SAP high-flyer gives view from the top
Published: 01 Oct 2003 14:25 BST
With its two closest competitors duking it out for the No. 2 spot, SAP is enjoying the view from a perch atop the business applications market.
While 2002 turned out to be a dismal year for most corporate applications sellers, the German software maker actually managed to eke out a modest 1 percent increase in sales -- good enough to help the company retain its No. 1 rank. More importantly, SAP registered 13 percent growth in the much-coveted category of licence revenue. That's important, because these higher-margin contracts are viewed on Wall Street as a barometer of how well a software company's core products are selling.
But it's not all milk and honey in SAPland, as the competition is growing increasingly feisty. Both Oracle and PeopleSoft are trying to bulk up through acquisitions, while Microsoft is elbowing its way into the fray. What's potentially even more worrisome to SAP is a reputation for making maddeningly complex software that's mammoth, rigid and doesn't like to talk to other business systems.
But as the company embarks upon a much-touted initiative to fix that problem, new leadership will be guiding SAP. Company co-founder and technology visionary Hasso Plattner, widely credited with being the charismatic force behind SAP's rise from an obscure start-up 30 years ago, earlier this year relinquished the job of co-chief executive.
One new leader SAP is grooming to fill the void is Shai Agassi. The 35-year-old Israeli joined the company in 2001 after SAP's acquisition of software maker TopTier. He was promoted to join the executive management board last year, and SAP further expanded his duties in February. As the youngest board member and the only non-German in the company's executive inner circle, Shai is considered SAP's rising star. But now, he has been handed the task of leading the company's technology development strategy -- an assignment that could either earn him more laurels or short-circuit a dazzling ascent through the ranks. Agassi recently sat down with CNET News.com to discuss the challenges SAP faces and changes in the enterprise software business.
Q: Larry Ellison's claim at OracleWorld was that he can make SAP and other business applications cheaper to run by operating them over a grid without any changes to the applications themselves. Is this possible? Or is he dreaming?
A: God bless him. I would like to see it happen.
You haven't seen it happen?
I haven't seen him do it without any modifications to the application. There is enablement that needs to happen. You need to wrap the application in the right way, so it knows that it is self-cognisant and self-described to know, "I need that much compute power to run."
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