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SAP vs Open Source alternatives

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by jmart 1 view

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Given the economic climate I'm asking SAP practioners whether or not their companies/clients are putting thier plans to implement SAP upgrades/products on hold or moving ahead, and Why?

The trend so far is that SAP clients are continuing their projects, the commitement to the platform seems to happen at such a high level and is so all-encompassing that companies feel obligated to stay the course.

I've also been investigating open source initiatives, I'm researching whether or not open source software movement has any shot at being a threat to SAP in the enterprise arena.

I know this may sound far fetched and naive, but then again this is why I'm asking.

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by xxx123

OK, open source stuff is GREAT for operating systems and utilities. There are even some desktop productivity tools like word processors, spreadsheets and, I understand, some reasonable databases.

But to talk open source in the same context as massive applications like SAP seems pretty unlikely in my opinion. For one thing, the people who are into participating in the creation of open source never care about business apps financials, inventory, order entry, purchasing, etc. And if they did, they would probably create something that would serve only a fairly small business segment. I haven't worked with SAP, but I've worked with similar applications and I can't see the open source community coming up with anything on that scale. However SAP products are usually priced out of reach for small companies, so if somone writes an open source AR, AP or Ledger and financial consolidation app, they just might find some "takers".

by jmart

An organization commits to SAP and everything changes, quite frequently the internal processes of the organization have to be reshaped to "fit" SAP. The system is so complex you need specialists for each module.

People either get down that learning curve or they are out, or maybe they are just out becuase SAP is being installed and maintained by consultants and some outsourcer. Once you've got it running after a year or two you've sunk so many resources into getting there that you are now moving at SAP's pace, the rate of change your business can tolerate is now determined by what SAP can deliver. (if you believe technology is a key factor in supporting high rates of organizational change)

I'm thinking open source alternatives, provide a way to keep thoses big companies honest, amount other things.

by xxx123

Of course, it's always great to postulate a competitor that charges little or nothing for a comparable product, but I was trying to say (perhaps badly) that I don't think there will ever be one. I'm not a promoter of SAP - - I'm just saying that I don't see the open source community putting together a suite of products that in any way challenges SAP for the market SAP pursues. You need an incredible amount of business knowledge - - often specific to particular business sectors - - to write a replacement SAP module. I'm saying that kind of knowledge is not present in the open source community nor are they interested in acquiring it. It's just not what they want to do.

Finally, companies adopt SAP because they want radical changes intheir productivity and profitability. You can't get that just by installing software, any software. You HAVE to change the fundamental business processes or you're wasting your time.

by jmart

I don't see the open source community, as we understand it today, under taking a SAP replacement either, what I'm thinking is that the business IT community ( for lack of better terms) starts adopting open source tools, standards, methods, philosphies, and as an outcome, expands the open source community and its potential.

I'm saying that the open source community would grow because the rest of us start participating, we would use these tools to solve our own problems, one of them being the outragous cost of enterprise-wide technology.

I agree that we have to change the fundamental business process and I think that part of that change is how we think about and use technology within large organizations. My experience of large organization is that IT is executed in a top down fashion. Quite frequently the TOP is furthest removed from the practical everyday execution of technology and the TOP limits what is possible within an organiztion by their understanding. Open source is bottom up, trying to use that approach would be radically different.

I don't know of anything bigger than SAP when it comes to enterprise-wide commitments, I believe it's the ultimate top-down decision, which is fine if that's the only way your company can run, but it's the old industrial-revolution model we're talking about not the information age revolution we're living in. Where's the next competitive edge? As much as SAP is trying to morph, I'm just not convinced, too much baggage.

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