I wrote the post below over a year ago. Clearly, McDermott does not believe in SaaS. He may be the co-CEO (instead of sole CEO) because his views aren’t shared throughout the organization. It really seems that SAP is split about its future direction. I am sure that management by committee will be just the ticket…
On January 7, 2009 John Foley wrote about an interview with Bill McDermott, SAP’s president and CEO of Global Field Operations (now co-CEO). Mr. McDermott is echoing SAP’s failure to deliver a viable SaaS solution for large companies as well as SMBs.
I think it is SAP that is disillusioned, not the customer. An excerpt:
‘McDermott contends that now more than ever companies need a full-featured, integrated applications platform for running global business operations — mySAP, for example — not half-baked applications from unproven SaaS upstarts. He points to SAP’s 36 years of experience developing a “stable core” of enterprise software and a service-oriented architecture that makes it easy to add on third-party and custom applications. “It will take another 36 years for software-as-a-service vendors to do the same thing in the cloud,” he says.’
Sounds to me like they just couldn’t figure out how to do what Plex Systems and others have done. I am surprised and, frankly, disappointed that SAP is choosing to throw in the towel on SaaS after only five to eight years and countless millions.
