What’s happening to the next generation of the SAP ecosystem?

18 Replies

It seems obvious to me that the ecosystem of SAP is aging. I’d love to be told wrong, but I just don’t see much evidence of it. Where the heck are all of the young guns? Why is Silicon Valley kicking ass with talent straight out of school? There are CEO’s and CTO’s who are 23, just graduated, and solving real world business problems. Where are these guys in the SAP ecosystem?

Over at Bluefin, John Appleby was touting an incoming graduate application base of nearly 2000 graduates interested in getting into the SAP ecosystem. Despite this I get the impression that the highest skilled graduates are not trying to get into SAP’s ecosystem. (note – no discredit to Bluefin – 2000 applicants is unprecedented and surely they will find some top level talent in a pool that large) They’re still going to banking and now with the crazy valuations in Silicon Valley, they’re going to San Fran.

My personal opinion:

1. SAP is not sexy. ABAP is not sexy.
I just read this article (the article itself is kind of terrible): Tech Leaders Don’t Win By Saying They’ll Crush Somebody. The author mentions the following tech companies “Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, AOL, HP, Palm” as “Tech Leaders”. Yet, no mention of SAP? This is not new. Before the crazy marketing buzz that is HANA, when was the last time you read a tech blog talking about the technological excitement around SAP? The problem here isn’t SAP, but rather that enterprise business software is not sexy. It also doesn’t help that if you read the wikipedia article on ABAP one of the first thing it mentions is: The syntax is somewhat similar to COBOL.

2. Big data is sexy. Ruby on Rails is sexy.
Today, big data is about petabytes of data, not terabytes. In 2008 Facebook had 2-3 TB of photo data uploaded every day. I too lazy to research what it is now, but I think you can speculate. I’ve worked with multiple TB in-memory systems in SAP – they’re fun, challenging, and usually raise some eyebrows when you tell someone about them. However, they are peanuts compared to the servers and data Amazon and Google are working with. Where exactly is the data explosion in the enterprise? The younger generation likes these challenges and they like frameworks (like RoR) that easy to use and well documented – tools that make talented individuals deadly.

3. No openness
Do you know why it’s possible for someone like Zuckerberg to start a multi-billion dollar business or for Mark Bao to start up multiple companies by the age of 18? It’s because they could go learn something new very rapidly and implement it very rapidly with very low costs. SAP – not a chance in hell. And what’s worse is that even areas like mobility where this should be possible today, SAP is now asking for licences for doing the trial of SAP Unwired Platform. Yes, the trial. It’s well documented and well known that collaborative communities lead to innovation. I wish SAP was more open to this. Sorry, but SDN doesn’t cut it for me. SAP certifications and trainings are great, but as it stands right now nothing beats hands-on experience. I think the fact that a majority of the SAP mentors are not certified is anecdotal evidence alone.

The Potential Issue
So who are filling these jobs and why is this important? It’s obvious there is a continued trend to ship everything overseas. This means nearsourcing has less importance, less emphasis and will drive everything in SAP to become commoditized. This will lead to less innovation and less support for real technological innovation. Who the heck is going to implement HANA? India? Good luck with that one. SAP – you need partners and you need their help. I know it sounds radical, but why not deliver HANA to partners under a “AS-IS” warranty and let me us go wild implementing it on Mac-Mini’s, Amazon servers, or whatever? Let us build it, break it, hate it, destroy it. You thank us later when we can give valuable feedback. Face it, SAP technology is not vastly superior in a technical sense, nor does it have to be. It’s purpose to help business to be better at what they do – and it does. It has a robust ecosystem, with robust controls and a great customer base. But please if you want the ecosystem to support disruptive innovation be more open and you’ll get the forward looking talent needed to support. Otherwise companies will continue to ship it overseas and the aging population of techies in the SAP ecosystem will become managers. Then who’s left? The SAP ecosystem needs techies and the techies are hiding under a little rock called the university.

  • http://profiles.google.com/vincenthuaweitien vincent hua

    What is SAP?

  • Student

    I am a college student who has interned at two companies with SAP. I definitely agree with the article, but I believe the increase in demand for more functional and technical SAP experts from implementations will force CS and CPE majors into a world they did not plan to get into. Colleges should be pushing enterprise systems and more importantly, business processes and their relationship with computer science.

    • http://www.techdisruptive.com Mike Bestvina

      This is exactly how I got into the SAP ecosystem. I saw the massive market, massive potential and had a professor that fostered me into it. 

  • John Appleby

    Mike - some interesting points.

    I think the nub of the issue is that SAP is getting more open – but hasn’t got all the way there yet. As they successfully open up, they should give access to more software to developer communities and make it easier to access.

    We’ve seen this a bit with NetWeaver 7.02 trial on SCN and the Composition Environment, as well as with things like CodeEx.

    But in the end SAP is struggling a bit with its identity and trying to become hipper. Whether it does so will be a factor of how it engages the wider development community just as much as their ability to produce “cool” SkullCandy runs SAP commercials.

    If SCN ride this social shift right they can be the centre of the grass roots rebirth of the cool – and this will definitely help us get the top percentile of the graduates in our graduate program – some of which are going to banks, as you rightly say.

    • http://www.techdisruptive.com Mike Bestvina

      Ya! I envision an SCN that looks like this:

      1. Clear collaborative one-stop documentation for all that is SAP. This will eliminate the “What is BI” posts we see so often on the SDN forums. Also with the ability to comment. For examples see Apple developer network or some of the open source communities. 

      2. How-to’s. I think this should go hand in hand with the documentation. Imagine if you searched something like “Offset variable” and it gave a description and a step-by-step example. And/or integrate this with the weblog series. 

      3. Unified search. See point 2. (note – actually logging into SAP support portal has a very good unified search for sap notes, sdn, etc)

      4. StackOverflow style Q&A. They’ve proven the model already and its replacing message boards/forums as a way of getting the right answers. Why not implement this in SCN?Thanks again for the input!

  • NoSolutionManager

    Its telling that Oracle provides a free developer license for everything, but with SAP you gotta jump through all kinds of crazy hoops (read: pay lots of money) to get access to their software. 

  • http://rvanmil.wordpress.com/ René van Mil

    ABAP can be sexy, just make sure you skip SAP courses, avoid SDN like the plague, and head straight for the OO features of the language.
    SAP really should provide a “community edition” of their NetWeaver platform so students and other curious techies can take a peek at ABAP and the application server it’s running on.

  • Vizcayno

    I see that the compromise of SAP with business community is very big and important. I would say that a company that uses SAP, has many possibilities to survive in the wild market and audit controls at the same time. SAP products is synonym of confidence and transparency and, if SAP is the main infraestructure/basis into a company, much better. I would leave the sexy software for the periphery software (better interfaces, value added products, etc) and integration.

  • http://twitter.com/vijayasankarv Vijay Vijayasankar

    Agree with most of what you are saying, and violently disagree with one part.
    “Who the heck is going to implement HANA? India? Good luck with that one.”.
    What is wrong with that scenario? India has amazing talent to deliver, has same starting point on HANA as everyone else, has more money than most other countries to invest in cutting edge technology due to booming economy, has a huge SAP labs presence and so on.

    • http://www.techdisruptive.com Mike Bestvina

      Vijay,

      I violently agree with your disagreement. ;)

      It was more of a snarky comment about many of the woes of outsourcing to india. Nothing really to do with india itself. I’ve worked with some absolutely brilliant Indians (especially within the sap organization) so I’m not questioning the skills that do exist there. It was more about the fact that (1) scn is flooded with outsourcing communities who have no access to credible knowledge, (2) outsourcing is becoming a detriment to a growing innovative ecosystem.

      I apologize if it offended anyone, it wasn’t meant to be taken literally.

  • John Moy

    Really enjoyed this post.  
    With respect to your comment on “ABAP is not sexy”.  The fact is that SAP has millions of lines of business logic wrapped up nicely here.  You haven’t mentioned NetWeaver Gateway.  There has been a slide that SAP has shown me that draws a line between what SAP terms ‘long haired developers’ in the evolving client world (iOS developers, Android developers, Web developers etc.) and via Gateway to ‘grey haired developers’ who manage the business logic layer within SAP in ABAP.  I think that is quite a pragmatic model.  In this regard, I think SAP IS opening up for all the sexy technologies and technologists to interact with the ecosystem.With respect to ‘SAP Unwired Platform’, firstly I should correct it as ‘Sybase Unwired Platform’.  My experience with this is that we are encountering some old processes within the Sybase organisation (I had to complete paper forms).  I think they will learn what the expectations are from the larger SAP community, who know they can download an ABAP trial straight from the SCN.With respect to the ‘offshoring’ statement.  I agree with Vijay’s comments … I have seen some awesome talent from SAP’s labs and custom development groups in India.  The problem more is companies that offshore or outsource simply to cut costs with the belief that SAP is a commodity skills.  Companies that have that intention don’t want to pay much, and especially not for the kind of innovation opportunities ahead.  Also, I believe in some sectors of the big consultancies, there is a kind of innertia and sense that SAP work also is a commodity … that you implement projects big and slow like in the 1990s (especially when remunerated on time and materials).  Personally I have seen more innovation out of the smaller consultancies.  That’s not to say the big consultancies don’t do it, but some of the best and most innovative consultants I know work for the smaller players or even as independent consultants (after cutting their teeth with the big guys).  

    • http://www.techdisruptive.com Mike Bestvina

      Ya, I think some of the ondemand offerings such as River are providing interesting opportunities to do “new age” technology.

      Ha, I didn’t think people would be so sensitive about the India comment. It was more about your comment concerning it being a commodity. Innovative technologies require a community that is willing to adapt – something very few large scale industrialized countries can do on a large scale. We have outsourcing in Romania and the talent is not only on par with the UK/US it’s at a fraction of the cost. To your point, what I fear is that the ecosystem is so engrained in large legacy ABAP technologies that its gojng to have trouble implementing at the speed the market appears to be demanding around HANA. This could potentially spell trouble for the success of the product no matter how innovative it is.

  • http://www.JonERP.com Jon Reed

    Mike, I’m late to the party here and you have some good comments already that cover a lot of the bases. I’ll add a few things: SAP’s ability to open up its ecosystem to a new generation of developers (and heck, any individual developers and small shops) is critically important to its future success in mobility, on-demand, etc. To SAP’s credit, it is aware of this at the highest levels of the organization. I can tell you that because I’ve seen it firsthand in blogger meetings with Vishal, Bill/Jim, Hasso. Dennis Howlett in particular pushed this “make the platform free” approach at Sapphire Now this year (and did it memorably) – that’s all documented on his ZDNet blog. So, I guess we’re going to have to wait and see. But I can tell you even two years ago the notion of “empowering individual developers” was just not a priority for SAP. So there’s a big change afoot at SAP in this regard in terms of priorities. Whether SAP will be successful following this through to reality, that’s still up in the air. Awareness does not always lead to full manifestation, if you can handle the New Age mantra.

    So that part of your post I agree with 100 percent. Where I differ pretty strongly is around the notions of what is sexy. What is sexy to folks evolves a great deal over time. Granted, people in their early 20s see the Mark Zuckerberg example and think that they would much rather work in a high-growth-potential startup hacking away with (insert nifty cool web protocol here). But, if you’re of the opinion that a lot of this “social anything” startup economy is a good-sized bubble headed for a meltdown – and that’s my view for sure – a lot of these folks will soon be in their mid-twenties and sexy is going to seem like an intellectually-stimulating job with a steady paycheck, not a 24/7 code fest for geo-taggy-social-whatever-we’re-broke-now dotcoms. Whatever its faults, SAP is a company that can provide that kind of sexy stability, though there are clearly others whether it’s IBM or even Google or Apple. Facebook is often seen as the epitome of sexy but I’d argue what they have done with privacy (and managing privacy issues with their user base) is anything but sexy. Sexy evolves. 

    That doesn’t take away from your point about openness and building a robust developer platform however.

    As timing would have it, I asked Vishal Sikka your question also after your blog came out during a virtual blogger session. I’ll share his response shortly. 

    - Jon

    • http://www.techdisruptive.com Mike Bestvina

      Jon,

      As long as you bring some beer you’re more than welcome to the party ;)

      Point 1- Totally agree – SAP needs to embrace the small agile development shops. Being a part of a small niche consulting provider myself, I can tell you that there is actually a shift in SAP’s attitude towards helping us grow with them in these areas. The problem here isn’t SAP embracing it but more so the big consulting shops. They are the ones who control the systems integration and development at the client. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve spoken with our current client base (which is mostly served by said consulting companies) that say that these practices cannot deliver on specialist areas. For example – BWA. While this is a widely generalized comment, I’ve personally heard it more times than I can count. 

      Point 2- As men, you and I both know that sex is just something that’s instantly gratified ;) Thus I don’t see sex and stability as being completely synonymous. I do agree that we are a bit in the bubble period when it comes to the new age SaaS web development era (whether it be business or social). However, just like how sex used to sell alcohol and fashion, the same goes for these types of companies. They are attracting the best and brightest because the best and brightest see the massive evaluations. Just reading TechCrunch for a week and I can just see the little freshmen techies’ jaws drop thinking that they can effectively skip the corporate ladder and go straight to the top. But that’s the new American dream right? I believed that dream for awhile. 

      I don’t normally divulge this (so as to skip the inevitable discrimination I receive when people read my title) but I am one of those twenty somethings you speak of. I like being in the SAP ecosystem since it is massive and it is stable. I also see the massive opportunity to transform it. However as you know, IT in general is transforming rapidly. Sys admin and platform admin is being commoditized by cloud infrastructure. IT solutions are beginning to be driven by the business users’ consumerist behavior and not by what the CIO and CFO think is best for the company. Recently I’ve noticed countless articles supporting this argument (one from SAP’s CIO that was just featured in BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13782193) 

      Why is this important? Because its the convergence of the 20-something techies who can hack up a Rails app in 24 hours and that of enterprise who spends 8 months outsourcing a CRUD application in .NET only to see it massively fail. Massive issues present massive opportunities. And why is this all possible today? Answer – read the collected papers from Eric Von Hippel that I referenced earlier (http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/papers/evh-04.htm) that come to the conclusion that “User communities, it turns out, can outcompete producers with respect to design under many conditions” 

      By the way – I’m super excited about SAP’s Project Gateway. Even though I don’t have use for getting involved with the Business Suite I’ve already started teaching myself Rails (as its the most REST compliant framework and easy as hell to program in). Unfortunately don’t know how I can install it to try to hack something together…. thanks SAP :)

       

      • http://www.JonERP.com Jonerp Com

        Mike, I think we can agree to disagree on the sex appeal thing to a certain degree, I’ve seen enough developers come back to larger companies after getting a tough learning experience in a dotcom to know the pattern. I think SAP is pretty confident they can attract the internal talent they need – creating that vibrant developer ecosystem is another challenge entirely. Sex appeal has a lot to do with money and opportunity. If they create a robust platform that is easy for ambitious developers to make money on, they will have accomplished their aim. I appreciate your divulging what you did and by all means keep on. :)

        As far as Gateway, I’m also excited about Gateway, I think it has enormous potential and is in fact a bit underestimated by the inferno of debate, hype and buzz that is HANA…

        • http://www.techdisruptive.com Mike Bestvina

          Ya haha I don’t think it’s really a disagreement really anyway, just a matter of perception.

          In regards to sexy, I do always find it fun (read-> challenge) telling women what I do. Saying “I do Hana” doesn’t always welcome a very good response ;)

  • John Rogan

    Hi Mike,
     
    Really enjoyed this article and I think you have raised some interesting points. I would just like to first point out before I express my thoughts that I am not a techie so, will be coming from a slightly different angle….I work within the recruitment team at Bluefin Solutions and am responsible for the graduate recruitment.
     
    A lot of students are blinkered at university by the big company campaigns plastered across university careers fairs, student unions, society sponsors and branded sports hoodies. These are the companies students are brain washed into thinking they ‘should’ be working for because they are not provided with the information of what else is out there. Similarly they have no idea about SAP and what can be done with it.
     
    I agree that SAP is not sexy to a student at university. This needs to change, and it can. If you can imagine a 2010 graduate on a night out and meeting up with their mates from university with the inevitable question of ‘what are you up to now?’ coming up, they answer with “I work for an IT company”, then we all know that the reaction to that would be a fairly disinterested one. However, I bet if they said “I work for Google”, it would be a completely different reaction although, the reality is that they are just working for a search engine. My point here is that it often has a lot to do with the brand. Why can’t this be the same with SAP? This is where I would like to add to your last point and say that SAP needs their partners for this. SAP as a product is not sexy but, perhaps a partner working to implement it can be…afraid I’m going to say it…like Bluefin!

    John

    • http://www.techdisruptive.com Mike Bestvina

      John

      Absolutely! Here is my own personal experience on how I got into SAP. I was an MIS major at Villanova University in Philadelpia. My professor is a big SAP evangelist and actually created a class called “ERP”. We had access to a shared SAP instance (not cheap) and had user logins for all of the students. Our assignments were to create sales orders, enter financial statements, etc. Very functional, but it at least gave us a starting point to understand how enterprise technology works. Unfortunately, what has happened today is that there is no more MIS program and no more SAP classes. I think everything has shifted to purely CS majors in the engineering school.

      As a 20 year old in the early 2000′s a couple of things stood out to me:

      1. I had no idea that computers used to use terminal screens. I thought everything in businesses would look like the web. Boy was I wrong…Then I used the SAPGui. The idea of a “transaction” is so 80′s!

      2. To your point about branding – the name of SAP was a bit foreign to me as student. I still have to explain to people in my generation what it is and what they do. You know what I have to say in order for people to understand? “You’ve heard of Oracle right? – Ya – Well, SAP is bigger than that in business application software” Sometimes I literally just have to tell women that I work for Google for them to understand that it’s not just about fixing company’s laptops. 

      My company is a small shop so we don’t have a huge initiative to go out and find graduate talent at the moment. (although I might be getting one to ramp-up in BWA/HANA soon!!) I’m also new to the UK school system and environment, so I really don’t know where to start. If there is anything we can collaborate on feel free to drop me a line at michael DOT bestvina AT xoomworks DOT com.