It does, notably, have an integration problem because the rest of the DHB services don't use it.
What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
131–140 of 703 posts
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
:D You can run SAP in the cloud on Kubernetes: https://cap.cloud.sap/docs/guides/deployment/deploy-to-kyma Also you can re-write everything in Rust https://blogs.sap.com/2020/07/23/learning-rust-with-cap-part...
Ah, that's my blog post :)
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#133I am an SAP developer since kind of forever, my first job after university (since 2009). First I hated it, but the deeper I am entrenched, the more I see why you choose SAP: Because there really is no alternative. The data model is so complex because it is growing iteratively since the 80s. Hacker News is valuing businesses that adjust to the customer instead of going for some kind of purity. Another complexity espec…
Speaking of purity, the first thing Hacker News would do is try to run SAP on a Kubernetes cluster, refactor crucial bits in Rust and shard the database into sqlite3.db files on per user basis. We'd also recommend you restructure your office for a more open space, bring down the cubicles and make sure the conference rooms are glasswalled and have funny names. Bringing pets to work is mandatory.
Already happening: https://apphaus.sap.com/location/heidelberg
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#134Some things you need to know: SAP is sold to the C=suit, never to IT or business operations, nor any of the people that will ever come onto contact with the software. SAP is priced based on your company's revenue. In industry X typical spend on IT is y% of revenue, so SAP will charge you a project for an amount equal to y% of your revenue. SAP project often fail (this is not specific to SAP but common for large proje…
Plenty of terrible corporate software works like this. Precurement has a checklist of features, and that list never includes "Has great UX", because only the people on the floor has to use it.
I'm looking at you JIRA...
> SAP project often fail (this is not specific to SAP but common for large projects). Making sure that in case the project fails it is the customers fault will be strategically taken into account from day 1.
I was a consultant at a major software consultancy for the better part of three years. No matter what, it is always the costumor's fault, even when it isn't.
Paying a customer back some 100 billable hours worth of payments is simply just not feasible, when a large part of consultants have less than a years worth of work experience.
While you sit down and talk about the project with senior and managing consultants, you are being deluded with a completely skewed perception of the base level competence of those that will carry out the work.
The higher hierarchical "level" a consultant is at, the less implementation work they'll do, because associates will take longer time doing the same tasks and will therefore sell more billable hours.
The entire T&M consulting industry is economically incentivized to produce organisations that shirks responsibility, while simultaneously work on "too big to fail" projects, because that's where the money is at.
> SAP is a fairly closed ecosystem. Typically consultants are recruited straight out of school and never leave the stack as it is very different from the rest of the industry. It has it's own cultute and habits that do not travel well outside of it's niche.
Not to mention that it has its own programming language. I had a colleague that worked as a SAP consultant, and she said it was horrible. Features like "variables names can consist of at most 8 characters" certainly didn't help.
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, that's my blog post :)
It's some years ago, did you succeed rewriting CAP in Rust :P Thanks for being a hipster SAP developer, and I mean it :)
But other than that, I haven't found time to continue with that project. But you can check out my YouTube channel for future endeavours: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFU7a7OMYfcpjtIpu2j47_Q
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#136Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. SAP has no restrictions on how much you customise it - you can customise and extend to your heart's content. The problems come during upgrade - SAP has very mature tooling to manage upgrades but a customer who has veered too far from standard will need to rework their customisations to fit the new version. Many many customers have been burned by this over the years - being too trigger happy and customising/buil…
Fun with your comment: s/SAP/Debian/g s/mature/so-so/ s/customer/sucker/
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#138This is a good time to remind everyone of the rules of SAP integration: 1) Your company processes MUST adapt to SAP processes. That's it. You can try customising SAP to fit your processes, but you will just waste time and hundreds of millions of money and then you will fail. Lidl spent almost a decade and 500M€ on its SAP project, but didn't follow rule #1: https://www.henricodolfing.com/2020/05/case-study-lidl-sap-d…
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Again, as I noted elsewhere in the thread, I worked in R&D at SAP for 4 years (16 years ago), but I have no deep love for it. But I do have some understanding of where it fits in the landscape. What you've said is absolutely true, but it's mostly a feature, not a bug. Once you get big enough to need SAP, it's actually useful to put your business processes on a standardized platform. It's painful, always mind bendingl…
I have to disagree here strongly. You are just saying, that a company that became big enough, so it can afford SAP, should drop their way of doing business, drop the processes that made it big in the first place and go through a painful and expensive process where it will become just another SAP shop, with zero competitive advantage. Telling that losing your uniqueness and being like “everyone else” will actually bec…
No executive wakes up and things ‘this is a great day to pour 500M down the drain’.