
One-third of Europe's software industry is SAP - chl
http://www.zdnet.com/one-third-of-europes-software-industry-is-sap-7000007106/
======
greghinch
> Most of this money doesn't come from banks or venture capital funds,
> however. "Newly founded companies are mostly financed by the founders' own
> funds"

Ah the typical European startup dilemma. The governments recognize that in an
age of difficult unemployment and stagnating growth, new avenues of
entrepreneurship need to be embraced, and so they set up all sorts of programs
to encourage new startups. But then these startups get beyond the very early
stage, and need to raise capital to continue their growth. And the look to
institutional money in Europe. And no one will give them any. Because the
European investor mindset is so risk averse, that only those who already have
money are considered safe enough to start real businesses (continuing the old
guard).

Personally, I think that's great. You folks in Europe are just reasserting
that we in the US have the more opportune climate for startups. And so we'll
continue to steal all your good ones ;)

~~~
donw
I'm from California and currently work as a traveling circus monkey, otherwise
known as a consultant. I've worked with startups in Europe, Japan, and the US,
and while I don't consider myself an expert, I do at least have some idea of
the differences between the various markets.

Europe is a big place, with lots of different countries, and much like states
in the US, they work differently. True, the investment climate makes raising
money _much_ harder than for companies in the US, but on the other hand, there
are sometimes fewer regulatory hurdles for companies looking into exploring
new business concepts.

Take FundedByMe. They're fulfilling the promise of equity-based crowdfunding
in Sweeden, and because they're not a US-based company, don't need to deal
with the SEC and FINRA. The US has tried to set up something comparable via
the Jobs act, but major players have kept all the regulatory hurdles in
effect, and so for-profit crowdfunding is still a few years off, if it ever
really happens at all.

Don't get me wrong -- we still have a _big_ lead in the US, especially in the
Valley, but don't get complacent about how quickly that lead can evaporate
through the missteps of well-meaning regulators and politicians, or through
the negative effects of software patent law.

~~~
greghinch
I will not disagree with any of that. The US regulatory minefield is still a
problem, though I do feel like the patent issue is going to become non-
existent over the next several years.

Laws and regulations are often simpler to change (although still difficult)
than the mindset of a bunch of old men sitting on the majority of investment
capital.

------
bane
...by revenue

that's missing from the title.

Growing up I found that a tremendous amount of software I used was European,
and most of it was free (as in beer). Not to disparage German software
developers, but almost none of this software was German.

There's absolutely fantastic software from all over the continent, but due to
various economic/cultural aspects doesn't revenue in quite the numbers boring
SAP does.

 _edit_ upon further review I've found a bit more German influence in my
software than I remembered, sorry Germans!

~~~
chl
Even worse: By revenue of the companies on Truffle's Top 100 list, apparently.

I have no idea how tail-heavy the landscape of European software companies is.

BTW, could you supply some examples of the "fantastic software" from Europe
you grew up using? Just curious.

~~~
bane
Growing up it was mostly music and games. On the East Coast, with parents
tolerant of tying up the phone line with lots of BBSing, I waited for software
to percolate over to my local BBSs, and probably half of it came from Europe.

An awful lot of stuff written for the C64 and Amiga. And then when the same
dev traditions moved onto the PC, that stuff. The demoscene and peripheral
software movements figured pretty heavily into it.

For example, I spent _thousands_ of hours in Protracker (Finland I believe),
Scream Tacker III (Finland), Fast Tracker 2 (Sweden I think)...there was also
a few graphic programs I mucked around with Sculpt 3d (England I believe)..a
few toy fractal programs, there was a great piece of music software I used for
a spell from Spain that I can't for the life of me remember, some ANSI
graphics editors. I'm currently keeping a copy of the pro-audio level Renoise
installed (a pile of Euro-authors if I've ever seen one)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renoise>

but I also spent thousands of hours watching the latest scene productions
coming out of Europe at the time. Growing up on the East Coast, we ended up
with a small, but relatively healthy demoscene in the early and mid 90s and
productions routinely (and quickly) found their way onto local BBSs.

But don't forget that Linux is originally a piece of European software
(Finland), UAE (which let's me relive some of my youth) was started in
Germany, theproduckkt (Germany), and on and on and on...

and then there's other stuff I'm keeping tucked away for when I get some time
to start playing around with micro-controllers
<http://www.linusakesson.net/scene/craft/> (Sweden)

most of this is just stuff I was interested in at the time, there's tons I
never even touched

basically a tradition of software on a different axis from commercial
proprietary and free (freedom) software, but I bet if you look at the
contributor lists for lots of popular open-source/free (freedom) software,
you'll find long lists of European contributors.

 _edit_ after review I've realized there's more German contribution to my
software history than I expected, sorry Germans!

Also, glad to see lots of folks jumping up and calling out some great German
softs.

~~~
bbgm
Much the music software I use is German

Ableton Live Native Instruments Steinberg (since superceded by Ableton)

There's a pretty large body of German music software developers, both large
and indie.

If I recall Logic (now Apple) was also German, and there are a number of other
good European music software companies like Propellerheads.

~~~
bane
good point, there's lots of _awesome_ German audio software out there..

I'd add Celemony to that list as well.

------
ig1
A substantial percentage of SAPs revenue is from consulting, and if you're
going to include that then why not Accenture who has twice the revenue of SAP
and is HQ'd in Ireland. Or Erricson who might primarily do hardware, but make
$8bn/year from software revenue.

~~~
chl
Ericsson indeed is a notable omission:

"Measured in software revenues, Ericsson is the world’s fifth largest software
company."

[http://www.ericsson.com/thecompany/investors/financial_repor...](http://www.ericsson.com/thecompany/investors/financial_reports/2011/annual11/results/board-
directors-report-2011/competitive-assets)

(Further examples would be highly appreciated.)

------
georgeecollins
Having worked at companies where we had to use SAP software, I find that sad.

~~~
hippich
Could someone give a brief example of what kind of SAP work require? I see
constantly recruiters searching for people who know how to work with SAP, but
I have not clue what it involves. ))

~~~
taligent
Usually it involves customizing what data is captured, what workflows are in
place and the reports that ultimately get generated.

Given that SAP is quirky (to say the least) it typically requires some real
world experience.

~~~
teamonkey
I worked for a company that was switching over from old internal software to
SAP. We actually had to change workflows to suit SAP. You see, they'd sold it
on the premise that it was adaptable, and it was, but actually a SAP
engineering team would need to make the modifications to _every version and
update_ that we were contracted to receive. This wasn't covered in the multi-
million-euro contract, of course.

------
mbell
Way off topic: what accounting software is everyone using?

I've been hunting for something that is a well designed SaaS product, yet is
highly scriptable with a great API to allow me to automate more of our
transaction flow.

Right now we've got a part time book keeper whom spends most of her time copy
and pasting things around in quickbooks, its just silly. Unfortunately we have
a 'complicated' transaction flow, by 'complicated' I mean none of the ultra-
simple SaaS models seems to allow modeling it correctly, but it could be done
with a couple dozen lines of script if the software allowed that.

I'm currently stuck either keeping things as are, which sucks, or massively
overpaying for SAP Business ByDesign to get the needed flexibility. It seems
like there is a bit of a hole in the market between the ultra simple SaaS
solutions and the SAP's of the world. It seems like NetSuite used to fill this
gap but has moved up market.

Is Xero getting to the point where they can at least partially fill that hole?
Anyone else out there that is close?

~~~
elchief
OpenERP

~~~
tluyben2
That looks good these days! Any experience with it? Stability, performance,
costs, flexibility?

~~~
wazoox
Stable, reasonably usable, most stuff written in python so easily extensible.
You'd better use some consultancy to set up everything from the start,
afterwards it's quite easy to maintain yourself (Free software FTW).

------
fractallyte
Meanwhile, SAP is (indirectly) funneling part of the revenue from clueless
enterprise into... Hasso Plattner Institut! One of the world's hotbeds of
computer science innovation (<http://www.hpi.uni-
potsdam.de/willkommen.html?L=1>)

"Professor Hasso Plattner [co-founder of the global software company SAP and
chairman of its supervisory board] has pledged the foundation from his private
assets for the day-to-day running of the Institute over a period of more than
20 years. Due to his commitment, he is one of the most important private
supporters of science in Germany."

Ironic? Visionary? Whatever it is, good work is being done, orthogonally to
SAP's main venture.

------
djhworld
The company I work for has an internal software suite (mostly Java EE) that's
rolled out across Europe, and we have a SAP team too who deal with all the
accountancy stuff.

Some aspects of the systems I work on have to communicate with SAP and I find
the whole process quite frankly, bizarre. The way SAP names procedures is
weird, it just seems so clunky.

Whenever the SAP team come to us to say they've added a new column and we need
to support it makes me weep a bit when having to type in ZTRANS_TTP_ORDER_TYPE
everywhere to support their bullshit.

~~~
brg1007
You can choose to use any name for your custom objects as long as they start
with Z* or Y*. This is the only constraint from SAP. And of course depending
on the object you have a max length.

------
Havoc
SAP feels kinda clunky. Whats the appeal?

>100lb gorilla

Seems fairly...light.

~~~
philwelch
100 pounds is much smaller than an actual gorilla.

~~~
jfb
Or a SAP installation, for that matter.

------
zafka
While I have barely used the SAP system where I work, I could intuitively
sense its value. Only half joking, I have claimed that If i could get a half
dozen good co-ops, we could build a far better system with LAMP in about 6
months. ( I know that LAMP is dated, but other than what I have read here, I
know little about the more modern frameworks)

------
dschiptsov
Which is very sad, because it is the worst crap ever.

Usually it works like this:

Specially trained sales people approach executives of a company with stable
money flows. They tell all that nonsense about how prestigious SAP is, that
all successful businesses runs SAP, that it is kind of a simbol of maturity of
the company and that it having SAP installed is good for IPO. Most of execs
who have no idea what crap it is just agree.

For IT execs it is even better. SAP installs a ready bureaucracy system inside
a company. All those meaningless titles, training, certificates, as if you
really learn something valuable. Usually IT manager involved in running or
supporting SAP have a guaranteed position, they say.

Needless to say, that they have a ready "processes" based on paper-pushing
inside a newly formed hierarchy.

Now about software. It is worse crap ever. It is a mess of Java, inhouse ABAP
layers, and thousands of SQL stored procedures with meaningless names.

All _technical_ and troubleshutting documentation, which is crap, available
only with paid subsribtion, explaining almost nothing. What is available for
free PR, success stories and use cases, which is completely meaningless lies.

Software itself is a mess. There are hundreds of different version which are
incompatible with each other, and only this version people know what to do.

All installations usually performed by stupid drones without any background
using detailed instructions with screenshots of each step. Usually typical SAP
"certified professional" know nothing but a few such instructions.

Support is much worse. Nobody know anything, all they do is finger-pointing.
All problems usually solved with a new re-install and then import whatever
data we have in last backup.

Data loses are normal thing. Bugs and gliches are normal. Incompetence is
rampant. But SAP bill you for each hour of each consultant involved, and each
document passed through system. May be even for each transaction.

After all crap is installed and organization are shaken up it is already too
late and too costly to revert. This is why SAP is so "successful" - when you
"invest" in it you are done for, and you just sign the bills and have your
"signs of maturity".

This is only quick overview. I can write a brochure what a crap it is.)

~~~
Argorak
While all you say is pretty much true, you have to see it in the context of
the service that SAP provides. SAP implements the workflow of their costumers
(the process is called "tailoring"), not the other way around. As every
customer has a different workflow, the maintenance nightmare you describe is
always looming, especially as the systems are built to run for decades. SAP
knows this, but sadly, there is no good solution for this problem.

Full disclosure: I worked for SAP Research, but not on ERP systems.

~~~
skrebbel
That's not a reason for the core tooling and docs to be crap, though. (I don't
know whether they are, but this thread gives me the impression that they are)

~~~
Argorak
Thats true and I don't want to defend this in any way.

But its a way to understand why SAP is like it is: the "core" you speak of is
already fragmented and by chance, it can even happen that this core knowledge
is invalidated by something further down the stack. Documentation of 100 edge
cases wouldn't help you much in that regard. As others have stated, the oracle
world is not much better in that respect.

Its a way to understand why anyone would even buy such "crap". Because thats
the crap that solves the customers problem somehow and there is no competing
company that would even come close to offering a similar service. I don't mean
to imply that no one could ;).

