Page II: Since taking the reins of Germany's SAP last year, Henning Kagermann has hardly had a dull moment. In this interview, he talks about Microsoft's bid to acquire the company, and where the enterprise software market is headed.
I think to some extent they would follow the Department of Justice. This is not an official position of SAP, but just my personal opinion.
One of the big questions in the Oracle-DOJ trial was whether or not
Microsoft plans to sell applications software to big global firms and
compete head-to-head with SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft. Considering your
recent merger talks, what do you think?
Whatever I heard from (Microsoft) is that they are focusing on the
mid-market exclusively. So they never talked about the "up market."
One software company that's getting a lot of attention these days is
Salesforce.com, and their big IPO last month looks like a major
validation. Are you worried about them and their motto that the
traditional enterprise software model is dead?
No, it's not a model that could replace today's model. What Salesforce
is doing is they pick a few services which are not strategic and give
this in a generic way to some clients. This would never replace customer
relationship management; it will never replace a suite.
If over time clients like this model, I think we are prepared to do the same. But it's not, in any case, a threat to our model because who in the world would ever give his entire customer-facing process to somebody else? Nobody.
Why not do what Siebel has done and go after Salesforce now? After all,
you're looking for growth, and this appears to be a growing market.
Yeah, but rushing into it without a clear, good value proposition that
might be a better one than what Salesforce offers makes no sense. I
think we have some time. But I don't see a huge market, otherwise we
would do it.
Have you formed a vision for SAP over the next five years that perhaps
differs from the vision of previous SAP CEO Hasso Plattner? Or is your
position to just keep your head down and continue along the same path?
Last year, we started to define a five-year strategy. You will see us
moving to a complete enterprise services architecture, which will be
finished in 2007.
Customers are buying more incrementally. It's not the big replacement of information technology infrastructure we used to see.
The innovator's dilemma is an interesting one. How do you respond to the
criticism that SAP has been slow to innovate in recent years? Is it fair
to say SAP followed rather than led some of the recent technology
waves, such as customer relationship management and e-commerce?
I think everybody has a different view on this. I think SAP, as viewed
from the outside, might be slow because we sometimes enter a market at a
point when others are in. But when we enter the market, it's a promise
for our clients that we are successful and in for a long, long time.
This is part of our value proposition, part of our reputation. SAP
cannot enter a market and go out. We cannot, like Siebel, go to Latin
America and, when business is not coming, just step out. We can't. This
is part of our brand.
Do these technological shifts you describe -- Web services and new
architectures -- change who you consider to be the competition?
Web services brings an overlap in the competitive landscape, you are
right. Because of Web services, we now have some overlap with IBM. We
have a broader overlap with Microsoft than five years ago, that's true.
It's not black-and-white any longer.
Do these competitive changes make SAP more vulnerable to attack?
If you are not changing, then you might be vulnerable. But we have been
on this track now for already 18 months. Everybody is saying we are
leading. Our clients feel we have the right pace. So I feel more than
comfortable. For us, it's an opportunity.
What's the big deal about Web services anyway?
People want to leverage their investments. There is no chance to come
back with the next killer app, and say, "OK, take everything out."
They've invested too much. With enterprise services architecture, SAP
can help them leverage, bring total cost of ownership down and bring the
flexibility.
This resonates well with our clients, and most important, it's not revolutionary. The client would kill us if we would come with a revolutionary idea. What they want to have is getting their bucks out of the investment, while having a vision for the next year so that they don't miss the trend and they have more competitiveness.
Are the days of the software megadeal gone? Will customers ever regain
their appetite for really big software projects that SAP is famous for?
Customers are buying more incrementally. It's not the big replacement of
information technology infrastructure we used to see. So I think deal
size goes down on average. We have less large deals, but we have more
deals. I personally don't believe that we will come back to see old
days, but I also believe that we will see the bottom very soon.
Will IT spending bounce back then?
No, IT budgets will not grow. People look at total cost of ownership and
they all try to squeeze out and try, if they have 3 percent IT expenses,
to bring it down to 2.5 percent -- some bring it down to 2 percent. But,
if you look at where really the value is created, it's with the
enterprise applications, which is sometimes less than 10 percent (of the
IT budget). Therefore what is a commodity today, such as hardware, I
think will be cheaper and will go down. There is enough demand for
applications, so therefore the amount of application spending will grow
(and) therefore the application market will grow.
7%
3%
