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Technology Stocks : SAP A.G. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: riposte who wrote (2790)	11/16/1998 10:34:00 PM
From: treetopflier	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3424

<misunderstandings regarding SAP> Yes, let's put three paragraphs from an SAP competitive whitepaper that is 2 years old on this thread and tout how SAP outperforms PSFT. <Peoplesoft in spite of their new and unproven 3-tiered client system still cannot support clients with a high number of simultaneous users> PSFT using Tuxedo runs just fine on slow to medium speed wide area network links. My current shop is doing just that. Yes two tier client/server doesn't work over a WAN. Not Peoplesofts, not Oracles, not SAPs - unless you are referring to character mode or some screen scraping facsimilie of a GUI client that SAP may be calling client server. Or are you talking about 3270? Yes, 50 users in 3270 character mode would probably run quite well on a 64KB line. <SAP is now in the support-position to sell into the slightly smaller sized companies in volume> Good luck to these companies. I haven't seen many SAP installations that didn't cost in excess of $10M. Many were over $100M. Unless a medium size company can drop in a vanilla SAP implementation they are in for a real shock. <Current internal competitive reports say SAP is more than 2 years ahead of all competitors in both support and training> Duh. What slide in the SAP sales pitch did this come from again? Peoplesoft pitch, same slide. Oracle pitch, same slide. Even Baan and JD Edwards will tell you the same thing about their competitive positioning. Prove it. Define how a company gets 'ahead' in support and training. Overall service revenue in these areas? Quality of materials? Training participant feedback forms? Time to close problem tickets? Number of problems tickets logged per product? Get the picture. You are dealing with topics that are not generally quantified to the outside world in any form that would substantiate this statement. Makes for a good slide tho. <It is my opinion P dug themselves a hole entering the marketplace in the mid-market. This let SAP dominate uncontested where the big money is and at the same time prepare for assault on the Mid-market. Full steam ahead.> Peoplesoft entered the 'market' via the worlds best human resource application suite and it was not targeted at middle markets. They broadened their application suite and sold to their installed base. They were never a middle market vendor. They began as a specialty application vendor. SAP uncontested where the big money is? Yes, they have a significant percentage of the major accounts, worldwide. Does this translate to mid-market success. No. Just because Peterbuilt powers more of the worlds trucking fleets than xyz truck vendor doesn't mean Peterbuilt will be the leading provider of cab-over tractors to the medium size truck marketplace. They can't figure out how to get the thing in the garage. Same is true of SAP. It isn't going to be a hands down winner in firms in the $50M to $750M gross revenue size range. Not if they really do their DD and understand the costs of a an implementation that fits their business vs. the quick and dirty, prepackaged, vanilla install that these mid-market sales schemes tout. And their premier consulting partners aren't racing in their to their aid. You don't often have Peat or Price or Anderson involved in small firms this size. You have local consulting organizations whose benches are not deep in SAP. Their benches are filled with SAP wannabees that REALLY foul up these implementations because they didn't have the time/money to go through all the certification. These consulting organizations are just as likely to steer the customer into a Lawson or JD Edwards or Peoplesoft or Oracle decisision. SAP is FAR from a hands down winner in the mid-market. And lastly, SAP is not a telemarketing sale and never will be. ttf