Where do you think SAP is heading? It definitely held the crown once for ERP and business software solutions. But the US has produced some brilliant competitors in the last decade or so. SAP has had it's fair share of struggles with integration and cloud too. 1. Do you think SAP has a bright future still or is it on an imminent decline? 2. Will we see someone replace SAP? ...OR... 3. Will SAP be replaced by smaller but focused solution-specific companies? (or you can also debate on how SAP is still the best)
It's heading to the ground
You think Salesforce is set to dethrone them entirely?
Germans don’t value software engineering like they do mechanical engineering. Software is just something that can be outsourced to Eastern Europe, India. Low pay results in low talent, low results
I agree that the Germans haven't invested or given enough importance to the software innovation as much as silicon valley. It surprises me though why they still keep the power in Germany / US East Coast when they badly need the software dominance that the west coast can provide. Agree with you on the low pay as well. It's disappointing honestly.
SAP has dedicated subsidiaries and locations in the heart of Silicon Valley and Seattle that do R&D and software. Their PA location is more of just a HQ where the SAP America corporate functions are located.
Well, SAP will finally realize that Saas is a fake topic for large and complicated softwares (almost all of the SAP products). In addition, except ERP, SAP still haven’t find any new great products yet.
Yeah, the SaaS model does seem very challenging for complicated solutions that SAP generally provides. And if they do manage to create out of the box solutions for even some of their software solutions, it'd mean the partners and consultants won't be required (at least as much as they are needed now). Simplifying the model would hurt the partner economy very much.
SAP is the largest ERP systems provider around, and more often than not we see clients moving away from a competitor ERP to implement SAP. Who are those brilliant US competitors? So my thoughts about your questions: 1. I think SAP is close to saturating its market (large companies), so it’s hard to predict how much growth it will be able to get without any breakthrough. It’s more probable they will operate even more as a mature business. 2. Who would replace SAP in all its capabilities? Oracle? LOL 3. No. Focused solutions still need an ERP backbone to get integrated into. No company will move away from running an integrated ERP system to go back to using multiple focused solutions, it is always the opposite.
That's for answering point by point! I agree, and know, that customers are still implementing SAP and it is still the only one with the most comprehensive portfolio. I wonder if they are innovating fast enough / in the right direction successfully? Would you not agree that a lot of customers have very little choice when choosing their ERP backbone? SAP's monopoly has helped it gain and retain many customers. How long can this last? Would customer's not switch to a modern solution whenever a worthy competitor arrives? By competitors, I mean the likes of Salesforce dot com - who are younger yet larger than SAP in a niche market (CRM) that SAP dreamt of winning. I'm afraid SAP is somewhat complacent. They are great at what they do, but mostly benefit from being only one of the few. They do need more breakthroughs to go above and beyond their current status in the software industry! Maybe, I'm really just hoping that someone can revolutionize ERP, and bring it up to the same level as consumer tech today. The same revolution that SAP lead in their early days :)
In some aspects, I think SAP became entrapped in its success, there isn’t a lot of incentive for change because they have a very large installed base that is getting what they need for the most part. And the entry barriers are very high in this market. Only companies like Microsoft and Google have the means to get into that space. Microsoft actually offers enterprise management software for small/medium companies. Sales Force chose to keep their nimbleness in the CRM space and avoid becoming like SAP. It will take many years for a real competitor to emerge in this area, an ERP implementation takes at least a year and average two years, and has a life of 10 to 15 years ahead, in some cases it could be 30 years! My point is that this space moves very slowly considering the size of the investment done by companies implementing ERP software. Switching ERPs is not something that can happen in one year, no executive board would just ditch a system and get into another costly implementation without a very sound business case for that. The arrival and adoption of a competitor for SAP will be very slow.
What’s their long term strategy
No one in their right mind would implement SAP if they are starting a new company (whichever it is) today, and that is the main concern for the company. Growth is going to get harder and existing customers will evolve Too many stagnant companies want to break into new areas but can’t shake their shadow from the past, whether it’s branding, mindset, culture, leadership, and/or technology. They simply don’t have the right combo to excel (mind you that they have to compete with more nimble competitors. In order to win, they have to be better at everything) Now the best case scenarios from SAP is to evolve into a leading SaaS ERP or diversify into a multi-facet tech company, and the worst cases would be that it dies a slow death by a thousand cuts or breaks up into smaller pieces to be sold
Thanks for responding. I agree with your point - as a new company, I'd rather go with more nimble competitors because they won't restrict my options or shrink my platform/tech stack choices when something new has to be tried out. Open source is the future, SAP is quite the opposite of that. Cloud is the future, SAP is a little late to that. And that was the intent of my original post, that smaller and more nimble companies can one day take over SAP little by little. Right now, SAP remains a giant. Hopefully their SaaS gets a revolutionary breakthrough.
Why not talk about future at SAP :) , if one is non technical role indeed future is bright at SAP . For technical folks, this is not a place . One can hardly find any technical guys at senior roles .
Yeah, that does seem to be the case. While selling technology to businesses, SAP itself has become a business corporation rather than a software innovator. Most conversations revolve around business than technology. I understand the customer obsession, but their image needs to remain as a software provider and tech innovator.
They're going the way of IBM. A dinosaur dying a slow death on the backs of outsourcing and consultants.
That's an interesting point - I had not compared them to IBM.