Hey hon,
KIM IBM also languished at $40 in the not to distant past. Difference is IBM can come back from that. SAP is hardly an IBM. The comparison would imply that SAP was around at the start of computingkind, which it was not. There were companies like GE, however, that wrote the earliest GL packages for commercial use. Have you seen GE's GL lately? (still around somewhere I think, CA called it Masterpiece last time I saw it).
MSFT, same thing. Flash in the pan GUI company and WANG killer. (from the vantage point of an IBM)
Just to put IBM, MSFT and SAP in perspective.
Products have lives like people, and so do their companies. They are hot commodities in their prime years and then live on for many years thereafter, but seldom are as productive at 70 as they were at 30.
SAP's product is in mid life crisis. Now during its prime earnings years it gained tremendous mind share and market share on the backs of consulting firms that got rich recommending and subsequently installing it. "No one ever got fired for recommending SAP is BS".
There are some substantial horror stories, not that they are unique to SAP, but when a $100M SAP implementation fails, it is noteworthy.
M&D and Dun and Bradstreet were just as entrenched in the boardrooms of the 80's and early 90's as SAP is today. Difference is 3rd party connections are much more vast today.
Poeple live longer too. These third party connections prolong the inevitable. Inevitably technology and customer needs move on. The large, more interconnected a company and its products become, the more difficult to migrate to what is in demand today. Also, the more difficult to die quickly. SAP will be around a very long time. They have what I call critical mass. They reached it three years ago, maybe longer. What I don't believe is that they stand a chance of regaining their glory days of summer 1998. But I also believe they'll end up as the first $10B enterprise apps company. Largely on the back of consulting sales, not license revenue. They'll make a fortune migrating customers from R/3 to R/4. They'll never grow license revenue like they did over the past three years again.
But mostly here is my axe to grind -- if a company is going to go to all the trouble to use a relational database under its product, it could at least use some of the product features. Hell, if we port VSAM to UNIX, R/4 will be easier for them to build than R/3 was and they'd be just as happy.
Do I feel good? Well I feel better now that I have that off my chest, yes.
ttf |
