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After years of being characterized as an unmovable beast—a monolithic company and enterprise resource planning system incapable of change—SAP AG is morphing, it seems, into a mover and shaker.
To this end, SAP is expected to announce a coup early next week: The hiring of several executives from rivals Oracle Corp., PeopleSoft Inc. and Siebel Systems Inc.
“I cant name names, but theyve picked up a group of people who five years ago wouldnt want to work for SAP, and who are now converging on SAP because their leadership is starting to show,” said Joshua Greenbaum, principal of Enterprise Applications Consulting in Berkeley, Calif.
“Its impressive. Theyre a group of senior-level people that are being drawn from the competition.”
The flip side is, of course, companies like Siebel and PeopleSoft have lost their luster—and in the latter case, their business.
The new hires, which in some cases have been on board at SAP since the companys annual Sapphire user conference in May, are said to have experience in technology and application development—skills (and bodies) desperately needed by SAP if its to be successful in its long-range plan to morph from an applications provider to an infrastructure provider.
SAP was unavailable for comment.
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