SAP dismisses open source innovation

SAP has a monster application that has been adopted (in Europe) in large numbers in the early days of ERP emergence. SAP is floating on their installed base and the new businesses that go SAP, because a lot of other businesses went SAP.

SAP itself, as an ERP suite, is an unfriendly beast. It does what it is supposed to do, but it does so as unfriendly as possible towards the knowledge workers that operate it. (I should know, I'm currently battling SAP 4.7 E).

SAP, the business, is being surrounded by the proprietary behemoths Oracle and Microsoft from the top and by Open Source newcomers from below. Since badmouthing Open Source is still a cheap and accepted way of staving off the competition, Agassi fires off some "Open Source is Communism" FUD to try and protect SAP's ERP abomination from the still minor threat posed by FOSS.

I would advise SAP to focus on Oracle and Microsoft, because they are a far more immediate threat. FOSS will march in and "pick the bones" long after the proprietary giants have battled themselves to death.

Huge blunder on SAP's part. Maybe not now but in the future. Of course, they made their decision based on something happening that only they could be aware. I wish I could go back and change all the bad decisions I have made. They may think the same thing in the future.

And of the proprietary forces SAP has to worry about, it seems like Oracle is a primary one...and Oracle is so pro-Linux it surprises even ME (and I'm a nearly rabid Penguinista...).

Why am I picturing a gigantic mammoth sinking into a tarpit and, after a great deal of noise and commotion, finally sinking out of sight and going extinct as a species?....