Microsoft insists debt issue not a prelude to SAP bid
Microsoft confirmed to the US Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday that it plans to sell a multi-billion-dollar debt offering, and in turn kicked off rumours that Redmond could be mulling a possible takeover of German software maker SAP. MS boss Steve Ballmer has since poured cold water on the speculation, but what’s …
I don't think it would in a million years.
That makes sense.
Let's hope it goes through I'd be happy to see all SAP customers forced to M$ Excel at the same price. OOOps I'm being told that SAP customers are in fact already using M$ spreadsheets to feed SAP CRM because it is a humongous piece of pooh.
... They gross profit approx $6bn a year...
And if they really wanted to buy SAP they would have already done so, but they could want to take SAP out of the market and reposition Dynamics as the leading ERP platform.
Mind you, SAP is German, and German companies are very good at playing the long game. so perhaps it's SAP orchestrating a reverse takeover of Microsoft.
I am generally regarded by my friends and colleagues as a rabid M$ hater. However, my recent experience of SAP (my employer implemented it in the UK last year) and Windows 7 leads me to suspect that while M$ has reacted to the negative feedback its previous heap of crap received, SAP appears to have done nothing of the sort.
With a system as complex as SAP, it's always hard to know how much is SAP's fault and how much is down to the way it was implemented, but the interface surely must be SAP's fault and it is hideous. My timesheet has about 50 buttons all illustrated by ugly little icons that seem to bear almost no relation to the function they purport to provide (in practice, my browser usually crashes so what the buttons are supposed to do is often irrelevant). My daughter, who is 3, could draw better icons. Also our MIS didn't give me the single most important piece of information I (and most of my colleagues) need.
I never thought I'd say this, but M$ all the way.
""It strikes me as a random rumour," said Ballmer, according to Reuters."
Or a Rogue Creative Fact in Immaculately Conceived Fiction, says amfM in the Register of IT Arresting, Interested Parties ....some of whom would Driver Virtuous Investment Vehicles Searching for the NXXXXT Breakthrough.
Which is always a Process of Reverse Engineering the Achieved Successful Goal to Chronicle Perfect Steps Made on the Quest/Magical Mystery Turing Trip, just back Only as Far as is Absolutely Necessary 42 Capture Viable Support Imagination ....... Co-Perfecting CyberIntelAIgents ReSearch & dDevelopment.
A Simple Phorm of Humble Words Easily Followed, to be Perfectly Understood and Probably Misunderestimated Too.
Conversation would then be DeaLogue. .... for Creation of AI Luscious ICFact in the Virtualised Operating System?
A Random Relative Question Launched* for VirtualAnswering/ChitChat/MajorLlanTwittering
* BetaLaunch AITest-Fired
Purest Python with Crazy Perls Opening a Flood of Gates. .....4PGP2 .... PerlyGatesPython for Pretty Good Privacy too in Cloud Phormations/MetadataBase Libraries in Information for Intelligence Exchange/Mentored Virtual Instruction for Physical Simulation and Personal First Party Lead Participation.
A New Fangled Entangling AIdDevelopment in ARGonaut Travel Systems with Full Virtual TelePortation Facility. An Awesome Application with QuITe Shocking Powers in Control...... and as Meek as a Lamb for the Protection of Innocence. Which is a Gift Abused All too Oft and which Returns, Time and Time again, to Haunt and Destroy an Abusive Entity/False IDEntity .
That one made even less sense than normal. Nicely done.
@Winhatter
"using M$ spreadsheets to feed SAP CRM because it is a humongous piece of pooh."
I passed your comment to our sales people - they would like to shake your hand as it matches their views. We have the consultants telling us we are incompetent because the SAP CRM is "so easy to use". We feel it is unstable, poorly designed and still not fit for purpose after 18 months of work. Oh well, another 70 thou down the drain.
@AC 13:19.
"but the interface surely must be SAP's fault " "My daughter, who is 3, could draw better icons." "MIS didn't give me the single most important piece of information I (and most of my colleagues) need."
I've made similar comments - all to no avail. Yes the ERP software can work well, once it has been set-up properly and if the users really do know what they are doing. But it is a bitch to get set-up especially as the majority of consultants need a smack with a clue stick.
@Doug
Try working with SAP - it will all begin to make sense!!!!
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I've said it before and I'll say it again - for the money (over £1.3 mil and still counting), we could have designed our own system and done a much better job and got it up and running much quicker.
Posted anonymously as the last time I made a comment on this topic, it got back to the consultants and they threatened to walk off the project. Personally I would say good f****** riddance - perhaps we could get some people in theat knew what they were doing, or better still drop the idea of installing this shit and find something that actually works as we need it to, instead of changing our processes to meet those of a company that doesn't understand our business.
The only problem SAP ever solved was "How do we burn through all our capital without actually getting anything useful done?" I know of two companies here in our small city that went out of business/were forced to be sold because SAP was so expensive and unwieldy.
Maybe they're going to buy all the non-DRM tracks in iTunes and use them to populate the new Zune subscription service.
I always found it amusing that Microsoft themselves run SAP.... rather than Great Plains as it was then.
Then again reading the horror stories of multi year and multi million dollar installations, i can see why you wouldn't be in a rush to change!!
Only £1.3 mil? That, my friend, is a bargain SAP implementation by almost any standards...My last one was budgeted for $30 million, and I'm sure we spent at least twice that before it became even remotely usable.
To paraphrase all the above comments with which I agree wholeheartedly, SAP sucks, most SAP consultants suck, and the SAP User Interfaces (all of them!) suck. I shouldn't complain though, I made a good living for several years making .NET and Adobe Flex-based interfaces to talk to SAP so users wouldn't have to learn to use any of the standard ones.
Its not SAP that costs the earth, its the shit consultants that claim to know how to set it up to your requirements. The pass some exam which must be easy because the consultants are such retards and this gives them the right to charge thousands a day.
$20m it cost my company to put it in globally, most of which going to the consultants who didnt do what they said they would. Then they wonder why companies are moving as much to India as fast as they can, same shit quality consultants but at 1/10 the price!
"Only £1.3 mil? That, my friend, is a bargain SAP implementation by almost any standards"
Possibly by SAP standards - but we are not a huge multi billion pound a year business. The cost of the SAP implementation will be over 50% of our total pre tax profits for the year.
And it's only a bargain if it works.
@AC 04:31
"its the shit consultants that claim to know how to set it up to your requirements"
Yes, we have had a few of those. But then, that is actually the SAP business model - don't get confused, they are NOT about selling software, they are selling consultancy and training services.
The small corporation I work for was looking at SAP versus Dynamics AX to replace a 25+ year old system. SAP walked in like we had no choice and Microsoft actually acted like they wanted our business. That along with the prices (SAP was 3 or 4 times more just in software) and features caused us to choose AX. We'll see how the implementation goes before I celebrate too much though.
When I talked to colleagues about our ERP options, not a single one spoke well of SAP. Well, except for those that made a lot of money off of making .NET and SharePoint portals to interface with SAP in order to bypass the crappy UI.
If SAP laid out the costs and time frames straight and square from day one, I reckon they would halve their sales right there.
It seems that SAP customers (always top management, never IT, SAP know how to talk to) are very often convinced to give it a go, and then it becomes so expensive that they can't back off, and they have to pour in more money until sap finally becomes useful. The ROI is *never* calculated.
The only SAP customer I am aware of that decided to write-off the huge costs after it became clear much more would be needed is Dell, so it seems to be a *great* sales model.
Anonymous because.
