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

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

#641

Post by vezuchyy »

_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…

Hey, I worked for SAP for ten years and I don't agree with you. ABAP is still ugly with all its improvements, version control system and developer experience is awful. CDS views are great until they aren't, then we had this newest feature where you build apps with metadata on top of CDS views and that's where I decided that it's not a software development anymore.

I do see how Fiori launchpad is a great thing, how HANA is extremely powerful if you know what you're doing. At the same time I couldn't stand the corporate culture, QA processes and etc anymore. There're innovations and innovative teams but for the most things SAP is doing, software development is not the core competency.

Fun fact: I work with Datapath now (if you know what it is then you get an irony)

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

#642

Post by vezuchyy »

lqet wrote: post #153
wheels wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Answer from former SAP employee (may have changed in the last 15 years): Two main reasons: - It's actually terminal software, that's translated into a GUI from a text interface on the fly. - The people that buy SAP never have to use SAP. Its interface is not a selling point.

> It's actually terminal software, that's translated into a GUI from a text interface on the fly I am intrigued - you mean terminal output is actually parsed, and a GUI view is then generated from it? E: this would certainly explain the issue of listboxes only having the currently shown items loaded (described by another commenter) - everytime you scroll, the terminal output has to be produced + parsed again

> the issue of listboxes only having the currently shown items loaded

I challenged this design decision when Fiori was introduced and the thing is that statistically the lists are either small or huge. When they're huge, they got touched in less than 10% cases, so by not loading the whole content you save a lot.

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

#643

Post by vezuchyy »

probably_wrong wrote: post #21

Whenever I read about SAP (which I hate, so don't mistake this for an objective take) it reminds me of the discussion about self-hosting your email: "Oh, no, it's too complicated, you are better off paying someone else to do it for you". The problem being, I host my own email and it works fine , which makes me suspicious of the common takes about ERP too. Now, I get it, once you have to deal with taxes and payroll in…

it's not about self-hosting your email, it's about writing your own email server

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

#644

Post by panick21_ »

mopsi wrote: post #458
panick21_ wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really boggles the mind. What can be so complex that you can not do it in 300 person years of development time plus the cost of SAP. Specially with the tools that exist in open source. Amazing databases, data modeling systems, libraries to integrate into literally everything. It think the bigger problem might actually be to define the process you want to implement. What are the specifications, what of your existin…

> It really boggles the mind. What can be so complex that you can not do it in 300 person years of development time plus the cost of SAP. Build a inventory planning and tracking system for a company that operates in every country in the world and has to issue and receive invoices, customs documents, waybills etc in hundreds of formats, currencies, languages and accounting standards. And you are right that the biggest…

Its a fair point the amount of differences of the external world really does force an absurd amount of configuration complexity on your system however well you do on your internal processes.

You really don't just need 100 programs but you need 30 people defining the processes and 200 configuration experts.

This really seems like something the world would profit from creating a huge amount of open libraries for all this stuff. There are so many old apis in all these old systems. I work in banking and when switching company and then you re-implement the same shitty format again.

You would obviously need some people who have done ERP systems experience, not just 100 random developers.

I think, at least I have heard, that Tesla does its own internal system, would be interesting to see how many people they have working on that if its true.

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

#645

Post by jabbany »

7952 wrote: post #619
lbriner wrote: post #78

I think the mistake with SAP, as with that other article about a modelling pyramid at Ikea, is assuming that it is possible to create one system to rule them all without it being extremely inefficient and expensive. It mirrors a dysfunctional business run on command-and-control rather than, like AWS, you have a large set of loosely affiliated teams and although you risk some duplication, it makes for much more agile…

I think part of the problem is driven by the desire to create a slick UI and wizards. These systems then underperform. I wonder if you could instead expose more of the underlying computer science stuff to the user. Give them an interface to push transactions. And a set of widgets to pull data. Keep every operation seperate and discrete even when part of a process. And let documentation and training teach the business…

This... is not a good idea.

I used to think this, but then I started interacting with actual end users (normal, non-engineering people). There are 2 main problems with exposing more barebones stuff to non-engineers:

1) Problem solving (thinking about how to compose the raw primitives) takes a lot of creativity. Most normal people only know what end outcome they want, not how to engineer their way there*. The reason wizards are so common is because they address this exact need. Wizards try to figure out what you want to do via a series of questions (and then do it for you) rather than have you come up with how to do it yourself. They are so common because when designed correctly they work very well!

2) Understanding errors is also very hard. Just because something didn't fail doesn't mean it worked correctly. Sure, anyone can file a transaction into a database, but they can just as easily file an incorrect one either by mistake or due to inadequate understanding. The complexity of the systems are their to catch problems before they become problems.

Sure, sometimes there will be corner cases that aren't accounted for by the existing system. And these will be frustrating. But taking away both the end users' guide and also removing their guardrails just so they can maybe solve the problem themselves is not generally a great idea.

*: This is not meant to disparage the normal users, but different people just have different interests and goals. Not everyone should be forced to know exactly how a machine works just to operate it.

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

#646

Post by dieselgate »

ihaveajob wrote: post #527
mixmastamyk wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Reminds me of the ol' classic, "Things You Should Never Do, Part I" by Joel. However, I do believe a (slightly) better competitor could be created, with better technology, better workflow, etc. If well-capitalized. If it had well-factored plugins. If you had a top-notch team to design all that and then build it. That's a lot of ifs . Joel says it isn't guaranteed a brand new team will even do better than the old…

Good read, thanks! https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

Thanks for posting the link - funny part about his blog is coming across articles multiple times years apart. Had a hunch I'd read this particular one before and when he started talking about the 'fckedString' that was when I knew. Love the persistence of his blog as this was written decades ago.

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

#647

Post by redhale »

jerf wrote: post #430
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" Probably not. SAP is an everything-to-everyone product. Using Fred Brook's terminology for essential versus accidental, the problem with everything boxes is that even just the essential complexity of such a product is so insanely large that they are sufficient to produce a "horrid" product. Of course they don't have just the essential comp…

You (and maybe GP) seem to be assuming that a SINGLE competitor would theoretically try to replace SAP and fail.

But the most likely scenario, I think, is that built-for-purpose competitors will build products that peel away small pockets of SAP's customer base over time.

The irony of course is that a product like SAP is the end result of similar built-for-purpose products being hoovered up and merged together in the first place.

Everything is a pendulum!

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

#648

Post by FpUser »

jonhohle wrote: post #449
brightball wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years ago I was a grad assistant for a couple of professors who'd built a pretty incredible JIT supply chain platform. The US Army started using it to manage their uniform orders and it worked so well that two entire warehouses were torn down due to lack of use. A new general came in and insisted on using SAP. 6 months later, they had to rebuild both warehouses. EDIT: For some additional context, the system manage…

The government funding mechanism doesn’t incentivize cost optimization, and in my experience, does the opposite. Money is allocated to be spent and if not spent is “lost” and may be cut from subsequent budget years. This leads to massive end of year purchases to use remaining funds or starting unnecessary projects just because money was allocated, regardless of whether needs have changed. It’s a really broken system…

When I lived in the USSR we had the this system where money must be spent no matter what or the next year budget will be cut. I thought it is insane and borderline crime and thing like these are impossible in free Western world. Boy was I in for a surprise when I emigrated.

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

#649

Post by mathattack »

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’ve heard a few CIOs say “The surest way to get fired is a security breech or replacing your ERP.”

For many companies it would be easier to do an asset sale of all their IP than to replace the ERP.

Since most ERP implementations are horrendously overdue and over budget, they are usually declared Done before they’re actually finished. That leaves a lot of crud and manual processes in their wake.

In addition, so many of these systems are on prem using hardware, operating systems and databases that haven’t been supported in decades.

I’m getting nightmares just thinking about it!

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

#650

Post by r00fus »

AlbertCory wrote: post #473
dangerboysteve wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk alone from a company switching ERP systems, or switching versions of the same ERP, is well documented in the press. Companies have lost tens to hundreds of millions on failed projects. So the pain points to switch to another platform must be so great even to think about going down this road. Like all ERP software, cost to implement is 2x - 3x the cost of the software. https://www.thirdstage-consulting.com/th…

Funny you have a quote from Ellison. I was at Oracle in the 90s, and "Oracle Apps" had its own building. At the same time, I was on lots of social events in the Valley and always running into Stanford IT people, and all of them could rant for hours about Oracle Financials. Apparently Stanford had its own homebrew system, and some dean had decreed that they had to move to Oracle Financials. For literally years, these…

They had an "apps" division because there were entire other companies with reasonably similar market cap at the time (Peoplesoft, Siebel, SAP) who basically wrote apps (and only the apps) as well (they required databases to function but were flexible on DB engine).

Apps are what organizations/people buy. Databases are just the storage engine.

The difference is that Oracle underwrote their apps with database profits and they never got the apps game.

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