
Why TechCrunch is boring, SAP is not, and the world has gone mad - zalthor
http://peopleprocesstech.com/2011/12/05/why-techcrunch-is-boring-sap-is-not-and-the-world-has-gone-mad/
======
arethuza
Do you think anyone has a copy of SAP at home that they hack on in their own
time for their own pleasure? I suspect not...

Anyway, I have to repeat my favourite quote about SAP from a Slashdot
discussion:

"SAP is how Lucifer interacts with our world."

[http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/05/28/2143219/Allegedly-
Rig...](http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/05/28/2143219/Allegedly-Rigged-
Product-Demo-In-SAP-Suit-Goes-Missing)

Which I think sums it up nicely.

~~~
johnappleby
I love the comments but this is exactly the stuff I was talking about in this
article. I'd love to show the wider tech audience a bit more about SAP and how
it works. Guess that can be my project for 2012.

1) Yes, you can download a trial version as Zalthor points out. I'm trying to
work with SAP to make this more open and easy to do. It's important.

2) SAP customers vary from 1 employee (SAP BusinessOne) to 250,000+ employees
(SAP ERP). But from a download perspective the interesting stuff is coming
with Gateway and the Unwired Platform. With those tools - the server
components of which will be available in the cloud - you can build Edge/Web
Apps and Mobile apps using whatever tech you want. Ruby on Rails, iPhone,
whatever. That's the sort of open integration which I hope will interest this
audience, not downloading copies of SAP ERP for home.

3) Couldn't agree more, don't block social media at work. I wouldn't work for
a company that did. By the way, SAP encourage social media and have 50k+
employees. But some organizations are stuck in the dark ages.

4) Streamworks integration is coming for the mainstream soon. It will be PaaS,
integrated with the new Java environment and developer toolkit and supports
open integration. It's had a bad press so far. Hopefully this will help.

Hope this helps.

~~~
sunchild
I think you might be somewhat lonely in this good will campaign for SAP.

In my decade-long career as a lawyer for customers who buy enterprise IT, the
only company that I consider more obnoxious across the table than SAP is
Oracle. If you are doing business with these companies, you pretty much
deserve what you get. I've seen a few CIOs lose their jobs when ERP falls
apart (it almost always does, for a variety of reasons).

I'm not saying there isn't a bunch of useful technology, but these aren't
technology companies – they're sales organizations, and that side of the
business is not pretty. I can't understand why anyone does business with
obnoxious sales organizations like these in 2011.

~~~
absconditus
What are the other options exactly?

~~~
thechut
I'm currently taking a class in managing SAP ERP systems, and noticed how
really bad it is. The user interface for end users is absolutely abysmal. Like
some other people here have pointed out it doesn't scale very well.

There are a couple open source ERP products, Compiere which is technically
open source but uses a service model. However, the most interesting open
source ERP is by far Openbravo. If you're question about other options was
serious, you should look into using Openbravo:
<http://www.openbravo.com/about-us/>

~~~
johnappleby
It's true that SAP ERP could really do with a better interface (and it does,
for the consumer end of the market by the way). But SAP ERP is bought by
people who enjoy the business benefit (increased revenue, decreased cost)
rather than by the users - that's life.

To say that SAP ERP doesn't scale on the other hand is a bit nuts. It scales
easily to the biggest companies in the world. Apple iTunes Store sales billing
runs on SAP.

I've not spent a lot of time looking at open source ERP in the context of
large enterprise. I'd be interested in a serious comparison of the contenders
and their UX, ability to scale to many countries/currencies/languages and
their ROI and supportability and extensibility.

------
chris_dcosta
SAP was built in the seventies on seventies technology, which it still uses
today (ABAP). None of it's front end reporting tools (even Business Objects)
are anything like "modern", and every patch they release is more and more
unstable.

TechCrunch people know this, I'm sure there are plenty of ex-SAP consultants
who got pretty tired of badly run projects by badly educated middle managers
who have no business being put in charge of enormous and complex SAP
implementations.

I have worked for some of the biggest companies in the world fixing some of
the rubbish out there, and you know why SAP has so much money? Because the
business just order another instance to migrate to each time they mess it up.

And so it goes on...

~~~
buyx
_I have worked for some of the biggest companies in the world fixing some of
the rubbish out there, and you know why SAP has so much money? Because the
business just order another instance to migrate to each time they mess it up._

SAP seems to run a powerful Reality Distortion Field. I live in a municipality
(Johannesburg) that is experiencing a huge multi-year billing crisis,
following a flawed SAP implementation. Despite being a disaster, SAP gave it
an award:
[http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view...](http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=34778:sap-
fails-to-explain-award)

~~~
rbanffy
Awards and spotlights at conferences are how companies like SAP (Oracle has
done this too, I assume many "industry success stories" are nothing but this)
award managers who generate big profits and who will probably generate even
more cleaning up the mess they got into. By branding their failure as a
success story, they reduce the likelihood of a change in direction to less
flawed approaches and maximize their chances of tying the customer forever.

After being awarded "CTO of the year", the incompetent one will probably move
on, away from the problem he/she created, and will possibly inflict the same
damage to the next company that hires him/her, generating even more profit.

------
icebraining
SAP passes an image of a predictable company where innovation doesn't really
happen (whether that's true or not is irrelevant - perception is what counts).

Money and size is irrelevant. Concrete supports all of our homes, but calling
is cool compared to e.g. "ultralight metallic microlattice" [1] is ridiculous
by most people's definition of cool.

[1]:
[http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/11/lightest-...](http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/11/lightest-
material-on-earth.html)

~~~
dextorious
"""whether that's true or not is irrelevant - perception is what counts"""

Actually, no. Reality is what counts. I don't bet my money based on
perception, and neither I trade with perception in mind. Except if I'm looking
to take advantage of some bubble.

~~~
danssig
>and neither I trade with perception in mind

Then I'd be surprised if you do well in trading. For monetary value; perceived
value _is_ value. We have no other means of valuing things monetarily.

~~~
altcognito
Yes, because we all know what a reliable guide to value trading has been over
the past three decades.

To _some_ extent entrepreneurship found in technology has been the counter-
culture to the con game that the financial markets have become accustomed to.

~~~
danssig
Again wrong. How do you think entrepreneurs are pricing their wares if not by
perceived value? Did you think they were doing something like "labor cost +
20%" or something?

The cost of making something is only used to determine price floor (i.e. if
perceived value is lower than the price floor it makes no sense to create this
product).

~~~
altcognito
This was originally about trading. Entrepreneurs are not traders, and while in
a perfect world they would have a similar set of concerns, but generally not
in today's world. (see HFT)

What your model of perceived value isn't accounting for are speculators who
are in a market with no real vested interest in the product. The correct
amount of speculation within a market can round out extremes but there is a
balance. Free markets generally find the best prices for most things and works
well in the majority of situations.

------
brd
So I'm just going to throw it out there that I'm a young SAP Developer. I've
been known as an "up and comer" in the community (yes, we have a community)
until I decided I was no longer sure I wanted SAP to be my long term career
choice. I've done SAP hacking on the side on multiple occasions and I've even
made money from a little side project that won a SAP innocentive challenge.

For all of you SAP naysayers (I oftentimes find myself among you) the best
explanation I've ever heard for why to work in the SAP ecosystem is "If you
want to change the world, you should work with the biggest lever you can
find".

Feel free to ask questions.

~~~
kokey
Nice to hear. I have a couple of questions: 1\. Is the community open to all
or do you need to be working for a SAP customer? 2\. What's the simplest way
to get set up to start tinkering with some SAP stuff? 3\. Can you mention some
interesting projects that you've done or was done by others?

~~~
brd
1) The community is open to the public: <http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/index>
-> Not a member? -> Public User 2) The main platform can be downloaded here:
<http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/nw-downloads> -> Choose a developer edition
Application Server. You can also find and download a trial of gateway, (mobile
platform) business objects, (analytic) etc if you look around. I'm actually
not so familiar with whats actively available these days. 3) johnappleby is
probably better qualified to answer this question at this point but I will
tell you to look into SAPlink since its considered the "open source enabler"
of SAP <http://code.google.com/p/saplink/> you can also check out the
enterprise geeks, good light-hearted site for SAP content
<http://enterprisegeeks.com/blog/projects/>

I built a framework for integrating data between SAP's cloud offering and
their on premise solutions but after unsuccessfully trying to opensource it in
collaboration with SAP (a frustrating experience) I pretty much stopped my
community activities. That experience sucked a lot of the SAP enthusiasm out
of me but I have watched the company get much better over the last 2 years and
I am in talks about getting involved in an another open source project
sometime in the next few months.

------
kevinalexbrown
_What’s wrong with the world is that they are so focussed [sic] on Apple,
Google and Facebook – with their over inflated [sic] IPOs and everything that
comes with that. The world was not built on technology bubbles – it was built
on hard work and honest money._

Even if I agree with the author's sentiment, that last line made me laugh.

Also: Apple, with their over inflated IPO? (their IPO having been long ago)
destroys SAP's revenue and profit.

Edit: The world _was_ built on hard work, but I'm not sure how SAP is
necessarily the embodiment of that.

------
kokey
I think the same can be said for 'boring' non-tech industries, like energy,
transport, finance, food retail etc. These are essential industries that make
the world turn, but because they lack the 'cool' factor they also get the
blame for many of the ills in the world. This is while the entertainment
industry (film, games, art, music) can shrink by 90% without causing much
damage, are often considered less evil or even more important than those who
provide the essentials.

I don't think the world has gone mad, I just think it's how the world is
perceived from by different age groups. When you are a teenager you think
you'll never stop listening to the cool new music when you are older, but when
you are older you realise the latest craze is cute but not that relevant.

On a different tangent, every year or two I have a look at what is happening
in the open source world in the space that SAP operates in. A few promising
things pop up from time to time but never gets much traction, but it does seem
to progress a bit over time, slowly. I think the only thing that will move it
forward is if universities put some projects behind it in their business and
technology courses.

------
dexen
Wait, what? According to his figures, SAP makes $1.18bn profit from $12.46bn
revenue (about 10% profit margin); Facebook brings in $1bn profit from $4bn
revenue (about 25% profit margin), yet SAP is somehow claimed /more/
interesting? By what metrics? Is SAP somehow gonna grow quicker than Facebook
and overtake it?

However you slice it, both SAP and Facebook have major share of their
respective markets. Facebook seems to monetize the market better. Next story
please.

~~~
masklinn
> Wait, what? According to his figures [...], yet SAP is somehow claimed
> /more/ interesting?

I also like that _by his own metrics_ Facebook has ~800m users, SAP has ~500m
users, therefore Facebook is insignificant?

But of course, TFA is (apparently) a SAP consultant and his tagline is
"Tangential Musings about Enterprise IT". It's not like he's going to say
otherwise.

~~~
johnappleby
Come now, I didn't say that FB is insignificant. That would be ignoring the
biggest social trend in the 21st century! What I'm saying is that the consumer
press community spends 99% of its time talking about FB et al., who are
interesting, cool but haven't got a proven commercial model, and 1% of the
time talking about (and denigrating) SAP et al., who run the real software
that makes businesses run.

And in the meantime, the global economy is going down the drain and Bubble 2.0
means that investors are throwing more of our savings down the drain. Some of
the latest startup IPO valuations have been ridiculous.

Yes, my primary income is SAP consulting, but that doesn't mean I am not
interested in wider IT issues. Facebook is a very relevant trend, but social
media is a fickle partner, and the crown has changed hands several times
already. Valuing it at 19x earnings is nuts.

Please do take a look at the innovations that SAP are doing. I look at wider
market trends and I think what SAP is achieving in innovation is well beyond
what Oracle/IBM/Microsoft/Google are doing right now. You may be surprised.

------
jroseattle
From the article:

"Well for my money SAP is possibly the most interesting technology firm in the
world right now."

To be sure, what trips one's trigger may not do so for another, so to each his
own. That said, this is just a synopsis of one guy's very tiny view on the
world.

To the original author: the value of an acquisition doesn't set the pace for
what's interesting. If that were the case, Exxon would be the single most
interesting thing on the planet.

Rather than bitching about someone else not writing about something that
interests you, why not start the Enterprise IT version of TechCrunch?

------
Jd
If any SAP consultants are out there reading this, can you give me some
insights on how to get up to speed with the SAP products and ecosystem? I'm a
developer/consultant (primarily Salesforce) but am interested in exploring SAP
product offerings. Infos in profile.

I think there are probably many of us that are interested in this side of the
"enterprise" but SAP is sort of its own universe and difficult to
understand/penetrate from the outside.

~~~
zalthor
The problem is that most of the legal documentation available are really
boring power point presentations that provide as little technical information
as possible.

Most of their detailed documentation is only available for people who take up
their courses (yes, they are that evil) and certification exams.

I do remember quite a bit of it was available on rapidshare though unless you
were already working on something specific you wouldn't know what exactly to
search for.

To start with, I would suggesting getting a book on SAP R/3. More specifically
the SAP R/3 handbook by Jose Antonio Hernandez. I don't know of any thing
available for free (legally) that is as good a place to start.

As for the product offerings from SAP, they more or less seem to be components
that sit on the same application stack. So getting into one of these
applications could provide insight into what everything else does.

Disclaimer: I work as an SAP Basis consultant (that's sort of an application
admin + OS admin + DBA)

~~~
Jd
Thanks, added to my Amazon wishlist! I'm planning to pull aside some SAP
consultants at some point soon and get them to show me the inner workings of
the SAP stack. It is amazing to me that they only provide documentation to
people who take their courses.

------
dexen
The article establishes and uses a brand new metric:

SAP's technology must be interesting for develpers because it costs exorbitant
amount of money to hire anybody to work on it. SAP is interesting for
investors because it pulls in massive 10% profit margin. SAP's services are
interesting for customers because it has high barriers to deploy, maintain and
replace. SAP is interesting

By comparison, Facebook-like projects must be boring for developers because
they flock to work on them, even if for free or `ramen-profitable' for year or
two. Facebook is boring for investors because it manages mere 25% profit
margin. Facebook is boring for users because barriers to entry and exit are
essentially non-existent.

What kind of metrics is that?

------
Havoc
I'm saddened by the fact that this is #2 on HN.

The entire thing is one big fat straw-man argument. The author (the bored one)
didn't even _mention_ FB in the article in question. The author (the attacking
one) pulled that out of thin air based on little more than:

>From what I get of her article, if it’s not Apple or a startup, she’s not
interested

Then he proceeds to refute the argument that he just set up by enlisting
stats...not even convincing ones at that.

And finally whether something is boring or not is entirely subjective. This
angle is as pointless as proving to stamp collectors that collecting stamps is
boring.

I agree with his point in that the glamorous companies get attention at the
cost of others & that this is a problem. The manner in which it was done
however is a fine example of:

>a crap piece of journalism

~~~
johnappleby
Can't argue - it was a reactionary response, such is the way of social media,
right?

I think that the underlying discussion is an interesting one. HN readers
perhaps might get some benefit from understanding SAP technologies and how
they integrate into the stuff they want to hack with. I've employed some real
hackers into the SAP market and it is a deeply interesting and open technology
stack.

~~~
Havoc
>I think that the underlying discussion is an interesting one.

That it is. Clearly SAP is doing something right.

Somewhat off topic, I'm surprised you say "open technology stack". I'm not
particularly familiar with SAP tech, but I always thought they were as closed
as it gets (& successfully so). Have I missed something?

------
potatolicious
I'm interested in hearing what the author has to say about this topic, I'm
_really_ not interested in this new FOX/CNN trend of quoting random people on
Twitter, even if they're semi-famous.

This is somewhat OT, but can we stop with this? Quoting the immature salvos
fired between random people on Twitter doesn't give your blog post any more
credibility, and probably less. It's like news networks nowadays - they're
more interested in what people on Twitter and YouTube think of some topic
rather than seasoned analysts and correspondents.

The whole blog post would've been just as informative and way less irritating
if I didn't have to wade through all the Twitspeak.

------
darklajid
Okay, let me help the author here.

Having success and market penetration doesn't make things cool. It's great for
the company, great for the ecosystem (and - that's a topic for another time in
this particular case..) built around it. But not cool. Not sexy.

It could be. Success, piles of money and 'cool' aren't incompatible per se.
They are just unrelated in my book.He has to accept that for a large audience
out there, _in the real world_, there's nothing more boring than looking at
SAP (and - wait. and wait. and wait).

"My advice: stop being bored by the stuff which makes the world turn."

My advice: Don't blow this out of proportion. If SAP dies tomorrow, the world
is not going to end.

~~~
yuvadam
I'm not sure what you mean by 'SAP dies tomorrow', but - to put it bluntly -
YES, the world will most likely stop functioning normally.

~~~
darklajid
Fair enough. I'm the first to admit that I'm actively avoiding contact w/ that
kind of technology (I did develop small things around SAP QA systems in a
distant past, but except for that my exposure is limited to watching users
around me).

To explain: I meant if they go out of business (and I didn't imply that this
was even remotely likely). If the software had a kind of stroke and wouldn't
work anymore, starting tomorrow, I'd agree with you.

I just hate the metrics used and the 'makes the world go 'round' tone in that
article. What percentage of shirts, shoes and gadgets are produced in China?
Would it be 'cool' (nothing against China..) to be live there, based on the
'We provide x% of the world's shoes' metric?

~~~
jameshart
> If the software had a kind of stroke and wouldn't work anymore, starting
> tomorrow, I'd agree with you

Well that's interesting, because if the SuccessFactors acquisition is
indicative of SAP's intent to become more "cloud based", and those critical
infrastructure systems which run on SAP move to the cloud, then if the company
went out of business their software _would_ just 'have a stroke'...

------
heresy
SAP deployments must work in some cases, surely.

I read somewhere that a large part of Apple's supply chain management is built
on SAP, as well as being the system of record for iTunes/App Store
transactions.

I can't find a reliable citation, since this will probably not be something
they broadcast, due to their secrecy.

But then, they have the capital to massively spend on heavyweight internal
systems.

~~~
johnappleby
Yes, Apple's iTunes store system of record runs on a custom SAP ABAP based
system. It used to run SAP ERP but that could not take the load of
transactions.

As I understand it, this is the reason why you get a weekly bill from Apple:
the iTunes ABAP system makes financial postings to ERP, to reduce the overall
number of transactions - and presumably also their credit card overhead.

------
djhworld
Also I think the main reason why no one talks about SAP is because SAP == Work
whereas sitting at home and hacking together your own open source project
outside of work hours? A welcome break.

To me: -

* Java EE == my day job == Work

* SAP == Work

* Working on own app at home written in Haskell == Fun hobby project that I do outside of work hours and doesn't feel like work

------
rythie
Disruption and innovation is cool, not big companies relying on a cash cow
business model created decades ago.

------
tryitnow
I work in finance and I use SAP. Or more accurately, I try my best to delegate
any SAP tasks to my co-workers because I swear I lose IQ points whenever I
interact with SAP.

Is it dull? It depends. For the TC crowd, yes, but that's because they're
consumer oriented and not very technical.

It should be interesting to the HN crowd because it's a huge opportunity for
disruptive innovation.

------
zedonious_sq
Author's primary income comes via SAP products

~~~
johnappleby
For sure, and I'm open and honest about that :)

I would like to say a few things though, especially to those people who think
that it's an us and them scenario.

First, I have personally spent a lot of time on open source software, and you
will for example find some of my code in the Linux Kernel, if someone hasn't
removed it by now.

Second, I think that closed communities are a bad thing, and it's something I
strongly believe that SAP needs to get better at. Yes, SAP has the largest
community network in the world with 3 million members. But it's not good
enough at opening that up to the wider tech community, which is a loss.

Third, I think that integration to the wider tech community like HN, would be
a huge benefit to Enterprise IT. We can be silo'd and the expertise of this
group in writing nice-to-use apps is something we really need.

------
pbreit
The thing is, if SAP did not exist there would still be some piece of crappy
software running all those transactions. Maybe it'd be custom, maybe
Accenture, whatever. In fact, many (most?) SAP installations are barely
recognizable after the customization. And who can even guess what
SuccessFactors does besides not make much money.

------
egor83
There's one thing he forgot to compare: number of employees.

According to Wikipedia, Facebook has 3000+ employees, and SAP AG has 53513.
So, profit per employee is ~300k for FB and 22k for SAP.

~~~
dextorious
And this metric matters over profits because?

If I have a 1,000,000 person company that has 1 bln in profits, and you have a
100 person company that makes 10 million in profits, you make 100 mores per
employee.

But I get to bank a cool billion...

~~~
lmm
Sure, but mine is probably a more interesting company for TechCrunch to write
stories about. It's more likely to be innovating in ways that readers will
care about.

------
russell
I'm curious. Are any of you working on commercial ERP products or services? It
seems to me that there is lots of opportunity there for well executed vertical
applications.

~~~
RvbNews
I do. Not SAP. but Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft has an ERP product. (a 'suite'
even: Dynamics) I've also worked with another ERP product. And you are right,
there are a lot of opportunities, but it is also hard to get a foothold.

------
djhworld
Some of our applications here push a bunch of data to SAP via their API

To be honest I have no idea what SAP does nor do I really care, we just push a
load of data over a network on a regular basis and the team who deal with SAP
probably do something.

They all have to wear suits though while us Java programmers get to kick back
in normal, comfortable clothing.

------
richardburton
It is so refreshing to see a post about this issue. In a nutshell: profits are
cool.

~~~
altcognito
True Hackers are interested in changing and influencing the world and the way
it thinks, profits come secondary.

~~~
richardburton
Agreed but profits allow you to change the world. Bankruptcy does not.

------
kennystone
It's a humorous article. TC knows their crowd, and they are poking fun at
everyone - themselves for not caring about a huge deal, their audience for
also not caring, enterprise software for being boring.

------
davidhansen
The article is poorly written, and SAP is indefensible as a company.

That said, welcome to my world. It's been an interesting experience working in
an industry (ecommerce) that is regarded as a huge yawnfest by most of the
startup community. The reality is that there really are very interesting
problems to solve. Algorithms to predict demand curves, optimize warehouse
pullbox location, and identify product flow constraints are all arguably more
interesting problems to solve than sharing photos.

Nonetheless, nobody cares. And that's fine, mostly.

~~~
AndyNemmity
"SAP is indefensible as a company."

What does that even mean?

~~~
davidhansen
As others have remarked in this thread, their products are maintenance and UX
nightmares, and their sales and legal departments operate on the basis of "do
lots of evil".

I suppose it was an exaggerated choice of term, but I was trying to set aside
the specific issue of SAP to talk about the somewhat broader issue of how the
tech community often finds technology boring if it doesn't appear in the form
of a consumer app.

~~~
Havoc
It is difficult arguing with results. I can't personally judge SAP
particularly well, but its interesting to me that they are so successful in
the long run _despite_ "UX nightmares" & evil sales dept. That to me suggests
that they are doing something else right which is worth paying attention to.

~~~
mistermumble
some companies are successful because of (rather than despite) "evil sales
dept"

~~~
Havoc
Not in the long run. Unless they have some other leverage like a monopoly or
something.

------
billpatrianakos
On the one hand the author is right about how SAP is a behemoth and shouldn't
be written off. On the other hand, this is TechCrunch we're talking about. Do
we really expect them to cover SAP? TC has its niche and I'm not surprised at
all. I think however the mistake on the part of TC wasn't not covering SAP but
covering it in the way they did. If you're going to write an article about how
the company is boring and dedicate the majority of the content to why you
don't want to cover it then just don't cover it at all. It would look better
for them had they just said nothing at all.

That said, the author of this post has an opinion. Cool. We all have opinions.
But he was off the mark in implying that there's something wrong with
techcrunch. There isn't. They're all about the cool factor and dare I say
shallow startup porn.

The post was almost a great point but the implication that something is wrong
with TechCrunch killed it. I'm not a fan of techcrunch. I think it's shallow
garbage and reads like a thinly veiled commercial a lot of times. But I won't
be writing any blog posts complaining about that any time soon. That's what
we've come to expect from them and their audience loves it.

------
pinaceae
let's put it this way:

on any large german airport you currently get met with large billboards by
IBM, advertising their urgent need for SAP consultants.

SAP is the backbone of the large tech consulting industry.

and no, you cannot compare it to facebook. like comparing a tv station to a
manufacturing company.

