Three years ago SAP was surpose to list on Nasdaq. Don't know why they didn't but they decided not to. They were to be listed as sapha or saphy or something like that, and were going to trade around $45. Fortune Magazine did a big article on them, and how they are one of the few software companies that msft can not turn into a small profit niche market player.
Like databases, human resource and enterprise resource softwares will slow down or will have slower growth. After a couple of upgrades corporations are going to keep their existing systems when the new system cannot justify its cost. Over 40% of business are still running Windows 3.11 or DOS, because the upgrade to WIN95 and Pentium, do not help them bring that much more productivity out of the workers.
Now that most business have an enterprise resource or human resource system for SAP, PeopleSoft, IBM, Oracle etc, is it worth it for them to continue to upgrade. Like databases is it worthwhile for them to upgrade to the newest version of the database if it does the exact same thing.
As with databases if the margins are fat, msft will go into that market. SQL Server is growing alot faster that IBM's DB2, Oracle 8, or Informix's universal server.
If msft goes into this market that is when the slow down in enterprise systems will occur.
Just my two cents worth of the farm
Geary Kwong |
