3 ms·

Warning - very very vague question Would someone kindly differentiate between the ERP vs ITSM (IT Service Management) industry in perspective for me? I would i

• john_minsk 7y ago
  SAP has a separate product for ITSM: Solution Manager. Everything else is beyond that scope. What is important to understand is that SAP is standardized way to do business for ALL departments in big corporation. You probably can't be "expert is SAP". You can be expert in SAP treasury system, SAP data warehouse, SAP ITSM, SAP data analysis, SAP call center etc. I heard that SAP consultants are paid very well and I think it will stay that way. But I guess this thread sums it up perfectly: it is due to the complexity that these implementations bring to organisation and lack of elegant solutions from modern software development world. So in terms of money it is good, but the trade offs are quite big.
• warpspin 7y ago
  Regarding the second question, it is not comparable at all. ERPs are still "standard" software, despite what the article implies. The difficulty is not so much on the software side, but on getting the software actually agree with the business processes and often the fault is less the software, more a convoluted business process which is simply not truly automatable. Then you run against the whole organizational inertia while implementing. I can only speak from a bit of SAP experience: So usually, implementing an ERP, at least SAP, first means "customizing" it, that means adapting the thousands of configuration parameters to the organization. This is no programming task, in fact you "just" operate a GUI. The difficulty is more in finding the proper the option. True development tasks are often very restricted in scope - most often it is just the development of a new report or custom data export (one of the annoying things of SAP ECC always was, that it really really really loves to keep its data to itself. While theoretically everything is open - you can even browse the underlying the database directly from the UI, with appropriate rights, and can also quite comfortable run even DDL statements against it - often you are back to ABAP very soon for any kind of interfacing tasks simply because SAP likes to live in its own world with its own standards for data import/export (Idocs for example or its proprietary RFC interface). Things might have gotten better recently with e.g. the OData support, but I haven't yet worked with a system which had that.
• cydmax 7y ago
  A colleague just switched from a game development company to our gig, which is selling Field Service Management Software which integrates with SAP. So we talked a bit about the differences and I hope this answers your second question. 1. Constant Updates/Upgrades Most games are a one time effort with some patches and maybe a add on and if it’s really successful a sequel. Business Software runs for years in a company and needs to be supported. So the customer needs to sign a service contract besides the initial payment and licenses. Games are usually a one time buy. Exceptions are MMOs. Game companies noticed this mishap and are trending to service games now, which would create a steady inflow of money from loyal customers. 2. Complexity It depends on what the game company focuses on. If you only build games, you need to master a game engine or build your own. It doesn’t need to be customizable if it stays in your company. With ERP software you need a lot of configuration switches and cover a lot of similar but not same use cases. A standard product is almost never bought my businesses. They want you to build something for THEIR process. So what SAP did is maximize on this need and they built so many customizations, that you need special training to even begin to understand one of their modules. ERP is definitely more complex in the realm of more stuff to learn and to remember to get it right. In terms of complexity defined as difficult I can’t really tell because of my lack of experience with game development. But I guess mastering a game engine is difficult, but less “complex” than ERP software. Funny side note: I did a SAP training one and half years ago at their HQ in Walldorf, Germany. And they own pretty much the small town. There were so many foreigners in town to visit SAP. The SAP campus had the same size as the town :)
• Rury 7y ago
  On your second question - as an enterprise software developer and hobbyist game developer of ~8 years, I'd say they're complex in different ways... ERP software is mostly a giant CRUD app/database, with APIs, reporting functionality, and a ton of relatively simple code for automating the system/business processes attached to it. These parts taken alone are usually fairly simple, however the complexity really stems from the enormous scale, interfacing elements, moving requirements, and mutability of everything. It’s easy to knock SAP, but it’s difficult to keep software nice when you're dealing with these attributes. As for game development, I tend to find it more computationally complex, but that can depend on the game and tools you use. By computationally complex, I mean the code itself is generally more complicated. However, what’s easier in game development is the amount of control over things you have. In comparison, you largely dictate how much mutability your game will end up dealing with, the data it will use, and how large the game will be. Players aren’t going to be dictating this. Not to say game development is easy, but it’s easy to make slick software when you have complete control over the nature of things. So in short, ERP software is complex (and crappy) mostly due to the enormous scale and the complicated nature surrounding the software - whereas games are complex in regards to the nature of software itself.