Kagermann Speaks

Mr.Kagermann thinks that with SAP’s new architecture, it would be possible to have different deployment options for having software "on-premise," like today, but also in a hosted, on-demand mode. Having seen that differentiation in business between companies can't be achieved with today's architectures without considerable investment and sometimes modification to applications He views that there is a difference that SAP brings to traditional on-demand models. The traditional approach to "software as a service" is an ASP [application service provider] "hosted" model. So it's one size fits all.(Am not sure of how this can be fully right!!) He would make us think the virtue of SAP is in its ability to share the program and separate the data of the company to aid on security and protection. Most of the times - companies don't want to share [their data]. The cost of this approach is only slightly( This needs better quantification!) higher than in the software-as-a-service model, but it is much lower than having it on-premise.Its easy to switch whenever a company feels that it doesn't want to own the data, His questioning is correct : Why are companies buying assets and not leasing them all the time? The same thing happens with software. He also sees SAP having partners to innovate around our technology and he thinks that there needs to be full clarity about what partners can expect. He sees that a majority of partners will have a very loose relationship and a few will have very strategic ones. Kagermann has always had a different vision about the SaaS world.
His futuristic vision : In the future people will work differently - they won't just sit down and have a transaction with a computer but instead it will be more of a "push" principle, managed by exceptions - so that the application is pushing exceptions to your desk. Result : Empowerement of the people and brings decision making down to a decentralized level. challenge. On challenges in operating in China & India - In China it is the IP [intellectual property] issue. Everybody is saying this, and they're right. In India it is the infrastructure. As he sees it(rightfully so) if India believes it can move directly to a knowledge economy and thus skip the industrial economy they are making a big mistake - because not everything is digital. And once something is physical. That is something India has to focus on. I would have loved to see more on the economics of running SAP in the future – migration, Netweaver, Innovation that SAP is bringing to the table, TCO and future pricing models etc.. Interesting read.