Five years ago, global tech giant SAP appeared vulnerable. Its brand suffered from runaway project costs and it appeared preoccupied with its HANA database. Competitors were circling around its core applications business.
This volume in the series depicts a massive, on-going turnaround. The existential threat has passed, and SAP is poised to lead again. Will it rise to the challenge and assume its mantle of Manifest Destiny, like the US did during its western expansion in the 1800s? So many new markets to conquer.
Thirty-five case studies, across over 20 industries and 10 countries, showcase a spectrum of SAP customer strategies: Some are moving to S/4HANA and C/4HANA, while others are trying out Leonardo machine learning and IoT projects. Some are developing new capabilities with SAP's cloud platform and others are implementing acquired cloud products like SuccessFactors. However, many customers continue to diversify away from SAP products, given a series of "unforced errors" the vendor continues to make.
Part industry analysis and part strategy manual, this book is a must-read for anyone with interest in SAP or its competitors—as customer, employee, partner or investor.
Early Praise
"Don't be fooled by the title—the book is not just about SAP. It's about drama in enterprise computing. As Vinnie points out, few would have speculated in the late '90s that Apple, near dead or Google, not born yet would have many times revenue of SAP or its peers. I’ve been fortunate enough to have a front-row seat overlooking this market both as executive and as investor. With new startups and developer communities reshaping the industry, SAP’s opportunity to reshape itself is still on the table, but only if it's willing to take a zero-sum approach. Platform vendors have to use their market cap and sales organizations to offer new services. Otherwise Amazon, Google and Microsoft will within a few years position to operate enterprise workloads, anywhere at any cost. Vinnie deftly brings out the trajectory at SAP and its enviable blue chip customer base, but also its many missed opportunities."
Raymond J. Lane, Managing Partner, Greatpoint Ventures. Previous Leadership/Board Roles at Oracle, HP, Kleiner Perkins & Carnegie Mellon U.
“A prolific writer and prescient observer of technology trends, Mirchandani has produced an intriguing look at the many forces shaping enterprise applications today.”
Francisco D’Souza, Vice Chairman and CEO, Cognizant
"In previous books, Vinnie has painted a rather dim view of SAP as an expensive, back-office system, grudgingly accepted by business as a necessary evil. The fast changing and rapidly expanding digital landscape in the enterprise now presents incumbents like SAP a fresh opportunity to move into front-line operations in many industries. Will they be able to dominate this new digital space or will they squander the opportunity? This book does an excellent job of examining this question, taking a somewhat optimistic tone about their chances of success supported by a number of examples. Time will tell how the story ends."
Phiroz Darukhanavala (Daru), CTO, BP (Ret.)
"We are in the midst of massive digital transformation. Software companies are not immune. The shift from on-premises to cloud and now the shift from clouds to data-driven digital networks will leave some vendors behind as the industry consolidates and evolves into digital duopolies. Vinnie's book looks at the shift and asks key questions about how SAP and other software vendors will make this transition. More importantly, he raises the question on how the software market will look like post a financial engineered world, asking what strategies they should take, where they should invest, and with whom they should partner. A must read for those who want to know how the software market will evolve in the next decade."
R “Ray” Wang, Founder/CEO Constellation Research, Author Disrupting Digital Business
