can be installed separately. Some are available as demos or learning products.

davidmathers• 15 years ago

The equivalent is actually "A copy of Oracle at home." SAP started with just the ERP product.

Jd5• 15 years ago

If any SAP consultants are out there reading this, can you give me some insights on how to get up to speed with the SAP products and ecosystem? I'm a developer/consultant (primarily Salesforce) but am interested in exploring SAP product offerings. Infos in profile.

I think there are probably many of us that are interested in this side of the "enterprise" but SAP is sort of its own universe and difficult to understand/penetrate from the outside.

kokey3• 15 years ago

I think interesting documentation in this regard would be nice. I believe there's a lot of space for developers to support small companies that aren't big enough to buy into SAP yet, but would benefit from other products and tools that can give them the same functionally. More importantly, have the benefit of their business processes being SAP friendly, but also allow other products to offer some of the same functionality for cheaper. My hope is that some of these products could grow to become a competitor to SAP.

zalthor3• 15 years ago

The problem is that most of the legal documentation available are really boring power point presentations that provide as little technical information as possible.

Most of their detailed documentation is only available for people who take up their courses (yes, they are that evil) and certification exams.

I do remember quite a bit of it was available on rapidshare though unless you were already working on something specific you wouldn't know what exactly to search for.

To start with, I would suggesting getting a book on SAP R/3. More specifically the SAP R/3 handbook by Jose Antonio Hernandez. I don't know of any thing available for free (legally) that is as good a place to start.

As for the product offerings from SAP, they more or less seem to be components that sit on the same application stack. So getting into one of these applications could provide insight into what everything else does.

Disclaimer: I work as an SAP Basis consultant (that's sort of an application admin + OS admin + DBA)

Jd5• 15 years ago

Thanks, added to my Amazon wishlist! I'm planning to pull aside some SAP consultants at some point soon and get them to show me the inner workings of the SAP stack. It is amazing to me that they only provide documentation to people who take their courses.

dhoe• 15 years ago

SAP is one of my focus areas at work. My answer would be to install the trial version (which I think is no longer called miniSAP, but used to be), try to get the general hang of how it's supposed to work, and then dig deeper in the areas that interest you, maybe Java or ABAP development if you want to do development. Last time I've used it, the trial version had a 90 days license, but you could renew it easily and legally.

You won't get a SAP job that way, but it might give you enough of an edge to take on SAP-related projects (think "sure, I've done webservice calls into Salesforce and I know how that works with SAP XI, happy to work on your integration project").

tg3• 15 years ago

help.sap.com

Or take a really expensive class from SAP (usually paid for by your employer).

The truth is that (it seems as though) SAP doesn't want people to be familiar with the system. Their distribution channel is consultants, and consultants make more money if the system is opaque and hard to get up to speed on.

This will be the downfall of SAP as we know it IMO (and Oracle, and every other enterprise application that relies on a technical consultant's input), the deliberate opacity of the system for the sake of the distribution channel.

pauljonas• 15 years ago

^^ This. ^^

Proprietary lock-in (or dial up the "exclusivity" meter on knowledge and any budding subject matter experts). Enroll some of the customer personnel in expensive training only available from SAP (or SAP "approved" vendors).

Contrast to open source models where anybody can become fluent with the code or platform and can be hired or contracted to work at a fraction of the rate a SAP (or to be fair, any proprietary, lock-in "turnkey" "solution").

While I departed the corporate IT world a few years, I have seen the same shenanigans with the likes of Oracle, SAP and others too remote to be recognized by many here. In fact, I owned a company that profited as a "service partner" for a data communications legacy "commerce" software suite maker.

darklajid4• 15 years ago

Okay, let me help the author here.

Having success and market penetration doesn't make things cool. It's great for the company, great for the ecosystem (and - that's a topic for another time in this particular case..) built around it. But not cool. Not sexy.

It could be. Success, piles of money and 'cool' aren't incompatible per se. They are just unrelated in my book.He has to accept that for a large audience out there, _in the real world_, there's nothing more boring than looking at SAP (and - wait. and wait. and wait).

"My advice: stop being bored by the stuff which makes the world turn."

My advice: Don't blow this out of proportion. If SAP dies tomorrow, the world is not going to end.

yuvadam• 15 years ago

I'm not sure what you mean by 'SAP dies tomorrow', but - to put it bluntly - YES, the world will most likely stop functioning normally.

darklajid4• 15 years ago

Fair enough. I'm the first to admit that I'm actively avoiding contact w/ that kind of technology (I did develop small things around SAP QA systems in a distant past, but except for that my exposure is limited to watching users around me).

To explain: I meant if they go out of business (and I didn't imply that this was even remotely likely). If the software had a kind of stroke and wouldn't work anymore, starting tomorrow, I'd agree with you.

I just hate the metrics used and the 'makes the world go 'round' tone in that article. What percentage of shirts, shoes and gadgets are produced in China? Would it be 'cool' (nothing against China..) to be live there, based on the 'We provide x% of the world's shoes' metric?

Garbage• 15 years ago

If SAP dies tomorrow, the world is not going to end. Neither if Facebook dies. IMO, the point the author is trying to make is TC calling SAP's acquisitions boring.

darklajid4• 15 years ago

(I didn't start the 'world ending' stuff, I merely commented on the - inflated, imo - line in the article that said that SAP et al make the world go round)

'Boring' is a subjective term. Hell, I don't read TC unless it is linked here and couldn't care less about them, but I assume that 'boring' is what came to their mind and (talking out of line here maybe?) connects with the majority of the readers. It sure as hell connects with me. SAP is boring. For me anyway.

Do people in the SAP eco-system think that their work is boring? I sure hope not.

Thing is: If someone says 'This is boring' then he's correct. That's an opinion, a feeling towards a subject. No need to argue about it. You can discuss _why_ that comes up or if TC should be opinionated like that in the first place, but the blog post fails to address that in any meaningful way.

That post seems to be a rant about 'Why aren't we considered interesting and "cool" although our software runs in a majority of the world's breweries' and the whole argumentation is flawed. As I wrote elsewhere: Market penetration doesn't make you interesting to people per se. Being the leader in 'world's transactions' (?) doesn't by default make you a sexy subject for the technology folks.

On a less serious side note:

I found it hilarious that someone defending SAP as being cool resorted to a comparison table. With bullet points, outlining the market size and comparing company values. It's like being the nerd in high school and sending a letter to your beloved which rationalizes your desirability by comparing your grades with ~that dude's~.

chris_dcosta3• 15 years ago

SAP was built in the seventies on seventies technology, which it still uses today (ABAP). None of it's front end reporting tools (even Business Objects) are anything like "modern", and every patch they release is more and more unstable.

TechCrunch people know this, I'm sure there are plenty of ex-SAP consultants who got pretty tired of badly run projects by badly educated middle managers who have no business being put in charge of enormous and complex SAP implementations.

I have worked for some of the biggest companies in the world fixing some of the rubbish out there, and you know why SAP has so much money? Because the business just order another instance to migrate to each time they mess it up.

And so it goes on...

buyx• 15 years ago

SAP seems to run a powerful Reality Distortion Field. I live in a municipality (Johannesburg) that is experiencing a huge multi-year billing crisis, following a flawed SAP implementation. Despite being a disaster, SAP gave it an award: http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view...

rbanffy• 15 years ago

Awards and spotlights at conferences are how companies like SAP (Oracle has done this too, I assume many "industry success stories" are nothing but this) award managers who generate big profits and who will probably generate even more cleaning up the mess they got into. By branding their failure as a success story, they reduce the likelihood of a change in direction to less flawed approaches and maximize their chances of tying the customer forever.

After being awarded "CTO of the year", the incompetent one will probably move on, away from the problem he/she created, and will possibly inflict the same damage to the next company that hires him/her, generating even more profit.

cbs• 15 years ago

SAP was built in the seventies on seventies technology, which it still uses today (ABAP).

The Internet was built in the seventies on seventies tech, which it still uses today (IPv4).

I'm not disagreeing with the rest of your post, but this is a dumb yardstick to use.

chris_dcosta3• 15 years ago

You make my point perfectly.

The internet is a perfect example of technology that is constantly evolving inspite of it's roots.

AndyNemmity8• 15 years ago

Business Objects is very modern!

Every patch they release is not more unstable! They have so many software products, you can't say "Every" about any of their software.

dexen2• 15 years ago

Wait, what? According to his figures, SAP makes $1.18bn profit from $12.46bn revenue (about 10% profit margin); Facebook brings in $1bn profit from $4bn revenue (about 25% profit margin), yet SAP is somehow claimed /more/ interesting? By what metrics? Is SAP somehow gonna grow quicker than Facebook and overtake it?

However you slice it, both SAP and Facebook have major share of their respective markets. Facebook seems to monetize the market better. Next story please.

west1737• 15 years ago

Profit margin as the metric for measuring "interesting"? There are lots of reasons fb could be considered interesting, and profit margin is only one and waaay down on the list. How about the fact that fb revolutionized the way people communicate and connect?

On the flip side, SAP revolutionized business software and as a consequence, business organization. That's pretty interesting too. I know which side I would come down on, but simplifying the debate to profit margin misses the point by a wide margin.

masklinn2• 15 years ago

I don't think you've read the comment you replied to.

masklinn2• 15 years ago

> Wait, what? According to his figures [...], yet SAP is somehow claimed /more/ interesting?

I also like that by his own metrics Facebook has ~800m users, SAP has ~500m users, therefore Facebook is insignificant?

But of course, TFA is (apparently) a SAP consultant and his tagline is "Tangential Musings about Enterprise IT". It's not like he's going to say otherwise.

johnappleby12• 15 years ago

Come now, I didn't say that FB is insignificant. That would be ignoring the biggest social trend in the 21st century! What I'm saying is that the consumer press community spends 99% of its time talking about FB et al., who are interesting, cool but haven't got a proven commercial model, and 1% of the time talking about (and denigrating) SAP et al., who run the real software that makes businesses run.

And in the meantime, the global economy is going down the drain and Bubble 2.0 means that investors are throwing more of our savings down the drain. Some of the latest startup IPO valuations have been ridiculous.

Yes, my primary income is SAP consulting, but that doesn't mean I am not interested in wider IT issues. Facebook is a very relevant trend, but social media is a fickle partner, and the crown has changed hands several times already. Valuing it at 19x earnings is nuts.

Please do take a look at the innovations that SAP are doing. I look at wider market trends and I think what SAP is achieving in innovation is well beyond what Oracle/IBM/Microsoft/Google are doing right now. You may be surprised.

absconditus2• 15 years ago

Facebook's market just happens to be the "wasting time" market and SAP's market is the "running the world" market.

richardburton2• 15 years ago

It is so refreshing to see a post about this issue. In a nutshell: profits are cool.

gordonguthrie• 15 years ago

It is astonishing that so many people don't think so.

Techcruch think Facebook making an acquisition hire for a couple of guys is more interesting that a founder selling out a company for $3 and a bit billion.

You would weep with laughter if it wasn't so tragic.

_delirium• 15 years ago

I don't see any necessary relationship between profits and coolness. Lots of boring things are profitable. In fact many boring things are profitable precisely because their boringness means substantial payment is required to convince anyone to do them.

altcognito3• 15 years ago

True Hackers are interested in changing and influencing the world and the way it thinks, profits come secondary.

richardburton2• 15 years ago

Agreed but profits allow you to change the world. Bankruptcy does not.

heresy• 15 years ago

SAP deployments must work in some cases, surely.

I read somewhere that a large part of Apple's supply chain management is built on SAP, as well as being the system of record for iTunes/App Store transactions.

I can't find a reliable citation, since this will probably not be something they broadcast, due to their secrecy.

But then, they have the capital to massively spend on heavyweight internal systems.

mbesto• 15 years ago

Not sure if their SCM is SAP SCM, but the back-end of Apple is largely run by SAP software.

johnappleby12• 15 years ago

Yes, Apple's iTunes store system of record runs on a custom SAP ABAP based system. It used to run SAP ERP but that could not take the load of transactions.

As I understand it, this is the reason why you get a weekly bill from Apple: the iTunes ABAP system makes financial postings to ERP, to reduce the overall number of transactions - and presumably also their credit card overhead.

kevinalexbrown• 15 years ago

What’s wrong with the world is that they are so focussed [sic] on Apple, Google and Facebook – with their over inflated [sic] IPOs and everything that comes with that. The world was not built on technology bubbles – it was built on hard work and honest money.

Even if I agree with the author's sentiment, that last line made me laugh.

Also: Apple, with their over inflated IPO? (their IPO having been long ago) destroys SAP's revenue and profit.

Edit: The world was built on hard work, but I'm not sure how SAP is necessarily the embodiment of that.

icebraining3• 15 years ago

SAP passes an image of a predictable company where innovation doesn't really happen (whether that's true or not is irrelevant - perception is what counts).

Money and size is irrelevant. Concrete supports all of our homes, but calling is cool compared to e.g. "ultralight metallic microlattice" [1] is ridiculous by most people's definition of cool.

[1] http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/11/lightest-...

dextorious6• 15 years ago

"""whether that's true or not is irrelevant - perception is what counts"""

Actually, no. Reality is what counts. I don't bet my money based on perception, and neither I trade with perception in mind. Except if I'm looking to take advantage of some bubble.

danssig3• 15 years ago

>and neither I trade with perception in mind

Then I'd be surprised if you do well in trading. For monetary value; perceived value is value. We have no other means of valuing things monetarily.

icebraining3• 15 years ago

I don't bet my money based on perception

Of course you do. Reality is unattainable, perception is all we have. What you're saying is that your perception is different from the average, and that's fine, but it doesn't change my point.

Besides, do you really perceive SAP as a cool company? I certainly don't. Whether it's a good investment or not is a different issue.

AndyNemmity8• 15 years ago

"SAP passes an image of a predictable company where innovation doesn't really happen (whether that's true or not is irrelevant - perception is what counts)."

Whose perception? That's not my perception. SAP has innovation in a number of areas, including in memory databases.

raydevtube• 15 years ago

SAP did not create Hana in-memory database. They wrote a check to buy it. I don't think that qualifies as innovative.

rythie• 15 years ago

Disruption and innovation is cool, not big companies relying on a cash cow business model created decades ago.

egor83• 15 years ago

There's one thing he forgot to compare: number of employees.

According to Wikipedia, Facebook has 3000+ employees, and SAP AG has 53513. So, profit per employee is ~300k for FB and 22k for SAP.

johnappleby12• 15 years ago

Interesting comparison and let's be fair: Facebook's EBIT (which is the real financial comparison) is pretty decent. SAP's EBIT was pretty low in 2010 - expect it to increase in 2011 based on preliminary results.

Main point is FB's financial model isn't proven medium-term. Also SAP have a lot of low-cost employees in India/China. Hard to compare with FB really.

dextorious6• 15 years ago

And this metric matters over profits because?

If I have a 1,000,000 person company that has 1 bln in profits, and you have a 100 person company that makes 10 million in profits, you make 100 mores per employee.

But I get to bank a cool billion...

lmm• 15 years ago

Sure, but mine is probably a more interesting company for TechCrunch to write stories about. It's more likely to be innovating in ways that readers will care about.

djhworld2• 15 years ago

Some of our applications here push a bunch of data to SAP via their API

To be honest I have no idea what SAP does nor do I really care, we just push a load of data over a network on a regular basis and the team who deal with SAP probably do something.

They all have to wear suits though while us Java programmers get to kick back in normal, comfortable clothing.

djhworld2• 15 years ago

Also I think the main reason why no one talks about SAP is because SAP == Work whereas sitting at home and hacking together your own open source project outside of work hours? A welcome break.

To me: -

* Java EE == my day job == Work

* SAP == Work

* Working on own app at home written in Haskell == Fun hobby project that I do outside of work hours and doesn't feel like work

Havoc5• 15 years ago

I'm saddened by the fact that this is #2 on HN.

The entire thing is one big fat straw-man argument. The author (the bored one) didn't even mention FB in the article in question. The author (the attacking one) pulled that out of thin air based on little more than:

>From what I get of her article, if it’s not Apple or a startup, she’s not interested

Then he proceeds to refute the argument that he just set up by enlisting stats...not even convincing ones at that.

And finally whether something is boring or not is entirely subjective. This angle is as pointless as proving to stamp collectors that collecting stamps is boring.

I agree with his point in that the glamorous companies get attention at the cost of others & that this is a problem. The manner in which it was done however is a fine example of:

>a crap piece of journalism

johnappleby12• 15 years ago

Can't argue - it was a reactionary response, such is the way of social media, right?

I think that the underlying discussion is an interesting one. HN readers perhaps might get some benefit from understanding SAP technologies and how they integrate into the stuff they want to hack with. I've employed some real hackers into the SAP market and it is a deeply interesting and open technology stack.

Havoc5• 15 years ago

>I think that the underlying discussion is an interesting one.

That it is. Clearly SAP is doing something right.

Somewhat off topic, I'm surprised you say "open technology stack". I'm not particularly familiar with SAP tech, but I always thought they were as closed as it gets (& successfully so). Have I missed something?

kennystone• 15 years ago

It's a humorous article. TC knows their crowd, and they are poking fun at everyone - themselves for not caring about a huge deal, their audience for also not caring, enterprise software for being boring.

davidhansen2• 15 years ago

The article is poorly written, and SAP is indefensible as a company.

That said, welcome to my world. It's been an interesting experience working in an industry (ecommerce) that is regarded as a huge yawnfest by most of the startup community. The reality is that there really are very interesting problems to solve. Algorithms to predict demand curves, optimize warehouse pullbox location, and identify product flow constraints are all arguably more interesting problems to solve than sharing photos.

Nonetheless, nobody cares. And that's fine, mostly.

AndyNemmity8• 15 years ago

"SAP is indefensible as a company."

What does that even mean?

davidhansen2• 15 years ago

As others have remarked in this thread, their products are maintenance and UX nightmares, and their sales and legal departments operate on the basis of "do lots of evil".

I suppose it was an exaggerated choice of term, but I was trying to set aside the specific issue of SAP to talk about the somewhat broader issue of how the tech community often finds technology boring if it doesn't appear in the form of a consumer app.

brd5• 15 years ago

So I'm just going to throw it out there that I'm a young SAP Developer. I've been known as an "up and comer" in the community (yes, we have a community) until I decided I was no longer sure I wanted SAP to be my long term career choice. I've done SAP hacking on the side on multiple occasions and I've even made money from a little side project that won a SAP innocentive challenge.

For all of you SAP naysayers (I oftentimes find myself among you) the best explanation I've ever heard for why to work in the SAP ecosystem is "If you want to change the world, you should work with the biggest lever you can find".

Feel free to ask questions.

kokey3• 15 years ago

Nice to hear. I have a couple of questions: 1. Is the community open to all or do you need to be working for a SAP customer? 2. What's the simplest way to get set up to start tinkering with some SAP stuff? 3. Can you mention some interesting projects that you've done or was done by others?

brd5• 15 years ago

1) The community is open to the public: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/index -> Not a member? -> Public User 2) The main platform can be downloaded here: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/nw-downloads -> Choose a developer edition Application Server. You can also find and download a trial of gateway, (mobile platform) business objects, (analytic) etc if you look around. I'm actually not so familiar with whats actively available these days. 3) johnappleby is probably better qualified to answer this question at this point but I will tell you to look into SAPlink since its considered the "open source enabler" of SAP http://code.google.com/p/saplink/ you can also check out the enterprise geeks, good light-hearted site for SAP content http://enterprisegeeks.com/blog/projects/

I built a framework for integrating data between SAP's cloud offering and their on premise solutions but after unsuccessfully trying to opensource it in collaboration with SAP (a frustrating experience) I pretty much stopped my community activities. That experience sucked a lot of the SAP enthusiasm out of me but I have watched the company get much better over the last 2 years and I am in talks about getting involved in an another open source project sometime in the next few months.

accountoftheday• 15 years ago

ftfy: "If you want to change the world, you should sell out to Lucifer".

msellout2• 15 years ago

Yes, Foucault would say that you can't change the system from within the system.

smiler2• 15 years ago

Yes, give me tips on _how_ I can get into getting involved with SAP development.

I have done plenty of integration with SAP in terms of processing IDOCs and I understand some of the business processes in SAP on the manufacturing side - but how can I go beyond that and understand SAP even more.

http://www.sapremotelyaccess.com/ - this site provides SAP on a hard drive, do you think it's legal? I'm guessing not!

brd5• 15 years ago

Trying to understand SAP processes is an incredibly difficult task to take on, especially as an outsider, and I'm not sure whats available in the form of relevant business modules for a developer edition license which would make it even tougher. My recommendation is to try to get a better understanding of whatever tables are involved in the area you're dabbling in and then create ways to integrate with them.

As far as integration goes, IDOCs are definitely a good start. You can also look into exposing things from Netweaver by creating web services using the ICF node http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70ehp1/Helpdata/EN/55/33a83e37... Theres also gateway and PI for integrating into SAP.

hello_moto2• 15 years ago

I'd like to learn SAP. Where should I begin? what streams are available for me (a beginner with zero knowledge)?

SAP ERP? CRM? NetWeaver?

brd5• 15 years ago

Much of it depends on what you'd like to do. SAP's bread and butter is the NetWeaver Application Server (the ABAP based platform that holds together most of the core modules SAP provides). Its by far my main area of focus and its the technology I'd recommend any developer focus on if they're interested in SAP.

Things have shuffled around so much I couldn't even tell you exactly where to look anymore if you wanted to get more into the 3rd party partnership area. I'd say start with the SAP EcoHub since that is what all the "app store" type SAP stuff is falling under now (or last I checked). There is a lot of traction here as SAP continues to try to ramp up cloud based offering and it could turn out to be a really interesting space if you can find a way to get into it.

Theres also the whole data analytics area which involves Business Objects.

And for those familiar with Java and not really interested in picking up ABAP, there is the composite environment which is supported by a variety of tools integrated into eclipse.

As far as tutorials go, I'm not entirely sure whats out there now but SCN/SDN (the SAP community) has a lot of content in it. If you're looking to learn ABAP you can also check out the tutorials from Thomas Jung: http://enterprisegeeks.com/blog/2010/07/30/abap-freak-show-a...

pinaceae• 15 years ago

let's put it this way:

on any large german airport you currently get met with large billboards by IBM, advertising their urgent need for SAP consultants.

SAP is the backbone of the large tech consulting industry.

and no, you cannot compare it to facebook. like comparing a tv station to a manufacturing company.

dexen2• 15 years ago

The article establishes and uses a brand new metric:

SAP's technology must be interesting for develpers because it costs exorbitant amount of money to hire anybody to work on it. SAP is interesting for investors because it pulls in massive 10% profit margin. SAP's services are interesting for customers because it has high barriers to deploy, maintain and replace. SAP is interesting

By comparison, Facebook-like projects must be boring for developers because they flock to work on them, even if for free or `ramen-profitable' for year or two. Facebook is boring for investors because it manages mere 25% profit margin. Facebook is boring for users because barriers to entry and exit are essentially non-existent.

What kind of metrics is that?

jroseattle• 15 years ago

From the article:

"Well for my money SAP is possibly the most interesting technology firm in the world right now."

To be sure, what trips one's trigger may not do so for another, so to each his own. That said, this is just a synopsis of one guy's very tiny view on the world.

To the original author: the value of an acquisition doesn't set the pace for what's interesting. If that were the case, Exxon would be the single most interesting thing on the planet.

Rather than bitching about someone else not writing about something that interests you, why not start the Enterprise IT version of TechCrunch?

russell• 15 years ago

I'm curious. Are any of you working on commercial ERP products or services? It seems to me that there is lots of opportunity there for well executed vertical applications.

RvbNews• 15 years ago

I do. Not SAP. but Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft has an ERP product. (a 'suite' even: Dynamics) I've also worked with another ERP product. And you are right, there are a lot of opportunities, but it is also hard to get a foothold.

tryitnow2• 15 years ago

I work in finance and I use SAP. Or more accurately, I try my best to delegate any SAP tasks to my co-workers because I swear I lose IQ points whenever I interact with SAP.

Is it dull? It depends. For the TC crowd, yes, but that's because they're consumer oriented and not very technical.

It should be interesting to the HN crowd because it's a huge opportunity for disruptive innovation.

billpatrianakos• 15 years ago

On the one hand the author is right about how SAP is a behemoth and shouldn't be written off. On the other hand, this is TechCrunch we're talking about. Do we really expect them to cover SAP? TC has its niche and I'm not surprised at all. I think however the mistake on the part of TC wasn't not covering SAP but covering it in the way they did. If you're going to write an article about how the company is boring and dedicate the majority of the content to why you don't want to cover it then just don't cover it at all. It would look better for them had they just said nothing at all.

That said, the author of this post has an opinion. Cool. We all have opinions. But he was off the mark in implying that there's something wrong with techcrunch. There isn't. They're all about the cool factor and dare I say shallow startup porn.

The post was almost a great point but the implication that something is wrong with TechCrunch killed it. I'm not a fan of techcrunch. I think it's shallow garbage and reads like a thinly veiled commercial a lot of times. But I won't be writing any blog posts complaining about that any time soon. That's what we've come to expect from them and their audience loves it.

potatolicious• 15 years ago

I'm interested in hearing what the author has to say about this topic, I'm really not interested in this new FOX/CNN trend of quoting random people on Twitter, even if they're semi-famous.

This is somewhat OT, but can we stop with this? Quoting the immature salvos fired between random people on Twitter doesn't give your blog post any more credibility, and probably less. It's like news networks nowadays - they're more interested in what people on Twitter and YouTube think of some topic rather than seasoned analysts and correspondents.

The whole blog post would've been just as informative and way less irritating if I didn't have to wade through all the Twitspeak.

pbreit• 15 years ago

The thing is, if SAP did not exist there would still be some piece of crappy software running all those transactions. Maybe it'd be custom, maybe Accenture, whatever. In fact, many (most?) SAP installations are barely recognizable after the customization. And who can even guess what SuccessFactors does besides not make much money.

Why TechCrunch is boring, SAP is not, and the world has gone mad

Related Stories