What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)

Post by colinmhayes » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

cholantesh wrote: post #370

ethbr0 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. People underestimate how much SAP is doing behind the scenes when properly configured. And beyond that, they overestimate the ergonomics of any enterprise alternative , especially ones that pre-dated SAP. For every "We had a great internal platform that we custom built" story, there are multiple "We used a small vendor's product, and it was a nightmare." Why is SAP successful? Because the general purpose too…

Are there really no meaningful competitors to SAP in this space?

Post by flavius29663 » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 2:34 PM UTC

progfix wrote: post #411

_glass wrote: post #27

I 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…

> ABAP, the programming language of SAP, is quite nice nowadays I took a brief look at the ABAP wikipedia article and this insanity [1] stood out to me. I think after a decade of SAP you are too brain-washed to give an objective opinion anymore. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABAP#Spaces

Post by zitterbewegung » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

KronisLV wrote: post #379

sotix wrote: post #310

I worked in public accounting with some major corporations as clients. Every single company I interacted with used SAP. It is the de facto software in its field and is deeply entrenched. Its UX is the most horribly wicked thing I’ve ever come across. We would conduct walkthroughs with process control owners that showed us what they would do in SAP to perform their job functions, and it would take multiple, intelligen…

> I feel there is a lot of room to develop better tools that are not so horrid, however, the process for replacing SAP will be long and close to impossible. Personally, I rather liked the approach that Oodoo takes: https://www.odoo.com/ It tries to be pretty modular and even the cloud hosted plans can be mixed and matched, in addition to which the apps can be self-hosted for free: https://www.odoo.com/page/all-apps O…

Post by rbanffy » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

sotix wrote: post #310

I worked in public accounting with some major corporations as clients. Every single company I interacted with used SAP. It is the de facto software in its field and is deeply entrenched. Its UX is the most horribly wicked thing I’ve ever come across. We would conduct walkthroughs with process control owners that showed us what they would do in SAP to perform their job functions, and it would take multiple, intelligen…

Post by marcosdumay » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 2:40 PM UTC

greedo wrote: post #352

q-big wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this story rather a strong sign that many managers are simply incompetent? I mean: how can you seriously manage things if you don't even know what kind of tasks you actually manage?

At a certain level, managers have to delegate broadly. I think this is best illustrated by the US Army. In an ideal situation, the commander general guidance about his intent. Then his subordinates plan how to accomplish it. I wouldn't expect a Colonel to remember how to fire a mortar properly, and it's the same in IT. My manager expects a well run, secure and efficient datacenter. He expects his SMEs to take care of…