Grounds for Optimism

 

And while some would say SAP's wow-factor peaked around the time the Berlin wall fell, there are current grounds for optimism. To wit:

Good financials: SAP had a strong first quarter, with profits up 81 percent over a year earlier.

The Sybase acquisition: The May 12 announcement involving an industry-leading mobile platform provided SAP with important new credibility for its emerging mobility story. SAP says it will run "this crown jewel" as a separate business that will transform m-business, m-commerce and m-payments, among others.

New products: Talk and new big initiatives like "Innovations 2010" are fine, but at some point, you need new products. BusinessObjects Explorer, integrating collaboration and Google-like search, is a good example from 2009 of the kind of innovation SAP needs to make commonplace. Ditto BusinessObjects Explorer on an iPad, shown the week of May 17. The vaunted "in-memory" analytics are intriguing but SAP needs to do a better job of explaining business benefits. 

New appreciation of channels and ecosystem partners: The May 17 announcement of the long-awaited Business ByDesign on-demand offerings for small and midsize businesses underscored the heightened importance of partners. Expect more high-profile deals soon, said Doug Merritt, executive vice president of On-Demand Solutions, especially with new SAAS (software as a service) and on-demand partners.  

New appreciation of customers: Are SAP's 97,000 customers an underutilized resource? Most companies would kill for the global who's-who that SAP serves. But beyond ubiquitous billboards and airport ads proclaiming, "XYX Runs SAP," customers don't hear enough. Too bad. That may be changing, though. Marquee customers like Kraft, Lockheed, Colgate Palmolive and scores of others featured prominently in more Sapphire sessions. Senior Vice President Nina Simosko and Vice President Aaron Pratt are in the early stages of redefining ways to better organize top customers with an eye toward, among other things, sparking mutual innovation. Stay tuned.   

Forrester Research analyst Paul Hamerman agreed the next 12 months will be crucial for SAP. Usability of Web clients remains an issue, and the company will need to deliver new products on time. But he cautioned against being overly dramatic. "People aren't going to rip out SAP systems," he noted. 

Still, chats with users quickly reveal the big challenges ahead. Take Partha Biswas, the bright and energetic CIO and vice president of Joerns Healthcare, a maker of specialty beds. A former SAP hater turned convert, he's eager to tell how SAP BI and ERP helped enable rapid company growth, from $150 million to $200 million since 2008. So enthusiastic is Biswas that he's presenting his company's story later this week at Sapphire. Yet he said he wonders about the depth of SAP's commitment to cloud. He is, for now, "cautiously optimistic."

In fairness, SAP does seem to be changing, however slowly. A small but telling personal example: When I attended my first Sapphire in Madrid in 1998, PR flacks shadowed me virtually everywhere, day and night. I had to shake them, spy-like, to speak uninhibited with an actual customer. In contrast, SAP PR at the current show was helpful and unobtrusive. I wandered freely, chatting with customers at the SAP User Group unimpeded. Small, but telling.

"This is a significant moment in IT history," Hagemann Snabe told the listeners. He said he is "cautiously optimistic" that the recession is easing and that customers are interested in growing (read: making major investments) again. My take: If a major evolution of SAP is going to happen, North America probably must lead the way. Whether SAP's management in Walldorf, Germany, can convince the company and its partners to keep stepping up, and whether it can keep opening up and ease off its habitual uber-control, will determine which way customers run. I am cautiously optimistic.

Editor's Note: Joe Maglitta is vice president and editorial director for Ziff Davis Enterprise's Market Strategies and Content Services.