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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

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 15y 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.
- johnappleby 15y ago
  I hear you. SAP suck at that stuff. The problem with SAP is it's so complicated, you can do anything you like. And so, it becomes hard to explain. Not sure what the solution to that is. SAP has a new CMO, Jonathan Becher, who I hope will bring some improvements to this stuff. Marketing is supposed to be about making stuff easier to buy - and as you rightly point out, SAP aren't always that good at that, especially to a casual observer.
- sime 15y ago
  Yep, For example. I read the article and think ok, this SAP HANA in-memory technology sounds interesting. I google it, go to their website and see a two minute video that supposedly explains it. I think cool I'll watch that to get an overview of what it's all about. I watch the first twenty seconds after which I'm still actually eager to learn more. But then the video stops and they put an overlay telling me I need to register to continue watching the video. WTF! So I still have not much idea of what it is and frankly no further inclination to find out.
- arethuza 15y ago
  "I have no idea what they actually do" For ERP applications (which SAP is arguably most famous for) you are basically getting all of the "standard" features that you require to run a business in one highly integrated (and usually highly modular) package. This will include, at a very basic level: - Accounting (general ledger, fixed assets, accounts receivable, accounts payable, budgeting, consolidation, maybe treasury) - HR - Payroll - Supply chain/warehouse - Manufacturing (processes, bill of materials etc.) - CRM - Interfaces (including web portals, EDI, perhaps direct links to manufacturing systems) - Many many others... What arguably makes this all rather complex is providing all of this functionality in a way that can work across a large multi-national organisation - for example, the accounting and tax rules in different countries can be very different. Even the basic technical challenges of getting a Tier-1 ERP working in a global company are non-trivial. Factor that these things are highly customisable and you can perhaps see why they have to be so complex.
sunchild 15y 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.
- absconditus 15y ago
  What are the other options exactly?
  - sunchild 15y ago
    For what? Glueing crummy old legacy systems together? Managing a workforce? GL? Performance metrics? Part of the problem is monolithic, kitchen-sink software. Most people are basically using SAP/Peoplesoft as a development framework anyway – playing into more vendor lock-in. It's like the Lotus Notes of the aughts. There are tons of targeted solutions that can play nice with intelligent use of modern, open data interchange protocols.
  - thechut 15y ago
    I'm currently taking a class in managing SAP ERP systems, and noticed how really bad it is. The user interface for end users is absolutely abysmal. Like some other people here have pointed out it doesn't scale very well. There are a couple open source ERP products, Compiere which is technically open source but uses a service model. However, the most interesting open source ERP is by far Openbravo. If you're question about other options was serious, you should look into using Openbravo: http://www.openbravo.com/about-us/ http://www.openbravo.com/about-us/
    - sunchild 15y ago

MatthewPhillips 15y 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.

johnappleby 15y ago
I hear you. SAP suck at that stuff. The problem with SAP is it's so complicated, you can do anything you like. And so, it becomes hard to explain. Not sure what the solution to that is. SAP has a new CMO, Jonathan Becher, who I hope will bring some improvements to this stuff. Marketing is supposed to be about making stuff easier to buy - and as you rightly point out, SAP aren't always that good at that, especially to a casual observer.
sime 15y ago
Yep, For example. I read the article and think ok, this SAP HANA in-memory technology sounds interesting. I google it, go to their website and see a two minute video that supposedly explains it. I think cool I'll watch that to get an overview of what it's all about. I watch the first twenty seconds after which I'm still actually eager to learn more. But then the video stops and they put an overlay telling me I need to register to continue watching the video. WTF! So I still have not much idea of what it is and frankly no further inclination to find out.
arethuza 15y ago
"I have no idea what they actually do" For ERP applications (which SAP is arguably most famous for) you are basically getting all of the "standard" features that you require to run a business in one highly integrated (and usually highly modular) package. This will include, at a very basic level: - Accounting (general ledger, fixed assets, accounts receivable, accounts payable, budgeting, consolidation, maybe treasury) - HR - Payroll - Supply chain/warehouse - Manufacturing (processes, bill of materials etc.) - CRM - Interfaces (including web portals, EDI, perhaps direct links to manufacturing systems) - Many many others... What arguably makes this all rather complex is providing all of this functionality in a way that can work across a large multi-national organisation - for example, the accounting and tax rules in different countries can be very different. Even the basic technical challenges of getting a Tier-1 ERP working in a global company are non-trivial. Factor that these things are highly customisable and you can perhaps see why they have to be so complex.

sunchild 15y 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.

absconditus 15y ago
What are the other options exactly?
- sunchild 15y ago
  For what? Glueing crummy old legacy systems together? Managing a workforce? GL? Performance metrics? Part of the problem is monolithic, kitchen-sink software. Most people are basically using SAP/Peoplesoft as a development framework anyway – playing into more vendor lock-in. It's like the Lotus Notes of the aughts. There are tons of targeted solutions that can play nice with intelligent use of modern, open data interchange protocols.
- thechut 15y ago
  I'm currently taking a class in managing SAP ERP systems, and noticed how really bad it is. The user interface for end users is absolutely abysmal. Like some other people here have pointed out it doesn't scale very well. There are a couple open source ERP products, Compiere which is technically open source but uses a service model. However, the most interesting open source ERP is by far Openbravo. If you're question about other options was serious, you should look into using Openbravo: http://www.openbravo.com/about-us/ http://www.openbravo.com/about-us/
  - sunchild 15y ago