SAP guy here (well I work in the industry). I know Enterprise Software is not highly regarded here on HN, but this is pretty big news considering the onslaught of Workday and SalesForce.com to enterprise software.
What is interesting is how SAP manages to handle disruptive technologies to its existing portfolio. Does large enterprise now use SuccessFactors or SAP HCM (via NetWeaver Portal/ESS/MSS)?
For anyone interested in the theories of the Innovator's Dilemma this is an awesome example.
Ex-Successfactors guy here. It is indeed going to be an interesting thing to watch. Successfactors was innovating big time in terms of usability and flexibility on their ESS/MSS suite during my tenure there.
haha. I don't see why all the angst here. The place I work at also has a big VB legacy code base that has to be moved to the cloud.
Furthermore, a lot of these large companies start off with a MVP hastily knocked up from 4GL tools and spend a lot of time doing customer development. (remember lean?)
Eventually they get big enough to be able to afford proper software engineering processes.
Gianforte of RightNow, a big enterprise player, started off in his bedroom with a list of possible features and lots of phone calls.
I've no idea why your first comment was downvoted. I've seen SAPs HCM interfaces and SuccessFactor's. The SF one definitely looks cleaner, more responsive (Web 2.0, Ajax and all). This is purely my own opinion. It may not be the case with all products of SF, but definitely the ESS/MSS modules. and you are absolutely right, these businesses lean more towards customer development, and hopefully, probably, catch up on other fronts(processes, eng quality etc) later. When I was there, SF had a pretty reasonable dev process and a reasonable codebase.
HN community tend to have a knee jerk response against enterprise software. They forget that Steve Blank of "4 Steps to Epiphany" made his fortune in enterprise software.
That is only because a lot of the developers don't have a sense of appreciation of how far the state-of-the-art has progressed.
The previous developers who put together the code aren't totally clueless people. Unless we wish for our own work to be brushed off in the same way we did to our predecessors. Future developers are going to laugh off at the cheesy way we develop our mobile and tablet apps.
Some of the original code had to work under onerous memory constraints, and have all manners of workarounds for various platform incompatibilities. Think IE6 hacks, pre-AJAX code when a sizeable portion of browsers could not script.
Do I think enterprise software as it is today can be disrupted? Yes, I do. But do I think the enterprise software vendors and developers are clueless? No, absolutely not. Many of them have adopted agile processes and are as fast as any other developer. If you want to disrupt enterprise software, you need to disrupt the sales channel, like what Salesforce and SuccessFactors did.
Do I think enterprise software as it is today can be disrupted? Yes, I do. But do I think the enterprise software vendors and developers are clueless? No, absolutely not. Many of them have adopted agile processes and are as fast as any other developer. If you want to disrupt enterprise software, you need to disrupt the sales channel, like what Salesforce and SuccessFactors did.
Not to mention that Oracle is also on shopping spree... The question is really whether disruption in enterprise software (cloud, SaaS) will generate new companies or old one will just acquire and change.
I think that the most important factor in big companies such as SAP or Oracle is not whether leadership is smart in their answers to new disruptions, but whether middle management is agile enough to embrace these kind of innovations.
The Walking Dead can survive quite some time by buying up competitors. Happens in all areas of business. Decline isn't fast for the big ones. But eventually, they go poof. Sun, DEC, etc.
What is interesting is how SAP manages to handle disruptive technologies to its existing portfolio. Does large enterprise now use SuccessFactors or SAP HCM (via NetWeaver Portal/ESS/MSS)?
For anyone interested in the theories of the Innovator's Dilemma this is an awesome example.