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Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

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Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#241

Post by youdonthavekids »

abiogenesis wrote: post #161
Joeri wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you look at it that way then Powerpoint is just one of microsoft’s acquisitions. After a certain period an acquisition becomes fully native to that business. In my view BusinessObjects passed that point with SAP a while ago.

Sorry, you are right, I should have been more specific. What I meant was BusinessObjects is only the reporting component they acquired to complement their product suite. It's not "the product" SAP sells (i.e. ERP).

"SAP" isn't a product either, it's a company name. When certain people talk about SAP they actually mean R3 or ECC. R3 is dead and the sun is setting on ECC which is being replaced by S4/HANA (which some people will still call SAP). SAP has a lot of products and it's main products have a lot of modules so two people using "SAP" may not even recognise each others versions.

It would not surprise me if KP were using ECC for their finances or some other area the parent comment is not familiar with.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#242

Post by solarkraft »

ci5er wrote: post #228
_bxg1 wrote: post #7

I remember reading this article about SAP a few months ago, and it just blew my mind: https://retool.com/blog/erp-for-engineers/ Here was an entire market segment I'd never heard of, and just the market leader is worth $163B . And on top of that, the technology is so totally alien to anything I'd ever heard of before. It's like an alternate-history kind of thing. Like if we discovered a continent somewhere in the Pac…

I've got a - maybe silly - question: Do you think that software engineers read about the business of technology? I mean, some of these behemoths (or used-to-be behemoths) of technology, like Oracle and Intel and Microsoft (Ok - everyone knows them) and Dell and Apple (mostly the 2nd one) and places like SAP (which is arguably the biggest database and logistics and supply chain (sans the EDI middle-ware vendors on the…

I do read about these things, but I can also spend my time with lots of other stimulating/important stuff. Priorities, maybe?

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#243

Post by youdonthavekids »

abiogenesis wrote: post #160
Aeolun wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You skimmed a small part of SAP’s market? Like, a specific niche that you built a better tool for? I can only imagine that if you create any tool worth competing with SAP, your customers also have to be huge companies.

Yes, we competed with SAP in a specific industry and honestly our tools were better and more user friendly, and no, they were not all huge companies, which is one of the reasons we were able to eat SAP's cake because we were much cheaper. I believe we got the job 90% of the time when we were shortlisted with SAP. We lost some customers to SAP later on because they become bigger and "consultants" told them that they s…

Which SAP product did you compete with?

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#244

Post by piokoch »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #13
_bxg1 wrote: post #7

I remember reading this article about SAP a few months ago, and it just blew my mind: https://retool.com/blog/erp-for-engineers/ Here was an entire market segment I'd never heard of, and just the market leader is worth $163B . And on top of that, the technology is so totally alien to anything I'd ever heard of before. It's like an alternate-history kind of thing. Like if we discovered a continent somewhere in the Pac…

That is fascinating to me, because virtually all my friends have heard of SAP outside of IT - as users or recipients. My engineer friend uses it for supply chain management, a beer store hq clerk helped implement it, construction accountant has used it, etc. At the same time, I guess you have to be at a company of a certain size for it to be relevant to your life... But that perhaps proves the point - HN is very star…

"My engineer friend uses it for supply chain management, a beer store hq clerk helped implement it, construction accountant has used it, etc."

Is SAP something that can be somehow scaled down? if this is used for a beer store, it has to be really large store, if that's what is written in the cited article is true:

"A basic installation of SAP has 20,000 database tables, 3,000 of which are configuration tables. In those tables, there are ~8,000 configuration decisions you need before even getting started. And that’s why SAP Configuration Specialist is an actual job title!"

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#245

Post by lenkite »

cambalache wrote: post #34
_bxg1 wrote: post #7

I remember reading this article about SAP a few months ago, and it just blew my mind: https://retool.com/blog/erp-for-engineers/ Here was an entire market segment I'd never heard of, and just the market leader is worth $163B . And on top of that, the technology is so totally alien to anything I'd ever heard of before. It's like an alternate-history kind of thing. Like if we discovered a continent somewhere in the Pac…

Want your mind to be blown even more? I worked for a multinational company, I would not be surpised that this company is among the top 10 SAP customers worldwide. Well, everybody hated hated hated SAP, it was a huge hindrance instead of any help.Any use beyond of a "dumb" database was a huge PITA, and I am not fully convinced that all in all it helped more than damaged the business. It was clunky, unintutive, slow, u…

SAP's ugly green, old style-UI screens are wonderfully optimised for data-entry. You can be ultra-fast. It's like VIM. It's like driving at 300 mph.

Its all the new fangled dumbed-down, web-ui's that is sheer crap and leaves your head scratching.

Well..the old UI's were coded by old-school, C programmers who started their career in the 70s and 80s. They even wrote a multi-process Erlang style kernel to back the application programming. Performance came naturally from their gut.

Nowadays, we get Electron and congratulate ourselves.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#246

Post by ci5er »

solarkraft wrote: post #242
ci5er wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got a - maybe silly - question: Do you think that software engineers read about the business of technology? I mean, some of these behemoths (or used-to-be behemoths) of technology, like Oracle and Intel and Microsoft (Ok - everyone knows them) and Dell and Apple (mostly the 2nd one) and places like SAP (which is arguably the biggest database and logistics and supply chain (sans the EDI middle-ware vendors on the…

I do read about these things, but I can also spend my time with lots of other stimulating/important stuff. Priorities, maybe?

Fair enough - I was just curious if the average modern software developer read books by Andy Grove ("Paranoid"), or Crossing the Chasm, or the biography of Steve Jobs, or kept track of what's up with the top 250 global tech companies on planet Earth every week for 20 years.

Now, that's a little unfair because I read really fast.

But - I guess I was just curious about how a tech person couldn't know about SAP.

NOT as a criticism, btw -- just I don't know how this could be? They are not a secret company. I just (apparently) don't know how young software engineers are wired? (Yeah yeah - Ok boomer, I get it)

But, because people actually do matter to me - I would like to understand better how they are wired...

EDIT: I am also stimulated by my healthcare projects and my energy projects and my stupid stupid project to build a carbon-nanotube elevator to the sky (which may have more funding than practical deliverables!), but I am completely stimulated. I assumed you were too, so it wasn't intended to be an either/or.

EDIT2: If you don't know the answer to the question I was asking, don't worry about it. Nobody else appears to know either. Just because I have a question doesn't mean that there is an answer. Thank you for engaging and have a good night.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#247

Post by [deleted] »

rorykoehler wrote: post #204
heipei wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, those German Mittelstand companies are the exact opposite of what's usually referred to as a unicorn. They are small to medium-size, multi-generational family-run and family-owned businesses that focus on a very narrow set of products, such as just making gears for automative applications, or ball bearings, or blades. The people working there often work there their whole life, with the understand…

Doesn't unicorn just mean $1B+ valuation?

[deleted]

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#248

Post by youdonthavekids »

njharman wrote: post #113
crimsonalucard wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you use ERP instead of a regular SQL database? edit Got a lot of vote downs. This was a genuine question from someone completely ignorant on what ERP is. Not trying to say that SQL is better, but I'm asking this because I'm ignorant of what ERP is and the description makes it appear as if it's a database. What's the difference? would be better wording I guess.

Because the ERP solution comes with a gaggle of sales people, sales eng, and bizdev folks to convince your co's decision makers that it is best thing since butter. SQL doesn't.

"SQL doesn't"... you are correct, SQL can't figure out how much tax you need to pay across 9 tax jurisdictions. SQL can't tell me the best way for my warehouse picking robots to move across the floor based on the layout of the warehouse and what others products are being picked right this second plus over the next few minutes. The list is really endless of what SAP will do and SQL won't. It would take decades to replicate what SAP does.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#249

Post by miki123211 »

Basecamp is a famous example of this.

It's a pretty popular project management software, 56 employees at this point if I remember correctly, probably millions in revenue. It's a tiny, bootstrapped company, no investors breathing down their necks, no IPOs, nothing. And they're one of the few companies who actually have principles, are committed to privacy etc.

Re: Patio11's Law: The software economy is bigger than you think

#250

Post by JackMorgan »

ci5er wrote: post #246
solarkraft wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do read about these things, but I can also spend my time with lots of other stimulating/important stuff. Priorities, maybe?

Fair enough - I was just curious if the average modern software developer read books by Andy Grove ("Paranoid"), or Crossing the Chasm, or the biography of Steve Jobs, or kept track of what's up with the top 250 global tech companies on planet Earth every week for 20 years. Now, that's a little unfair because I read really fast. But - I guess I was just curious about how a tech person couldn't know about SAP. NOT as…

I would guess - at least for a lot of developers in my cohort - we came into tech at a time when every few years there was some big improvement to software productivity. Staying current with language features, new languages, and new paradigms could be the difference between getting that next job or not. Especially since people younger in their career are often expected (yes, even in tech) to be current with all the latest and greatest. A new graduate with only C experience is going to have a much much smaller pool of potential jobs than one with React and NodeJS. We've gotten trained (and paid) to assume the old isn't effective, and the new must be better. Obviously this isn't always the case, but I think it leads to a culture of obsessing about the new hotness and ignoring everything else.
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