If you've never worked in big corporate environments you probably are scratching your head at WTF SAP is. Though to be honest most people who have worked with SAP still struggle explaining what SAP is.
I personally think SAP is a ridiculously overblown and complicated piece of software. It is just asking for a bunch of smaller companies to come in and slice and dice it apart. However there is huge value in going with a single provider for all your logistics needs.
I see this move by SAP as wanting to shore competition up. If SAP integrates this into their product then I'd be happy. The product will get better. If they don't...well...who knows what will happen?
"Though to be honest most people who have worked with SAP still struggle explaining what SAP is."
Completely untrue. People that work at SAP are just like people working in startups or anywhere else. This is just made up fantasy. They can explain SAP, although at times perhaps only their area of expertise.
"I personally think SAP is a ridiculously overblown and complicated piece of software."
It isn't a piece of software, it's many pieces of software.
Some of those are complex, others are not.
"I see this move by SAP as wanting to shore competition up."
What does that even mean?!
The reality is as simple as you'd imagine. SAP is buying SuccessFactor because it doesn't have extensive experience in Cloud based delivery models, and would like to add their experience and infrastructure to SAPs.
Just like they did with Sybase, and Business Objects. This is completely obvious, and nothing in your comment made a lick of sense.
It is hard for startups to replace the real value of SAP, because it is a standard ERP basis+auxiliary apps, all integrated on the same data. You will spend years to build e.g. the payroll system, and then you only have one piece of the puzzle. Thus it has become the standard for large companies (e.g. many companies in BRIC countries are now adopting it). And it is very powerful and stable software, for which you are guaranteed to find experts to fix problems that might put your company's production at risk.
I personally think SAP is a ridiculously overblown and complicated piece of software. It is just asking for a bunch of smaller companies to come in and slice and dice it apart. However there is huge value in going with a single provider for all your logistics needs.
I see this move by SAP as wanting to shore competition up. If SAP integrates this into their product then I'd be happy. The product will get better. If they don't...well...who knows what will happen?