SAP's SaaS pull-out will help rivals in Europe

Business By Delay - Trial By Fire Still Needed: Great point on validating the market and then withdrawing. It shows how little visibility they have had in terms of what is on / off track. No one plans to announce a 12-18 month delay. That 4-6 release cycles for salesforce.com. Appirio's blog highlights the challenges SAP faces in making this transition.

In addition, after spending nearly three years in the Office of the CEO at SAP and now two years at Appirio working with Google and salesforce.com, I can fully appreciate the degree of change needed at SAP requires a massive DNA change in all parts of the business. The more subtle parts of the equation will be impossible to internalize until they launch broadly. Operational processes around the product are one thing, but how you generate leads, inside sales, high volume sales processes, culturally serving the customer every month (support & sales), quickly iterating the product while retaining longer term dev objectives, etc. will only become problems you can solve after a broad release.

Planning out the Xs and Os is critical, but there is nothing like being in the game for really understanding what is needed.; Posted by: Narinder Singh Posted on: 05/02/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use