Homo SAPiens

The Economist has a (quite positive) story on SAP and its CEO Henning Kagermann. Speaks a little to the differences in personality between Kagermann and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

TAUNTS from Larry Ellison of Oracle, a big Silicon Valley software firm, cut no ice with Henning Kagermann, the boss of SAP... Last month Mr Ellison made wild claims that his firm had outperformed SAP tenfold and had established a two-year lead because of SAP's delays. He also claimed that SAP was abandoning its strategy of organic growth. Mr Kagermann did not respond personally, as Mr Ellison would no doubt have wished. Instead, his firm issued a statement denouncing Oracle's “complete misrepresentation” of the facts, and left analysts at Citigroup and Dresdner Kleinwort to pour scorn on Oracle's claims.


Thought the article highlighted two of the critical success factors (trying to keep my consultant-speak alive) for SAP over the next few years

• Encouraging customers to upgrade from R/3 to mySAP ERP 2005.
  
• Among other things, customers running mySAP ERP 2005 can be cross sold other products such as PLM, SCM
• Selling to the SME space
• Selling and servicing this market can be different than the LE market (I say, can, because a ME with 1500 customers functions very similar to a Large Enterprise). Engaging the channel is, of course a component of this, but SAP will need to make other adjustments as well.
  

[Henning Kagermann][Larry Ellison][SAP][Oracle]