SAP "opens up"
SAP's Plattner lays out new vision, laments media perception at user conference
By Sidney Hill Jr., Executive Editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 8/1/2001 12:00:00 AM
Hasso Plattner does not like the way his company has been portrayed in the media. The co-chairman and CEO of SAP AG, Walldorf, Germany, is particularly perturbed that some of SAP's top rivals in the business software market were anointed leaders of the so-called e-Business revolution while SAP was, in Plattner's words, "perceived as losers."
Plattner voiced his frustration during his opening address at SAPPHIRE 2001, SAP's annual North American user conference, held in Orlando, June 13-15. Over the past year, Plattner said, SAP has taken steps to change its public image, particularly in the North American market. As a result, he said, industry analysts and business journalists have begun writing the story of SAP's comeback.
"It's nice that we are starting to get good press," Plattner told the roughly 10,000 SAPPHIRE attendees, adding, "But I am still upset that we got beat up the way we did." Plattner said SAP lost some customers as a result of what he called the perception war, but he thinks many of them will return as the image of the new SAP continues to emerge.
That image was on full display at SAPPHIRE, where Plattner stated emphatically that SAP is committed to developing applications that can easily integrate with other vendors' systems, giving users the freedom to adopt a best-of-breed approach to building information technology networks. "We knew we wouldn't be able to realize our dream of providing a complete set of applications, and having companies run only on SAP," Plattner said. "We have to face the fact that companies operate in a heterogeneous world."
Facing change
Having companies run exclusively on its technology had been SAP's corporate mantra since it entered the North American market with its R/3 enterprise resources planning (ERP) package in the early 1990s. The message played well then, when the industry was making the shift from mainframes to client/server. As Internet technology emerged, however, companies began seeking more open technology platforms and SAP was slow to react to that change.
It is clear from its message at the SAPPHIRE Conference that SAP has adopted a more open approach. Plattner said SAP's "new vision" is built on two technology platforms that were conceived in the Internet age: enterprise portals and trading exchanges. The portals will give users access to all of their applications, while the exchanges will serve as a platform for connecting applications to create new business processes.
Behind the portals and exchanges, Plattner said, companies will have a set of applications for running their own business. The primary applications, according to Plattner, will be customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM), and product life-cycle management (PLM). SAP offers all of these applications, and Plattner still hopes most of SAP's customers will use them, but he realizes that some companies will purchase certain applications from other vendors. SAP intends to make it easy for those vendors' products to integrate with SAP applications.
Plattner said SAP began traveling down this open-systems road more than a year ago, but it did not publicize the move because it was occupied with helping customers with the Y2K issue. Meanwhile, he said, SAP's competitors—particularly Oracle Corp., Redwood Shores, Calif.—was marketing itself as an e-Business supplier.
SAP began playing catch-up in that regard last year, when it announced that it would begin developing trading exchange platforms through a partnership with Commerce One, Pleasanton, Calif. That partnership led to the creation of SAPMarkets, a subsidiary that builds platforms for public and private trading exchanges.
This year, SAP showed it was serious about the portal market when it acquired Top Tier, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based company that built the engine that runs SAP's portal product, called mySAP Workplace. That acquisition led to the formation of SAP Portals, a subsidiary dedicated to portals.
The Top Tier acquisition also lent credibility to SAP's message of developing open technology platforms, because Top Tier had licensed technology to SAP competitors, and SAP pledged that the SAP Portals subsidiary would continue that practice. And true to its word, SAP announced at SAPPHIRE that IBM, Armonk, N.Y., has licensed SAP's portal technology and plans to integrate it with IBM's WebSphere Portal Server application.
Just giving options
Several industry analysts in attendance at SAPPHIRE were impressed with SAP's new vision. "It's a good corporate message," said Rod Johnson, an analyst with Boston-based AMR Research. "It's good to see SAP finally open up and play fair with the rest of the industry."
But at least one customer is skeptical about how SAP's new attitude will affect his business. Paul Newton is vice president of information technology with Waters Corp., an $800-million-a-year manufacturer of analytical instrumentation equipment based in Milford, Mass. "I am a bit confused by this message," said Walters, who manages an all-SAP shop. "We chose to go with all SAP applications partly because we didn't want to worry about integrating systems from multiple vendors."
When questioned about Newton's statement in an interview with MSI, Plattner said SAP does not intend to force customers to use other vendors' applications. "We are happy to have them use only SAP applications," he said. "Our new position is simply a recognition of the fact that not all users want options, yet we do want to give them those options."
A new platform, and a slightly new attitude
12/31/2001The view on portals
05/31/2001
